I discuss what Lenin called “useful idiot” syndrome in today’s column. If you want a longer treatment of the theme, here’s the book.
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For Democrats, the Party’s Over
If the Democrats are really tempted by impeachment, bring it on. Since the day after the 2016 election they have been threatening this, placing their chips on the Russian-collusion fantasy and then on the phantasmagoric charade of obstruction of justice. The attorney general accurately gave the ingredients of the ...
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The Sexual Revolutionaries Got Sexual Satisfaction All Wrong
One of the more remarkable developments of the last 50 years is the relentless commitment of a segment of the American academic and cultural elite to selling a vision of American life that is slowly but relentlessly proving to be — on balance — more harmful for children and less joyful for adults, while also ...
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Attorney General William Barr Makes First Ruling Against Asylum Seekers
The U.S. Attorney General is ending asylum seekers’ opportunity to ask for bond in front of an immigration judge.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Joins the War on Cauliflower
A few weeks ago, I noted that Louisiana’s state legislature is contemplating legislation that would bar makers of cauliflower rice from labeling their product “rice,” contending that consumers will get confused. Instead, the rice growers want the product to be labeled . . . “riced cauliflower.”
But ...
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The Supreme Court Should Take Up NR v. Mann, and Vindicate Free Speech
In 2012, Barack Obama was still president, indeed had four years left in his presidency. "Gangnam Style" was a world-beating music video. Game of Thrones had just gotten started. And, oh yeah, the climate scientist Michael Mann sued National Review over a blog post.
Seven years later, this case has gone pretty ...
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Avenatti Stole Stormy Daniels’s Book Advance, According to Indictment
Celebrity attorney Michael Avenatti was indicted by federal prosecutors Wednesday for stealing the identity of his former client, Stormy Daniels, in order to claim more than $300,000 she was owed for a tell-all book about her efforts to expose President Trump.
In the indictment, prosecutors for the Southern ...
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Against Jonathan Chait’s One Weird Trick
New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait has continued his turn toward conspiracy theory with a new essay. Inspired by our “Against Socialism” issue, it's titled “The New Socialism Panic Is the Right’s Trick to Justify Supporting Trump.” The central thesis of Chait’s submission is that National Review ...
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TV Before PC
Affixing one’s glance to the rear-view mirror is usually as ill-advised as staring at one’s own reflection. Still, what a delight it was on Wednesday to see a fresh rendition of “Those Were the Days,” from All in the Family, a show I haven’t watched for nearly 40 years. This time it was Woody Harrelson ...
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When Abortion Suddenly Stopped Making Sense
At the time of the Roe v. Wade decision, I was a college student — an anti-war, mother-earth, feminist, hippie college student. That particular January I was taking a semester off, living in the D.C. area and volunteering at the feminist “underground newspaper” Off Our Backs. As you’d guess, I was ...
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The Brexit Party Poses an Existential Threat to the Tories
Theresa May’s departure from Downing Street and the premiership has been promised so many times and not materialized once that I react to the latest version of it like the Charlie Ruggles character to a rival suitor in the great Lubitsch comedy, Trouble in Paradise: “See here. You keep saying you’re ...
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