The Left

Barack Obama and the Bad Ideas of Progressivism

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine  Barack Obama’s serial gross incompetence has elicited all sorts of explanatory theories. He’s a closet socialist, an Alinskyite radical, a secret Muslim, or an anti-American internationalist. Though some of Obama’s words and deeds give support to all these speculations, I prefer a simpler explanation. Obama is a Progressive––not a […]

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Watching the Middle East Implode

Only when we recognize the fundamental role Islam plays in the region can we begin to craft sensible policies that put U.S. interests first. by Bruce S. Thornton // Defining Ideas  The revolutions against dictators in the Middle East dubbed the Arab Spring have degenerated into a complex, bloody mélange of coups and counter-coups, as have

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Syrian Knowns and Unknowns

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media   1) Red lines: Does anyone believe we would be on the eve of a war with Syria had not Barack Obama on two occasions — echoed on two others by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — warned Bashar Assad of red lines surrounding the use of WMD? Share This

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Counterintuitively Risky

by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner Ostensibly, even an intervention of the most restricted sort in Syria, given the loud proclamations of the limited nature of cruise-missile attacks, should not pose geostrategic risks anything like costlier major ground operations of the sort we conducted in Afghanistan and Iraq. Share This

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The Death of Populism

Plenty of pleaders for rich and poor, but no politician speaks for the common man. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Occupy Wall Streeters claimed that they were populists. Their ideological opposites, the Tea Partiers, said they were, too. Both became polarizing. And so far populism, whether on the right or left, does not

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Obama’s Authoritarians

Mouthing Sixties-style anti-Western slogans is the way to win the president’s heart. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online There were many paradoxes left after the protests of the 1960s. One of the worst was American elites’ hypocrisy toward authoritarianism abroad. Most Americans granted that anti-Communist strongmen like Ferdinand Marcos, Augusto Pinochet, Mohammad Reza Shah

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The Senate Immigration Bill: Another Legislative Disaster

by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The “comprehensive immigration reform” bill cooked up by the Senate has a decided Obamacare stink to it. Like that disaster, the immigration bill is rushing to solve a whole host of complex problems with a massive, muddled bill few Senators will have the time or inclination to read in

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Flat-Earth Democrats

by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The victims of the tornado that hit Moore Oklahoma had not even been counted when Democrat politicians made fools of themselves by trying to link the disaster to global warming and Republicans. Share This

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Ideology Trumps Character in South Carolina

by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner Liberals are probably astounded that voters in South Carolina would prefer a candidate who misled and lied to them to conduct an affair over another whose personal life was, in comparison, spotless. Share This

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Graffiti on Trees, High-Speed Rail to Nowhere: The Wages of Liberalism

by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Last week, while reading about an insolvent California’s insistence on going ahead with the first leg of a proposed high-speed rail line (total cost of the system: an estimated $100-$300 billion), I heard the following story on a local ABC news affiliate about a nearby low-Sierra lake: Share This

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