William Murchison from Creators Syndicate

The Gospel, Anyone? for 07/21/2009

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Not that the secular world walks the floor at night worrying over the Episcopal Church and its waning influence over the minds of all decent and honorable Americans. The secular world lost this decent and honorable habit years ago and likely won't get it back, especially with Episcopalians themselves acting more and more like members of a secular pressure group.

The Episcopal Church, at ...

Updated: Tue Jul 21, 2009

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Time For Recess for 07/28/2009

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

According to a recent poll by Political Strategies Inc./POLITICO, only a quarter of Americans "trust" Nancy Pelosi.

Mrs. Pelosi, reacting to a question about the poll, replied, "I don't care." The reporter with whom she was speaking said she was "laughing heartily."

Now for today's topic: democracy.

Say what you will about it, and there's plent ...

Updated: Tue Jul 28, 2009

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Clink, Clank, Clunker for 08/04/2009

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

You can't make this stuff up. First, the name of the program — Cash for Clunkers. Then the origin, the fountainhead — to wit, the U.S. Congress. Then the results: unexpected demand for participation, unanticipated shortages of cash, bureaucratic unresponsiveness, public and congressional consternation.

Many of the politicians who designed Cash for Clunkers want now to re-desi ...

Updated: Tue Aug 04, 2009

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The Great American 'Oh, Yeah?' for 08/11/2009

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Did!

Didn't!

Did, too!

Didn't either!

Oh, what a wondrously enlightening health care debate we're having. Democratic hotshots, from the White House on down, blame the throngs protesting at town hall meetings. Baloney. It's the hotshots who are most to blame.

The hot shots see, or profess to, nothing in the least remarkable about rearranging a sixth of the Amer ...

Updated: Tue Aug 11, 2009

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Love And The Ruins for 08/18/2009

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

What with baby boomers running our instruments of communication, what were we going to talk about this month but, yes, the 40th anniversary of Woodstock? Lay it on me, man! Peace! Love! All that '60s stuff!

Or some of it. The marginality of Woodstock as a Great American Event will grow more obvious as — I hate to put it this way — people younger than the present writer dimini ...

Updated: Tue Aug 18, 2009

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Obama's Blunder for 08/25/2009

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

If the left wing of the left wing of the left wing in American life doesn't control most of the Obama farmstead's best and richest acreage, it could be time for new spectacles — since things surely look that way.

Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to go after the CIA has all the earmarks of policy designed to make left-wing hearts palpitate. What other purpose could it possibl ...

Updated: Tue Aug 25, 2009

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That Kennedy Legacy for 09/01/2009

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The end of Ted Kennedy's long sojourn among us, splendidly splashed by the media, opened the renewed discussion of whether it's time that big government, in the Kennedy mode, came back.

The late senator's eulogists — in politics and the media, not to mention at the funeral — tended to nod their heads enthusiastically. We needed the big ideas and projects of the senator's lega ...

Updated: Tue Sep 01, 2009

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Trials and the Celebrity-in-Chief for 09/05/2009

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

They're all over him — swarms, flocks, flights of critics taking apart President Obama: his style, his motives, his modus operandi, assuming he has one.

Charles Krauthammer, in a dead-on column, called him "Obama the Mortal." Peggy Noonan, in the Wall Street Journal, sought to close the deal: "Obama has grown boring … He always has the same stance. There is no humor ...

Updated: Sat Sep 05, 2009

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Another Bronx Cheer For Politicians for 09/15/2009

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

It helps to read history. We know, or should, that American life shows us nothing like the social and political conniptions that Germany experienced in the 1920s, France in the 1790s and the United States in the 1850s.

But something is cooking. Indignant people — I'm sidestepping the adjective "angry" so as to avoid connotations — don't mysteriously materialize in t ...

Updated: Tue Sep 15, 2009

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The Joys of Failure for 09/22/2009

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

You know — you must — you can't help it — aren't you alive?! — that the marketplace isn't perfect. Haven't we all been told often enough, amid the political chatter concerning how to crack down on Wall Street?

Bad, bad bankers whose pay should be regulated and selfish brokers — not to mention negligent directors of corporations — are among the current ...

Updated: Tue Sep 22, 2009

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Freedom -- the Key Foreign Policy Concept for 09/29/2009

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

George W. Bush got banged up badly for his foreign policy choices: Iraq, Guantanamo, "torture," a certain tonal disdain for critics foreign and domestic. It will be interesting to see, in a matter of weeks or possibly days, how his successor, Barack Obama, fares with the critics.

Many on the right sound angry right now over what they see as Obama's dithering, apologetic tone in ...

Updated: Tue Sep 29, 2009

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Dave's and Roman's World for 10/06/2009

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Institute for American Values gives us the news that — all right, they don't say it in so many words, but two and two are easy to add, and there seems no way not to understand that David Letterman didn't inadvertently become a cad and a bounder and Roman Polanski a rapist on the run.

Our culture's grasp of the right relationship between men and women —founded on a proper ...

Updated: Tue Oct 06, 2009

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Political Delusions for 10/13/2009

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Plutarch tells us that, back in the fifth-century B.C., when the citizens of Athens were voting on whether to ostracize — i.e., throw out — Aristides the Just, one sourpuss explained his emphatic yes vote: "I am tired of hearing him called 'the Just.'"

I hesitate to introduce the comparison. It introduces the possibility — assuming Jon Stewart and Robert Gibbs ...

Updated: Tue Oct 13, 2009

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Obama and his 'Enemy' Fetish for 10/20/2009

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

One element in last summer's Obama ruckuses — there's always an Obama ruckus going on, it seems — was a few placards at tea party rallies comparing the president to a certain A. Hitler. Both the comparisons and the ensuing ruckus they caused were rubbish. Couldn't we all just see Obama heil-ing huge crowds to fury over national enemies and the like? Nope. Not a bit of it.

The ...

Updated: Tue Oct 20, 2009

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Comeback Time for Christians for 10/27/2009

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Holy Father — Pope Benedict XVI — offers to let Episcopalians and other Anglicans of Catholic disposition join the Roman Catholic Church, while retaining characteristics of their Anglican identity. And who in the booming pagan market cares a flying broomstick what the pope does about anything?

Not the Wiccans, an estimated 340,000 strong. Not the worshippers of Wotan or t ...

Updated: Tue Oct 27, 2009

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Can Washington Make You Buy Health Insurance? for 11/03/2009

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Yes, yes, says White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Congress has the power to make everyone buy health insurance. "I don't believe there's a lot of case law that would demonstrate the veracity" of comments to the contrary.

Thank you, Mr. Justice Gibbs. We'll see about all that when — if — the matter of Congress' power over private commercial judgments of this n ...

Updated: Tue Nov 03, 2009

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The Fort Hood Massacre for 11/06/2009

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

It makes no sense to see Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as represented in at least one family account, as the victim of "harassment" by fellow soldiers (and therefore a candidate for "understanding"?) He's an officer. Soldiers don't harass officers.

It makes no sense to suggest he'd been traumatized by narratives he had heard concerning the awfulness of combat in Iraq a ...

Updated: Fri Nov 06, 2009

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The Fort Hood Massacre for 11/06/2009

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

It makes no sense to suggest he'd been traumatized by narratives he had heard concerning the awfulness of combat in Iraq a ...

Updated: Fri Nov 06, 2009

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Mrs. Pelosi Thumbs her Nose for 11/10/2009

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

After 10 months of Nancy Pelosi at the helm of the House, Americans could be forgiven for unfurling their umbrellas should the speaker announce the sun was shining. A "historic" vote for "health care," huh? The lady says so.

Let her have her day. She worked hard enough for it — and in the end, notwithstanding a Democratic margin of 81 votes, prevailed by only fi ...

Updated: Tue Nov 10, 2009

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Women in Danger! for 11/17/2009

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

A major detail of the Fort Hood horribleness has escaped comment, insofar as I can tell. I'm going to comment, therefore -- with no expectation that many if any will note the civilizational shift it connotes.

The detail is this: Of the 13 who died, three were women soldiers: Sgt. Amy Kruger, 29; Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, who was pregnant; and Lt. Col. Juanita Warma ...

Updated: Tue Nov 17, 2009

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