Free Republic

Do psychopathic dictators spawn monsters? Jay Nordlinger's answer is a qualified yes. And it's the qualifiers that make Children of Monsters: An Inquiry Into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators such a riveting and informative read. In the easy, elegant style that is to be expected from a senior editor of National Review, Nordlinger coaxes his reader into a universe of evil all the more astonishing for its ubiquity: the twenty men whose offspring he selects for scrutiny span the globe. China, Japan, Russia, North Korea, Cambodia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Cuba, Haiti, five African countries (the Democratic Republic of the...

I was sad to read an obit of Happy Rockefeller. I met her once, when Bill and Pat Buckley invited her to dinner. She came with a British fellow, Sir John. She was very pleasant. And she seemed happy, à la her name. Let me quote from the obit, published in the New York Times: Happy Rockefeller, the socialite whose 1963 marriage to Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York, soon after both had been divorced, raised a political storm in a more genteel time and may have cost him the Republican presidential nomination in 1964, died on Tuesday at...

For years, the Left in Britain had a taunt: “There are more pandas in Scotland than there are Tory MPs.” Ha ha ha! Yes, there were two pandas in the Edinburgh Zoo and only one Conservative representing a Scottish constituency in parliament. Activists used to dress as pandas to remind David Cameron and the Conservatives of this fact. Well, guess what? There are now more pandas in Scotland than there are Labour MPs. Yup: After its wipeout at the hands of the Scottish National Party, Labour has a single MP representing a Scottish constituency. Just as the Tories (still) have...

Wayne LaPierre has an extremely important job, as head of the NRA. He is de facto the No. 1 spokesman for gun rights in the country. And gun rights are widely misunderstood. They have to be defended, or explained. The Second Amendment has to be explained. There are lots of people irreconcilably hostile to gun rights, that’s true. But plenty of people, believe me, are confused, or simply ignorant. They are reachable. Pro-gunners should not write them off. Here at CPAC, when LaPierre speaks of gun rights, he is on very solid ground. He knows the subject, definitely. (He’d better!)...

When I read the opening of this Associated Press report, my heart sank, and my bile rose: “U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the leader of the world’s largest military, met Pope Benedict XVI, the world’s best known advocate for peace, at the Vatican on Wednesday.” Ay, caramba! There is no contradiction between the Pentagon and peace. In fact, there is harmony. Bill Buckley once observed that the Pentagon ought to win the Nobel Peace Prize every year, because the U.S. military is (or was) the world’s foremost guarantor of peace. What did Theodore Roosevelt say? He was the winner of...

She said that the Pennsylvania plane — you know what I mean by that — was “driven into the ground by brave citizens who died so that others might live.” Powerfully stated. “Dictators in Iran and Syria butcher their own people and threaten the security of the region; China and Russia prevent a response.” Very interesting for an ex-secretary of state to have fingered China and Russia like that. Good. Frank. And the world wonders, said Condi, “Where does America stand?” Yes, they do — and that is dangerous both for the world and for the U.S. One could elaborate,...

Let me know if I’m being a right-wing paranoid. I saw a headline last week: “US military deaths in Afghanistan at 1,968.” (Article here.) If a conservative Republican, rather than a liberal Democrat, were in the White House, would the media be doing a big countdown to 2,000? Based on recent experience, am I being paranoid — or more like realistic? (It will shock you to know that I vote “realistic.”) Think way back to the Florida recount in 2000. The Democrats worked pretty hard to block military ballots — to have them invalidated. This did not play very well,...

In an interview with the sportswriter Bill Simmons, President Obama said, “I am very proud of the fact I do not cheat when I’m playing golf.” Well, a non-cheater is better than a cheater — an Obama is better than a Clinton, you could say. But I thought of Bobby Jones. In the 1925 U.S. Open, he called a penalty stroke on himself. It may well have cost him the tournament, which he wound up losing by a stroke. Praised for his honesty and sportsmanship, Jones would have none of it. In fact, he bridled: “You may as well praise...

Everything seems very serious, very important, very consequential now. The earlier debates — months ago — were looser. The eight or nine candidates would bounce onto the stage. Romney would greet Bachmann with a big mwah. Cain would smile brightly. The atmosphere was almost festive. But now we’ve gotten down to the nitty-gritty — crunch time. Newt immediately links himself to Reagan. Remember when pundits swore the Gipper couldn’t win? he says. He also points out that Reagan’s economic program was labeled “voodoo economics.” That was Bush 41’s — the future Bush 41’s — line, of course. But the 1980...

Five days ago, a New York Times article delivered a shot heard ’round the world. It came in the form of a statement by Eric Holder, the attorney general. About some of the criticism directed at him, he said, “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him, both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.” Buckle your chinstrap: We’re going to be hearing a lot of this sort of thing in 2012. Will it be all race, all the time?...

I realize I’m a partisan, and getting worse, I’m afraid. I’ve long wanted to be a nice, above-the-fray neutralist. But life has not allowed that. Anyway, I’m going to make a point about the Democratic party. Nancy Pelosi said the following about Republicans: “They don’t just want to make cuts. They want to destroy. They want to destroy food safety, clean air, clean water, the Department of Education. They want to destroy your rights.” I want to ask you: How do you do business with someone like that? How do you do business with a party like that? “They want...

There was a headline last week: “Obama’s ratings plummet in Arab World.” (Article here.) Obama’s ratings are below those of George W. Bush, when that much maligned president left office. I couldn’t help thinking of something that Obama said during the ’08 campaign: “I truly believe that the day I’m inaugurated . . . not only does the country look at itself differently, but the world looks at America differently.” The candidate went on, “The world will have confidence that I am listening to them, and that our future and our security is tied up with our ability to work...

I’d like to say something about Sarah Palin — but I first need to say something about Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel peace laureate who was the subject of my column on Monday. I promise that my point about Ebadi will relate to my point about Palin. About a year ago, I was talking to an Iranian friend of mine, an exile journalist. We were talking about his countrywoman, Ebadi. I was kind of griping about her. I said, “You know, if she wants to oppose the Afghan and Iraq wars, fine. She can denounce them if she wants — plenty...

One of the raps against George W. Bush was that he treated our allies badly: He was arrogant toward them, insensitive, cloddish. Of course, this was a bad rap: He handled our alliances — and our other relationships — well, as I argued at length. I thought of the rap against Bush the other day when I read what the current vice president, Joe Biden, said about our Afghan allies: “Daddy is going to start to take the training wheels off in October — I mean in next July, so you’d better practice riding.” Condescending and appalling. Whatever you think...

Like many magazines and newspapers, National Review has a fairly steady stream of visitors — officials, thinkers, personages. I thought I would tell you a little about three recent visitors — different people with interesting things to say. I’m not going to encapsulate our conversations. But I thought some tidbits or observations might be nice. And the three visitors, three personages, are T. Boone Pickens (the legendary Texas oilman), Thomas Sowell (your favorite “public intellectual,” maybe), and Sharron Angle (the new Republican Senate nominee in Nevada — the one who’ll challenge majority leader Harry Reid). Pickens? (Actually, it feels more...

A few days ago, I did a post in which I linked to an article about Sarah Palin. The article was published shortly after Palin was nominated for vice president. My purpose in citing the article was to say something about Palin and Israel. But I noticed something else in the article that I thought I’d bring up here. In the 2000 presidential cycle, Palin was mayor of Wasilla. And she was formally with . . . whose campaign? Steve Forbes’s. I think that most people think of Palin as a “social conservative,” as indeed she is. But she’s also...

The White House communications director, Anita Dunn, contrasted Fox News with CNN: Fox News is just a Republican opinion outlet, she said, while CNN is a real news network. Of Fox, she said, “Let’s not pretend that they’re a news network, the way CNN is.” She said this on CNN, of course. (In the 1990s, conservatives used to refer to it as “the Clinton News Network.”) I got to thinking. Fox has some opinionists, such as O’Reilly and Beck. Fox also has news anchormen and correspondents. CNN has those, too. One of the CNN anchors is Anderson Cooper — he’s...

In recent days, I’ve been expressing dismay at Hillary Clinton: in this column, for instance, and in this Corner post. Can you stand some more quotation of her? In an interview, she said, “There are some days when we’re dealing with very difficult security issues when you kind of wish, ‘Oh man, I wish I didn’t know that.’” Yeah, it’s terrible when the world does that to you. Say you want to come to terms with the Iranian regime — want to reason with them. But you find out that, really and truly, they’re bent on acquiring nuclear weapons —...

In the last few days, I’ve been thinking a little about Dick Cheney’s image. This stems from a lunch a group of us had with him last week (and I wrote about it here). Cheney is an unusual person: very sensible, very measured, very trustworthy. No wonder he has been entrusted with so many sensitive government positions. He is a calm person, and he has a calming effect on others. He is the kind of man you want in public service — party or partisanship quite aside. In the course of our lunch, he said that the recent Democratic victory...

"No matter what you think of Bush's policies," said a friend of mine at lunch the other day, "you have to admit that he's a decent man. I mean, that's just obvious: He's a good man. Why can't people see that?" Well, some can, some can't. Our 43d president provokes very strong emotions, to say the least. Many people flat-out hate him (and aren't shy about saying so). Some of us - fewer of us - love him. Probably very few people are lukewarm about him. He has been anathematized to an extraordinary degree. "It's a wonder he can get...