It was surreal. President Biden began his State of the Union speech by invoking the Nazi threat. More than eighty years ago, Biden reminded us, Franklin Roosevelt rallied the nation, as “Hitler was on the march,” and “freedom and democracy were under assault.” Today, the president warned, . . . . Continue Reading »
In December 2023, Michael Cassidy, a Navy veteran and devout Christian, encountered an obscene statue of Baphomet erected by the Satanic Temple inside the Iowa Statehouse. He tore it down. For this act of what he described as spontaneous “Christian civil disobedience,” he was quickly charged . . . . Continue Reading »
Russians take positions to the extreme. As a result, Russian intellectual history shows us where ideas may lead—and in Russia’s case, really did. The English prided themselves on moderation and suspicion of radical abstractions, but Russians regarded anything short of ultimate positions as . . . . Continue Reading »
Our failure to remember our heroes and martyrs of communism is having a dangerous effect on what the next generation knows. Continue Reading »
Want to know what a world without order, a world in which even tacit rules are flouted with seeming impunity, looks like? Continue Reading »
The sinister character Salazar Slytherin, of Harry Potter fame, was named after Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, prime minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968, whom J. K. Rowling had learned to revile during her two years living in Porto in the early nineties. By contrast, the American . . . . Continue Reading »
Franco: Anatomy of a Dictator by enrique moradiellos i.b.tauris, 264 pages, $30 Not long after the successful Allied landings in Normandy in June 1944, Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain, removed a photograph of Adolf Hitler from his desk in the Pardo Palace in Madrid. He promptly replaced . . . . Continue Reading »
Alberto Rodríguez's film “Marshland” is a haunting combination of detective tale and truth-and-reconciliation case study. Continue Reading »
The First Things Podcast, Episode 11. Also featuring: the true fantasy of T. H. White and the bad style advice of E. B. White (no relation). Continue Reading »
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