ArcaMax

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

During Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings, some conservatives, including supposedly Donald Trump-despising ones, declared themselves "radicalized." "Kavanaugh snapped something in me," Sohrab Ahmari tweeted. The Democrats had demonstrated their depravity, they said. On the strength of this revelation, they ran into the arms of Trump...Read more

One of the less helpful aspects of our current quandary is the shrill argument between two closed-minded camps. One condemns those who wish to open up the economy as science-defying ghouls who care nothing for human life. The other depicts the stay-at-homes as economic saboteurs willing to destroy the national economy in the name of unobtainable...Read more

The numbers are preliminary, but it seems that African Americans are dying from COVID-19 at alarming rates. In Louisiana, for instance, blacks represent 70% of the dead but only 33% of the population. In Michigan, blacks comprise 33% of the infected, but 40% of the fatalities. This has occasioned an outpouring of analysis suggesting that racism ...Read more

Who among us, knowing what we know now about COVID-19, doesn't wish we could roll back the clock to Jan. 1, 2020 and make very different decisions about testing, contact tracing, PPE and social distancing?

Well, we are staring at another possible disaster bearing down on us. I refer to the Nov. 3 election. There is still time to act wisely, but...Read more