IN THE March 28, 2016, ISSUE
The Father-Führer
Michael Brendan Dougherty is bitter. I think that I can write that in both truth and charity. (I think you might even say that he and I are friends.) Dougherty ...
Also In This Issue
Articles
Never Trump
Donald Trump’s defenders have taken to arguing that his critics are endangering the Republican party. “I’m used to being the moral scold,” Bill Bennett told the Washington Post, “but Trump ...
Trump’s Tent Revival
To enter the world of conservative Evangelical pastors and leaders is to enter the world of the shell-shocked. It is the land of the thousand-yard stare. In one election cycle ...
Beyond the Wall
Mexico has been at the heart of Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign from the very start. When Trump first announced that he would be seeking the Republican presidential nomination, in ...
Sovereignty Assaulted
From his first days on the Supreme Court in 1986, Justice Antonin Scalia insisted that judges read the Constitution as it was understood when drafted and ratified. He also demanded ...
Freedom U
Guatemala City — For years, people have said to me, “It’s too good to be true. But it is true. It actually exists.” These people are classical liberals, or Reagan ...
Features
The Father-Führer
Michael Brendan Dougherty is bitter. I think that I can write that in both truth and charity. (I think you might even say that he and I are friends.) Dougherty ...
Black Voters, Too, Want a Choice, Not an Echo
Sabina Loving dreamed of owning a business and becoming her own boss. A black single mother living on Chicago’s South Side and working full time, she decided to make the ...
NASCAR Nation
I was still in New York City when the sputtering began.
“You?” a friend of mine asked, earnestly. “You are going to do that?”
“Why not?” I inquired.
“Well, y’know. I wouldn’t have ...
Books, Arts & Manners
A Turning Point for Conservatives
It would be easy for conservatives to dismiss E. J. Dionne’s latest book as a book on the Right by a man of the Left, and one that therefore suffers ...
The Critic’s Art
Film critics are an opinionated lot, and many have written books on individual filmmakers. A. O. Scott, however, a New York Times film critic since 2000, takes on the subject ...
Inside the Master
The autobiographical works of Henry James (1843–1916) are from the Master’s later period, and we all know what that means: The style is ornate, and reading it is no picnic.
James ...
The Real Land of Illusions
It is possible to gain perspective on almost anything after 70 years. Let us consider, then, Hollywood cinema as it was in 1946.
William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives ...
Testimony from Hell
In the tangled debates about the Holocaust and theodicy, I often find myself coming back to a line from the Australian critic Clive James, criticizing one of the innumerable attempts ...
Sections
Letters
My Friend Florence
I’d like to express my thanks to John O’Sullivan for his honest and insightful tribute to my dear old friend Florence King, who died recently after a long ...
The Week
‐ We wish Trump talked this much about the size of his government.
‐ Did the Founding Fathers talk about penises come election time? Pretty close, actually. Thomas Jefferson’s 1804 reelection ...
Dear Mrs. Reagan:
We were delighted to welcome you to the Heavenly Paradise Above, and we hope that the past few days have been an easy transition for you. Your reunion with your ...
Trump’s Golden Ticket
Don’t worry, this won’t be as dorky as it sounds. Nerdy, perhaps, but not so dorky. In the fifth Star Trek movie –
Hey, come back! Sit down, don’t worry. This ...
Poetry
36 WEST PITMAN
What witches, what magicians, but . . . they needed
Sixty years — the slowest sleight of hand
On record. Did they fail to understand
We were sufficiently distracted on
Our own ...
O.J. Trumps Trump
Something surreal happened a few days back. The cable news networks all cut away from the political horse race and their current ratings cash cow, Donald Trump, to focus on ...