Conservative Evangelism, Part One

The liberal's basic problem is that he is participating in the false and wicked system of liberalism, a system that is dragging him and his nation down to destruction. His basic need is to hear this bad news (the truth about liberalism) and the good news of conservatism that there is a truer and better [...]

Neither a Dark nor Golden Age: Thinking About the Past

Golden Ages exist in Heaven, Dark Ages in Hell, but in this world, neither the unadulterated optimism attending to the former nor the dreary pessimism belonging to the latter have any place, for it is a mode of existence to which both tears and laughter are intrinsic.

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Thinking About “Conservatism” and “Libertarianism”

Considerations of such contingencies as cultural traditions, widely distributed emotional dispositions, institutional arrangements, and habits, prescription, precedent, and prejudice, are conspicuously absent from the libertarian's vision.

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The Disillusionment of Garry Wills

Henry Adams, about whom Garry Wills has written at length, concluded upon observing politics up close that "power is poison." Garry Wills appears to have reached the same conclusion regarding Barack Obama.

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Harry Reid, “Racism,” and Racial Subtexts

Harry Reid's only offense (in this case) is that he told the cold, hard, truth.

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Calling the Threat for What it Is: Not “Islamo-Fascism,” “Koranic Literalists”

Those who are convinced that this is indeed a "war" should take the first indispensable step toward "the Victory" for which they long by at least understanding who "the Enemy" is and what "the war" is about.

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The Decisive Reason Against Obamacare: Liberty Revisited

Republicans and others who decry the monetary costs of this contentious program inadvertently, and in spite of their protestations to the contrary, prove that their difference with the Democrats is one of degree, not of kind.

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Nathan’s Hope

A tribute to IC's brother Nathan Alexander who passed away from leukemia on May 24, 2009. Emily Ham was one of his favorite students and most talented writers. A memorial service is being held at Troy University at 5pm on August 24, 2009.

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White Ignorance, Black Guilt, and the Politics of Race

To most whites the phenomenon of affluent and privileged blacks like Henry Louis Gates, Jr. harboring racial grievances toward the United States is a baffling curiosity. The phenomenon is best explained by the twin concepts of White Ignorance, which demands a post-racial or trans-racial world, and Black Guilt, which, in glaring contrast, demands an enlivened racial awareness.  

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Barack Obama, Notre Dame, and Abortion

How can this self-professed Catholic institution embrace the most visible proponent of "abortion rights" the world over while simultaneously maintaining its identity?

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Requiem for a Word — Racism: Revisited

The term "racism" should be called out for what it is and retired.

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Chinese Spies Infiltrating US Businesses

{The following is based on an FBI strategy report sent to the 14,000-member National Association of Chiefs of Police.}

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The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and its Responsibility for 9/11

The "liberal solution" to America's conflict with the Islamic world, Dinesh D'Souza argues, is doomed from the outset because it imagines that American political values may be absolutely abstracted from its cultural values. Most Americans, according to D'Souza, have cultural beliefs that give them much more in common with the "family values" of Islamic culture, [...]

Mexican government corruption fuels US drug problem

Mexico continues to be the source or entry point for the vast majority of the narcotics that are consumed in the US. Mexico is the leading transit country for cocaine and heroin consumed in the US. It is also the leading source country for marijuana and now methamphetamine. [...]

Conservative Reformation

The ideas of liberalism currently have effective control of America, so the conservative movement must deliberately instigate a war of ideas, with the aim of retaking intellectual control of the country.

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Unless Republicans and Conservatives Adopt a Sound Set of Principles, they are Destined for the Political Scrapheap

While some Republican politicians profess to advance certain foundational principles, the principles amount to nothing more than a few mixed-up policy proposals. Low taxes and small government, the most often advanced Republican/conservative principles, are not actually principles.

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Crossing Swords: Buckley in Perspective

William F. Buckley, Jr.  was arguably the most conspicuous intellectual lightning rod on critical political and intellectual issues for nearly three decades. The deeper you explore his life and the people with whom he conversed, debated and corresponded, the more you realize the remarkable reach of his enterprise.

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Crossing Swords: The Environmental Movement

Though William F. Buckley, Jr. was hardly a member in good standing in the environmental movement, he deserves credit for dealing with the issue seriously, if infrequently. While he was not hostile to environmental concerns, he positioned himself more in opposition to the fad of modern environmentalism than as a proponent of legitimate public policies around [...]

Crossing Swords: John Kenneth Galbraith and Free Enterprise

William F. Buckley, Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith agreed on virtually nothing in the public sphere. Whereas Buckley celebrated the free market and the anti-collectivist views of Hayek and Nock, Galbraith was an unrelenting critic of an economic system that left, in his view, millions of Americans vulnerable to capricious circumstances.

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The Green Frontier; Environmental Sentimentalism and Reverse Manifest Destiny

The traditional American zeal which accompanied settlement — and the evangelistic crusade to tame and purify it — is being channeled into modern Environmentalism.

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Crossing Swords: Noam Chomsky and the New Left

In Noam Chomsky's world, there is a pro-American capitalist exploiter behind every tree. He is the ultimate ideologue, devoted to explaining history, or at least American history and foreign policy, through a single prism. For Chomsky, to even engage in a discussion about Vietnam was to lose one’s humanity. But that didn't prevent him from going on William [...]

Replies to Critics on Behalf of Classical Conservatism

To oppose “rationalism” is not to oppose reason; rather, it is to oppose a particular conception of reason, a conception according to which the intellect is “omnicompetent,” judge, jury, and, if need be, executioner of all traditions, institutions, customs, and laws that fail to vindicate themselves before its bar.  The notions that nations can be [...]

Crossing Swords: Norman Mailer and the Culture Wars

The cultural impact of the 1960s was sobering: divorce, pornography, drug use, single-parent families, infidelities, unwed mothers and teen-aged pregnancies all exploded, contributing to enclaves of dysfunctional and destructive behavior that constituted a national disaster. Norman Mailer, for all his (occasional) claims of being a social conservative, played a prominent role in ushering in this [...]

Evolution 101

If you are sure there is no miracle-working God, then something like Darwinian evolution must be correct. But if there is even a chance that such a God exists, then basic intellectual integrity demands that you take seriously the criticisms directed against Darwinism.

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Crossing Swords: Michael Harrington and the War on Poverty

Michael Harrington helped ignite The Great Society and all the benefits and problems that were associated with that effort, and made the elimination of poverty a staple of Democratic politics. Natually he clashed with William F. Buckley, Jr., who viewed Johnson’s war on poverty as an exercise in futility.

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