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Recently, actor-cum-commentator Ben Stein was condemned in media for touting the "progress" the U.S. has made and saying that black Americans "never had it so good." One website called his remarks a "racist rant" even though he was, in keeping with his personality, just calmly expressing his opinion. The worst thing about this story, though, isn't that Stein may become a cancel-culture casualty. In fact, the matter reminds me of philosopher G.K. Chesterton's observation that the worst aspect of duels wasn't that someone might die, but that they settled nothing about who was right or wrong. For as is always...

Sunday I am wildly dizzy. Just really dizzy. I know why. It’s because in my lifetime, I have seen the people of this great country elect a president and vice president who are explicit fans of the worst anti-Semites in the public forum we have ever seen. Yes, Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris are open, smack-me-in-the-face fans and boosters of a certain Rev. Warnock, who is a wild Jew-hater and admirer of the worst Jew-hater ever in American history, Louis Farrakhan. This means we have a fully racist, anti-Jew administration in 2020. And they were elected by a huge majority...

FULL TITLE: Ben Stein: Stalin, Hitler 'Came to Power Promising Same Things Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Promising’ Democrat Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is promisng Americans the same thing brutal dictators promised, and those promises are never realized, Ben Stein explained in a Fox News Channel interview this week. Stein, an economist, lawyer and writer, warned that, when politicians promising to punish success in the name of equality obtain power, their policies invariably have terrifying results: "We have a society in which there are an awful lot of people who have no idea that Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung all came to...

Video at link. Actor and conservative commentator Ben Stein said Saturday that the protesters who berated Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at a Louisville restaurant the night before are “becoming like the brownshirts in the early days of the Nazi Party.” Mr. McConnell and his wife, Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, were confronted at the Havana Rumba restaurant by at least two hecklers who reportedly stole the couple’s leftover food off their table and threw it outside. It was one of many similar incidents involving Republican politicians being heckled in public in recent months. Mr. McConnell was recently heckled by...

Part 2: “Health is a basic American right,” makes for nice rhetoric but lousy policy. In the first post in this series I took Ben Stein to task for suggesting on “Your World with Neil Cavuto” that single-payer health care protects people with preexisting conditions. During his appearance, Stein also let this gem drop: “It is a basic American right to have decent health care. That is a basic right. We live in a very rich country…and the idea that any parent who sees his child born with a serious defect will think, ‘My God, I might not be able...

Part 1: Single-payer does not protect people with pre-existing conditions Ben Stein appeared on “Your World with Neil Cavuto” Wednesday to discuss late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s touching monologue that included ill-informed statements about health care. Instead of trying to correct Kimmel’s assertions, though, Stein just added to the confusion. Regarding the future of our health care system, Stein said, “At the end of the day … it’s going to be single-payer. And the taxpayers are going to have to pick up the tab, and we might as well face that fact as soon as possible. I don’t like...

Ben Stein is entitled to believe anything he wants but never again may he call himself a conservative Alleged conservative Ben Stein revealed his bleeding-heart leftist self Wednesday on “Your World with Neil Cavuto” as he defended Jimmy Kimmel, his longtime personal friend. Kimmel delivered a heart-wrenching monolog the other night about his newborn son who was born with a dangerous heart defect and needed emergency open-heart surgery. No one with blood coursing through his veins who watched it could fail to be moved as Kimmel passionately discussed his personal anguish about a loved one.

Night after night, I stay up late watching documentaries about World War II. I’m obsessed with it. Not surprising, since it was the biggest event in the history of the human race. My father was in the Navy during the war, though to this day, I am not sure what he did. My father-in-law served in combat under Patton and was awarded the Silver Star for combat gallantry, before he was 22 years old, fighting hand to hand against the toughest of the tough, Hitler’s S.S., near Zeitlen. The documentary I am watching right now is The War by Ken...

I used to have a best friend, recently in his eighties. I’m not allowed to talk to him any longer because I voted for Trump. That’s the law from his wife. Anyway, just before I was cut off, I asked this great man if he could summarize all the wisdom of his life in one sentence. He looked at me with a smile and said, “Peace is good.” With that, a few words about Mr. Trump’s getting us into the war in Syria in a big way: First of all, the happiest people on the planet right now must be...

MY father entered Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., in September 1931. The United States was entering the downswing of a small uptick at the beginning of what would be the worst industrial depression in history. My father had an unemployed father (a former skilled tool-and-die maker) and a mother who worked as a sales clerk at a department store in Schenectady, N.Y. He had no money, no financial reserves, no social connections. He told me of many jobs while he was at Williams, but one stays in my memory a dozen times a day, especially when I am working by...

Dave Gergen was the kindest boss I ever had. He was in charge of me for most of the time I toiled happily as a speechwriter for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in 1973 and 1974. Intelligent, witty, a loving and caring man. I still run into him from time to time at lush watering spots. Still always a man to be admired. That’s why I was surprised today to read that Dave had said that Mr. Trump’s first 100 days were the worst of any President ever. Really, Dave ? Worse than Lincoln’s first 100 days? When 11 southern...

Let’s not kid ourselves. That was a super speech. Not flowery, except that in parts it was eloquent without being flowery. Not poetry, except that it was poetry. It was a blast from the heart of the heart of America. It was as if Mr. Trump did not even have to use words. His sincerity and power in touching what Americans want to hear was beyond prose. *snip* I have been a speechwriter since I was 18. First for Senator Joe Tydings (D-Md.) and then for Mr. Nixon and Mr. Ford and for decades for myself. I listen to all...

By a great stroke of luck, I read frequently about immigration law. One of my best friends, Nolan Rappaport, is a nationally renowned lawyer/expert on immigration law. He sends me his writings — lately, for the Hill — and I read them. I have learned that the President, through many decades, has been given by Congress immense latitude in enlarging or diminishing immigration. Mr. Obama could admit about as many Muslims as he wanted. Mr. Trump can keep out as many Muslims as he wants. Since the early 20th century, the U.S. has not even remotely been “a nation of...

ust don’t get it. People are going insane about Donald Trump being president-elect. It’s beyond the wildest anger and fear I saw even about Richard Nixon, my hero. And, as I say, I just cannot see it. For example, this morning, I got several emails from men who had been my friends since high school. “America is going through its worst days ever,” said one letter. “We’re going to lose everything,” said another. It gets even worse. A dear old friend — a woman who has been my close friend since the mid 1970s, a woman who never even liked...

Ben Stein says "I'm Not Sure Obama Is In Good Mental Health." I'd say Obama is anti-American!

It is hot. Too hot. I awakened feeling happy, though. Maybe because the conventions are over and I can go back to watching my TCM classic movies and my World War One documentaries. I also just finished watching the greatest western of all time, High Noon. There is a movie about heroism. About manliness. That movie, starring the incomparable Gary Cooper, came out in 1952. It was the first and only movie my father ever took me to by myself, that is, just us two men. I was seven. I saw it on a double bill with the British movie,...

<p>The actor, economist and former Republican presidential speechwriter said that he thinks Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton "knows something" about economics, but that her rival Bernie Sanders is "willfully ignorant."</p> <p>Actor, economist and former Republican presidential speechwriter Ben Stein is slamming Donald Trump's economic knowledge.</p>

Actor, economist and former Richard Nixon speech writer Ben Stein says Donald Trump is the “George Wallace of our era without being a racist.” In an interview with “CNN Newsroom With Brooke Baldwin” on Monday, Stein argued Trump “is going to be a figure to be reckoned with. I’m not even sure Hillary can beat him. He is the voice of the unspoken, unwashed voice of the people coming down from the hills and hollers and they are very, very angry.” Referring to the large number of protesters ejected from Trump’s campaign rally in Radford, Virginia Monday, Stein said, “These demonstrators...

Tuesday on Newsmax TV’s “The Steve Malzberg Show,” Ben Stein, a former speechwriter for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, actor and author, Ben Stein said President Barack Obama “has a real strong hatred of America.”Stein said, “Mr. Obama has been wrong from day one about ISIS. He called them a JV team, he said that they weren’t really serious or important. He has not in any sense addressed their threat. And he is a bad joke, as the leader of the most important nation in the world, he’s a bad joke.”

"Vice President [Dick] Cheney came up to see the Republicans yesterday. You can always tell when the Republicans are getting restless, because the Vice President’s motorcade pulls into the Capitol, and Darth Vader emerges," Hillary Clinton said just now (video) at a $100-a-head fundraiser at town hall near New York's Times Square, referring to Cheney's efforts shore up Republican congressional support for the Iraq war.