ArcaMax

Political pledges often cause headaches. On election night in 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt told reporters, "Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination." He regretted it almost immediately. Later, he would say, "I would be willing to cut off my hand if I could call back that statement."

In 1988, accepting...Read more

My friend David French, one of the most admirable voices in America today, argues that conservatives need not vote against Republican senate candidates in order to send a message about Trumpism. I disagree. He writes, "A rage, fury, and a 'burn it all down' mentality is one of the maladies that brought us to the present moment."

This assumes ...Read more

President Donald Trump has a point. People are being injured. The property damage runs into the millions. Things are out of control. Local governments are not able to handle this on their own. It demands a federal response. When sacred things are desecrated, it takes a toll on the national spirit.

Trump thinks this applies to rioters and ...Read more

Bari Weiss brought keen intelligence and broadminded liberalism to the editorial pages of The New York Times. So, naturally, she had to go. The right will cackle that this proves how dangerous the left is. They're not totally wrong, but they need to look in the mirror.

Many Twitter denizens first became aware of former New York Times writer and...Read more

A number of conservative commentators have rushed to defend President Donald Trump's Mount Rushmore speech. Incensed by press depictions of the speech as "divisive and dark," figures such as Mollie Hemingway and Tom Fitton rode to the president's side, assailing The New York Times as a "leftist propaganda outfit" (Hemingway) and a "leftist ...Read more

Christopher Slutman, 43, had always wanted to be a firefighter. He was that kind of kid, the kind who wants to save people. He was also a Marine Reserves Staff Sergeant who had served in Iraq. Last year, he was assigned to duty in Afghanistan.

On April 8, 2019, just two weeks before he was scheduled to return home, he and two other Marines were...Read more

This election "is no longer about Donald Trump's tweeting," conservative historian Victor Davis Hanson told Fox News host Tucker Carlson the other night. Nor is it about "a lockdown, the virus, the economy (or) foreign policy. It's an existential question ... and I'm going to vote for civilization."

Ah, the conservative warning of barbarians at...Read more

For many years, I was skeptical about accusations of racism in the criminal justice system. Yes, I knew that blacks comprised only about 12% of the population yet represented 33% of the prison population. But those data alone did not prove that police are racists or that courts are tougher on blacks than others. The relevant criterion is not the...Read more

We thought it was a fixed feature of our new era. We thought that objective reality didn't matter anymore, if it even existed at all. We thought we were so entrapped by our information silos that nothing could penetrate. "LOL. Nothing matters" ran the Twitter meme.

What we've learned in the past two weeks is that we were wrong. Reality ...Read more

Both President Donald Trump and candidate Joe Biden visited churches on Monday -- though "visit" is a poor descriptor of what Trump did. Consistent with his life pattern, he didn't actually enter a church. Rather, he positioned his body in front of St. John's Episcopal and held a Bible aloft, like a trophy, for the cameras.

Though in the ...Read more

A lifelong bird-watcher ventured into a section of New York's Central Park, the "Ramble," at 7:30 a.m., hoping to catch a glimpse of waterfowl. In previous days, he had spied scarlet tanagers, ovenbirds and mourning warblers. On Memorial Day, as he waited quietly, an unleashed spaniel scurried into the area -- as happens frequently in the park ...Read more

Among dozens of addled tweets from the commander in chief over the past few days, one in particular deserves pausing over because it demonstrates not just the weak-mindedness of our president but also the way his leadership is sabotaging conservatism.

Trump retweeted a post featuring disgraced columnist Michelle Malkin, who complained about ...Read more

One of the chief selling points about Donald Trump in 2016, one that persuaded many initially dubious Republicans, was the argument that "he fights." Some of us tried to counter that his battles nearly always concerned his own fragile ego, not the cause of conservatism, nor even the Republican Party, but these objections were swept aside.

Since...Read more