National Review Magazine June 23, 2014, Issue

A Concert of Democracies

By John Yoo

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and continuing pressure on Ukraine reveal more than the Obama administration’s national-security paralysis and a lack of strategic vision. Like the collapse of the League of ...

Politics & Policy

There’ll Always Be an England . . .

By David Pryce-Jones

On September 18, the 5 million or so who live in Scotland will be able to take part in a referendum to decide whether or not their country is to ...

Politics & Policy

A Long Way from Harlan County

By Jay Nordlinger

In May, the Oslo Freedom Forum takes place. It is the premier human-rights conference, held in the Norwegian capital. This year, it was canceled, or postponed. The reason: a hotel-workers ...

Politics & Policy

Right Reforms

By Ramesh Ponnuru

Liberals are taking the publication of a new collection of essays by conservatives as an occasion to diagnose what ails the Right. The favor should be returned. Liberalism’s reaction to ...

Politics & Policy

#NoNotMe

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Collective guilt is en vogue at the moment, the ever-supple concepts of “privilege,” “rape culture,” and “entitlement” having been gradually brought into the mainstream and then ruthlessly applied to anything ...

Politics & Policy

Fight the Dragon

By Oren Cass

The standard economic model treats free trade as obviously positive, creating prosperity for all participants. Conservatives, and most neoliberals, have embraced that view and consistently press for further liberalization while ...

Politics & Policy

Victus

By Kevin D. Williamson

There were a few plying the dark arts of lobbying in Washington before it, but Patton Boggs was in some ways the original modern lobbyist shop. A D.C. law firm ...

Politics & Policy

High Stakes

By Paul Lettow

In October 1986, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev met in Iceland for what were supposed to be brief working discussions to prepare for a summit later ...

Politics & Policy

The Real Tinsel

By Rob Long

The story can now be told. Sort of. Almost 1 million years ago, when then-president George H. W. Bush was running for a second term, his running mate, Dan Quayle, gave ...

Politics & Policy

The Great Flood

By Michael Novak

On May 31 of this year, the often-flooded city of Johnstown, Pa., marked the 125th anniversary of the Great Flood of 1889. Five hundred more people died that day (more ...

Politics & Policy

Monster Mash

By Ross Douthat

Sometimes your feelings about a two-hour movie can be summed up by the way you react to a single fleeting scene. In the latest incarnation of Godzilla, that moment arrived ...

Country Life

Homecoming

By Richard Brookhiser

As a weekender, I do not subscribe to any of the daily newspapers upstate, so I had no advance notice of Sergeant Shawn Farrell’s homecoming, which happened on a Wednesday. ...

Politics & Policy

Dysfunctional Government

By Fred Siegel

This book speaks directly to the malaise that has accompanied Barack Obama’s second term in office. “The West,” write John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, “has lost confidence in the way ...

Politics & Policy

When to Go to War

By Mario Loyola

‘There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action,” said Winston Churchill in his Iron Curtain speech of 1946, “than the one which has just ...

Politics & Policy

Letters

By NR Staff

Is Causation Magical? While I share David Pryce-Jones’s aversion to Gabriel García Márquez’s unforgivable political affiliations and the undue accolades he received in eulogy, I’m not certain that Mr. Pryce-Jones’s article ...

Politics & Policy

The Week

By NR Staff

‐ Hillary Clinton has a new book out. At this point what difference does it make? ‐ President Obama gave a commencement address at West Point, which he meant as a ...

The Long View

Memorandum

By Rob Long

CONFIDENTIAL TO: POTUS FROM: Strategy RE: Rebranding as “Promise Keeper” Sir: We’ve spent the past few cycles seeing where we are in re: our rebranding efforts, and we think we’re making great progress. In the past ...

Athwart

Argument of the Week

By James Lileks

It would appear that writers for Slate wake, stretch, yawn, and think: What comfortable, familiar, harmless aspect of life can we destroy today? What means of arranging society, accumulated over ...

Politics & Policy

Poetry

By Stephen Scaer

OVERHEARD “Just think about her name and hit ‘delete.’” I want to interrupt, say, “Don’t believe the steps could be so simple and complete. Love rifles through your trash bin to retrieve each image that ...

Happy Warrior

Personal Library

By David Harsanyi

Not long ago, I popped into a Salvation Army store in suburban Maryland to check out the used-book section. I’d unearthed plenty of gems in similar places, so it wasn’t ...

June 23, 2014

Magazine

Fight the Dragon

Also In This Issue

Monster Mash