ArcaMax

Three decades ago, as communications director in the White House, I set up an interview for Bill Rusher of National Review.

Among his first questions to President Reagan was to ask him to assess the political importance of Barry Goldwater. Said Reagan, "I guess you could call him the John the Baptist of our movement."

I resisted the temptation...Read more

To attend the Indianapolis Colts game where the number of the legendary Peyton Manning was to be retired, Vice President Mike Pence, a former governor of Indiana, flew back from Las Vegas.

With him in the stadium was wife Karen. In honor of Manning, she wore a No. 18 jersey as "The Star Spangled Banner" began.

The Pences stood, hands over ...Read more

What was his motive? Why did he do it?

Why did Stephen Paddock, 64, rent rooms at the Mandalay Bay hotel, sneak in an arsenal of guns, a dozen of them converted to fully automatic, and rain down death on a country music concert?

"We will never know," writes columnist Eugene Robinson.

"There can be no rational argument for mass murder ... ...Read more

"An act of pure evil," said President Trump of the atrocity in Las Vegas, invoking our ancient faith: "Scripture teaches us the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."

"Our unity cannot be shattered by evil. Our bonds cannot be broken by violence," Trump went on in his most presidential moment, "and though...Read more

When elected chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2000, Judge Roy Moore installed in his courthouse a monument with the Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai carved into it.

Told by a federal court his monument violated the separation of church and state, Moore refused to remove it and was suspended -- to become ...Read more

"America refuses to address the pervasive evil of white cops killing black men, and I will not stand during a national anthem that honors the flag of such a country!"

That is the message Colin Kaepernick sent by "taking a knee" during the singing of "The Star Spangled Banner" before San Francisco '49s games in 2016. No NFL owner picked up his ...Read more

If a U.S. president calls an adversary "Rocket Man ... on a mission to suicide," and warns his nation may be "totally destroyed," other ideas in his speech will tend to get lost.

Which is unfortunate. For buried in Donald Trump's address is a clarion call to reject transnationalism and to re-embrace a world of sovereign nation-states that ...Read more

"The Barbarian cannot make ... he can befog and destroy but ... he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true."

Hilaire Belloc's depiction of the barbarian is recalled to mind as the statues honoring the history and heroes of the Republic and of the West continue to be ...Read more

"Having cut a deal with Democrats for help with the debt ceiling, will Trump seek a deal with Democrats on amnesty for the 'Dreamers' in return for funding for border security?"

The answer to that question, raised in my column a week ago, is in. Last night, President Donald Trump cut a deal with "Chuck and Nancy" for amnesty for 800,000 ...Read more

Recently, a columnist-friend, Matt Kenney, sent me a 25-year-old newspaper with his chiding that my column had been given better play.

Both had run in The Orange County Register on June 30, 1991.

"Is there no room for new nations in the New World Order?" was my title, and the column began:

"In turning a stone face toward embattled Slovenia ...Read more

Donald Trump is president today because he was seen as a doer not a talker. Among the most common compliments paid him in 2016 was, "At least he gets things done!"

And it was exasperation with a dithering GOP Congress, which had failed to enact his or its own agenda, that caused Trump to pull the job of raising the debt ceiling away from ...Read more

By setting off a 100-kiloton bomb, after firing a missile over Japan, Kim Jong Un has gotten the world's attention.

What else does he want?

Almost surely not war with America. For no matter what damage Kim could visit on U.S. troops and bases in South Korea, Okinawa and Guam, his country would be destroyed and the regime his grandfather ...Read more

Like 9/11, Hurricane Harvey brought us together.

In awe at the destruction 50 inches of rain did to East Texas and our fourth-largest city and in admiration as cable television showed countless hours of Texans humanely and heroically rescuing and aiding fellow Texans in the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

On display this week was ...Read more

Wednesday morning, Nov. 9, 2016, Republicans awoke to learn they had won the lottery. Donald Trump had won the presidency by carrying Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. All three states had gone Democratic in the last six presidential elections.

The GOP had won both houses of Congress. Party control of governorships and state legislatures ...Read more

Decades ago, a debate over what kind of nation America is roiled the conservative movement.

Neocons claimed America was an "ideological nation" a "creedal nation," dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal."

Expropriating the biblical mandate, "Go forth and teach all nations!" they divinized democracy and made the ...Read more

"I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire," said Winston Churchill to cheers at the Lord Mayor's luncheon in London in November 1942.

True to his word, the great man did not begin the liquidation.

When his countrymen threw him out in July 1945, that role fell to Clement Attlee, ...Read more

"They had found a leader, Robert E. Lee -- and what a leader! ... No military leader since Napoleon has aroused such enthusiastic devotion among troops as did Lee when he reviewed them on his horse Traveller."

So wrote Samuel Eliot Morison in his magisterial "The Oxford History of the American People" in 1965.

First in his class at West ...Read more

When the Dodge Charger of 20-year-old Nazi sympathizer James Alex Fields Jr., plunged into that crowd of protesters Saturday, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, Fields put Charlottesville on the map of modernity alongside Ferguson.

Before Fields ran down the protesters, and then backed up, running down more, what was happening seemed but a ...Read more

"When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight," Samuel Johnson observed, "it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

And the prospect of a future where Kim Jong Un can put a nuclear weapon on a U.S. city is going to cause this nation to reassess the risks and rewards of the American Imperium.

First, some history.

"Why should Americans be ...Read more

That the Trump presidency is bedeviled is undeniable.

As President Donald Trump flew off for August at his Jersey club, there came word that Special Counsel Robert Mueller III had impaneled a grand jury and subpoenas were going out to Trump family and campaign associates.

The jurors will be drawn from a pool of citizens in a city Hillary ...Read more