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Joe Sobran (February 23, 1946 – September 30, 2010), was an American journalist, formerly with National Review magazine and a syndicated columnist.
I confess it: My television is always on. I seldom watch the news, the talking heads, the public-spirited uplift, Masterpiece Theater, or the educational stuff. No, I watch old movies. Constantly.
Barack Obama seems to hate calling anyone our enemy. It isn’t nice. It’s not Christian, as he understands Christianity. Well, Christ enjoins us to love our enemies.
If I could ask our young President a few questions, they would run something like this: “At what point would you say, ‘There. We finally have as much government as we need. To give it any more power would be tyrannous and would diminish our God-given rights’?
“A corrupt society has many laws,” observed the Roman historian Tacitus. The Founding Fathers knew this aphorism, and their work reflects it, from the Articles of Confederation to the Federalist to the Tenth Amendment.
Nearly a century ago, G.K. Chesterton wrote of “the modern and morbid habit of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal.” Today the very word normal is almost taboo.
For several months after last November, the American media raved about Barack Obama’s achievement in becoming the first African-American president of the United States. I didn’t—and couldn’t—join in the jubilation, for several reasons.
The other night, while watching The Godfather on television for roughly the 50th time, I was struck by a parallel that had never occurred to me before. The movie’s sentimental musical score reminded me of “Tara’s Theme” in Gone With the Wind.
The Jaffa school has an unfortunate tendency to talk as if Lincoln agreed with men who didn’t always agree with each other: Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton. Unanimity among such strong-minded men of genius would be almost miraculous.
Complaints about “media bias” usually boil down to uninteresting charges that the news media tilt their reportage in favor of one party—usually, but not always, the Democrats.
Most American presidents, unless they leave office in disgrace, are honored by having airports, schools, libraries, streets, and even whole cities named after them. The city of San Francisco has saluted President George W. Bush in a singular way—by naming a sewage-treatment plant after him.
I’ve been reading Garry Wills for more than 40 years now, with mixed admiration, delight, and alarm. In the early 60’s he wrote for National Review, the youngest of its many brilliant contributors.
My mother, an incurable Democrat, God forgive her, adored Adlai Stevenson. To her mind, he and Richard Nixon offered the extreme and opposite poles of spiritual reality, like Saint Michael and Lucifer.
When you get intimately familiar with any artist’s work, you become delightedly aware of the development of his style. I was reminded of this lately while working on a book about Shakespeare; more than ever, I was impressed by the vast difference between the “middle” Shakespearean style and the later style (or styles).
Conservatism is usually defined as “opposition to change,” “adherence to the old and traditional,” and so forth. But, of course, in the Bush-Cheney era, we all feel these familiar tags to be seriously inadequate, even wholly beside the point and downright misleading.
In my last appearance in this space, I wrote erroneously that Christopher Hitchens had favored both Anglo-American wars on Iraq. In fact, he strongly opposed the first one, back in 1991.
Atheists are feeling their oats these days. Three militant unbelievers—Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens—have recently hit the best-seller lists and talk shows.
If Rush Limbaugh can pass for a conservative these days, it’s no marvel that George Will can, too. Unlike Limbaugh, he at least reads books, especially Victorian ones.
Alfred Hitchcock now enjoys a high and even, some would say, an exaggerated reputation among Hollywood film directors.
As I write these words, just after the November 7 elections, liberal Democrats are enjoying a well-earned gloat on their victory over the right wing. Just one question: What does right wing mean?
This summer, as the odious Barry Bonds advanced toward Henry Aaron’s home-run record, I told a friend: “I’m going to write Bonds a letter. And it’s going to be even more vitriolic than the one I wrote Aaron 30 years ago.”
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