Joking matters
Everybody used to know the difference between freedom and license. Not any more. — From The New Criterion of November, 2025
Of man & manners
How did the radical left in America forget to remember their manners? — From The New Criterion of October, 2025
No different result
The Democrats hitch their wagon to Trump-hatred today, Trump-hatred tomorrow, Trump-hatred forever — From The New Criterion of September, 2025
Free speech — latest.
So Jimmy Kimmel is back, not only unrepentant but glorying in his new role as the people’s champion of “free speech” against the “un-American” tyrant in the White House. The nearest he got to an apology for the faux pas that got his show briefly suspended by his paymasters at Disney-ABC was the assurance that…
Policing polite
When I was a boy I was an eager reader of what were then still known as the funny papers. These provided, like the movies, a way for children to learn about some of the mysteries of the adult world hidden from them by their parents. In the funny papers of those days there was…
Just another act of “political violence”
The New York Times had the scoop, at least according to its own lights. Charlie Kirk’s body was not yet cold when the paper’s “On Politics” newsletter whooshed into my inbox with the news: Good evening. Tonight, we’re covering the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing youth activist and close Trump ally, at an…
A culture of innocence, part three
The rule of law has at last given way to the rule of lawyers — From The New Criterion of June, 2025
A culture of innocence, part two
From Karen Bass to Mahmoud Khalil to Volodymyr Zelensky, all certified victims must always be innocent, even when guilty, just as their certified victimizers must always be guilty, even when innocent.
A culture of innocence
The media’s relentless search for scandal that will cripple or cancel those in government whom they do not like depends on the conceit of their own, and their sources’, moral purity — From The New Criterion of April, 2025
Melting the ideological permafrost
When America was finally done with the Biden administration, it seemed to many as if the country was kinda done with a lot of other things too — From The New Criterion of March, 2025
Tribalism, good and bad
Good man or good president? Take your pick. But you get neither a lot more often than you get both. From The New Criterion of February, 2025
Non, je ne regrette rien
On the reason why ideologues never seem to be able to learn from their mistakes — from The New Criterion of January, 2025