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“People who spend a lot of time in front of Fox News or MSNBC,” writes Kevin Williamson in National Review Online (NRO), “are not in the main what you’d call happy and well-adjusted people.” Williamson is one of the bright young writers of NR and NRO, presided over by Rich Lowry (or is it Richard now?) who have made National Review increasingly irrelevant to modern American conservatism. Williamson’s estimation of Fox News viewers resembles Hillary Clinton’s description of populist conservatives as “deplorables” and Barack Obama’s snide remark about those voters who cling to their religion and guns. Bill Buckley (who...

I began writing these columns 36 years ago and have come to the conclusion that it's time to bring them to a close. It's certainly not a problem of lacking subject matter. It's simply that I am 85 now, and the energy and creative juices are just not what they used to be. Anyone in that age bracket will know what I mean. Happily, I am not ending the column with a gloomy conviction that America is heading to hell in a handbasket. On the contrary -- barring all the usual problems with which I have had to deal in...

Following its lopsided victory in the legislative elections of Jan. 12, Taiwan's Nationalist Party (or Kuomintang) has nailed down control of that vital island by electing its candidate as president of the Republic of China for a four-year term. This has been hailed in some American quarters as a victory for those who favor an accommodation between Taiwan and Beijing, but don't be deceived. The Kuomintang was Sun Yat-sen's party, which lost control of the mainland to the communists in 1949 but has maintained itself on the staunchly independent island of Taiwan ever since. Eight years ago, it lost control...

The end of the year is always a treacherous time for columnists, for we know that our readers expect us to tell them what is going to happen next year. And not unreasonably -- after all, we specialize in forecasts. But year-end prognostications are particularly likely to be remembered, since they tend to be sweeping. So I have decided to limit my risk by concentrating on one particular set of events that is sure to happen (one way or another) in 2008: The presidential nominations of the two major parties, and the outcome of the general election in November. You...

With former Sen. Fred Thompson's official declaration of his candidacy, the race for the Republican presidential nomination has now assumed the shape that seems likely to characterize it right down to the finish line. Conceivably some new and unexpected contender could still enter the contest and win it, as Wendell Willkie did in 1940, but the odds against such a development are high. Some observers, noting that the national political conventions won't be held until the late summer of 2008, argue that there is still time for a surprise. But by advancing the dates of many of the most important...

With all due respect to my fellow election observers, I don't think nearly enough attention is being paid to the plans and potentialities of former Vice President Al Gore. Gore is a man who, less than seven years ago, won the votes of over half a million more Americans than the ultimate winner of the presidential election, George W. Bush. If Gore's votes had been a little differently distributed in the Electoral College, he would have become president and might currently be rounding out his second term. But it didn't work out that way. Instead, Gore returned to private life,...

The other day, when I made a reference to "the war on terrorism," a Democratic friend of mine objected: "It's not a war." I never found out what he thought it was -- the conversation wandered off in other directions -- but the question keeps nagging away in the back of my mind. If it isn't a "war," what is it? I have no particular hang-up about calling it a war. Call it a "fracas," if you prefer, or a "brouhaha." But it is certainly something, and deserves a name. And I will concede that, if it is a war,...

The Bolton battle -- again By William Rusher Thursday, August 3, 2006 It is a fair question just what kind of ambassador the United States should send to the United Nations. This country is, after all, by far the most powerful nation in the world -- militarily, economically and therefore politically. It has legitimate interests all over the globe, and, by virtue of its might, is a vital partner in any major international effort. As for the United Nations, it is the principal international forum, where all the world's countries gather to argue, agree, disagree and conspire with one another....

... Nor has the Times been the only major periodical to blow hot and cold (if you will forgive me) on the subject of the global climate.

After the Vietnam war had ended, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the North's top commander, admitted that North Vietnam had never possessed the military strength necessary to defeat the United States. Everything, he acknowledged, depended on eroding the determination of the American home front to win. So the North Vietnamese had hung on grimly, inflicting steady casualties, until the balance of opinion in the United States swung against continuing the war. A similar calculation has obviously been made in Iraq by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He knows very well that he can never oust the Americans from Iraq by military force. But...

When I retired as publisher of National Review in 1988, I sent all my office files to the Library of Congress. It had requested them, as part of its archive of 20th century political manuscripts. I guess they thought students of conservatism might find them useful someday. Among them were my files on Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP), a group I had helped found in 1972 to protest Princeton's steady drift toward being what a fellow alumnus, my old National Review colleague James Burnham, sadly called "just another liberal joint." Our two chief concerns were its deliberate debasing of its...

I have been informed by a very reliable source that Senate Judiciary Committee staffers have reviewed the entirety of William Rusher's CAP documents at the Library of Congress and have determined that those documents make no mention at all of Alito. This should be no surprise, as New York Times reporter David Kirkpatrick reviewed the same documents in late November 2005 and made the same determination.

At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court this morning, Senator Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.) asked Judge Alito (again) about his involvement with a group called the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. The question hit close to home here at National Review, because Ted Kennedy requested that the committee go into executive session to discuss subpoenaing the private papers, stored at the Library of Congress, of William A. Rusher, former publisher of National Review. Rusher was a founding member of CAP. Bill Rusher answered some questions from NRO Editor Kathryn Lopez this...

It is often said that American politics today are more acrimonious than they have ever been before. Certainly, from the standpoint of a contemporary observer, they seem to be. The hatred that many Democrats feel toward George W. Bush is truly searing – quite the equal, it is only fair to say, of the hatred many Republicans felt for Bill Clinton. Still, when one reflects on the things the politicians of earlier decades said about each other, and even did to each other, it is possible to argue that what is going on today is only par for the course....

The Feb. 28 issue of The New Republic, that venerable liberal journal of opinion, published editorials by half a dozen of its writers discussing what's the matter with liberalism. That something is the matter with it wasn't seriously disputed. Its long-time home, the Democratic Party, is virtually powerless. The Republicans, solidly controlled by the conservative movement, possess not only the White House and Congress, but almost all the major governorships and even the mayoralty of New York City. Time was, 40 or 50 years ago, when the situation was almost exactly reversed. What has gone wrong? The writers advance a...

Confession, they say, is good for the soul, and I have decided to end 2004 by giving mine a thorough dry-cleaning. For at least four decades, we conservatives have complained loudly that the major media in this country are biased in favor of the liberals. With the sole exception of the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal (its news pages are another matter), virtually every major source of information available to the American people has religiously followed the liberal line. The New York Times, The Washington Post, all three major television networks, and both newsmagazines (Time and Newsweek) have...

The Republican left Posted: April 8, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 Newspaper Enterprise Assn. "In politics," Richard Nixon once astutely observed, "no victory is ever complete." No matter how overwhelming the national landslide racked up by one party, some particularly obnoxious representative of the defeated party will always ruin the victor's day by winning his or her personal re-election. And, within each party, there will always be those who insist on behaving as much like members of the other party as possible. Thus, the Democrats have to live with the fact that Zell Miller is a Democratic senator from Georgia, even though...

It would help if the two sides in the debate over "gay marriage" could begin by conceding that each has a point. The gay supporters of the concept are not, in most cases, out to scupper the institution of marriage; on the contrary, all they ask is to be allowed to participate in it. And its opponents are not necessarily homophobes; many people, among them not a few homosexuals, believe that marriage, defined as the union of one man and one woman, is one of the indispensable building blocks of a stable social order, and that expanding the definition would...

The 'Cold' hard truth Posted: March 11, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 Newspaper Enterprise Assn. Books about the Cold War are a dime a dozen. It would be nice to read them all, or at least all of the good ones, because the Cold War was the defining event of the last half of the 20th century. Its outcome determined mankind's basic direction for centuries to come. Whether you are old enough to remember all of the Cold War, or just parts of it, or whether you have only heard about it, you need to understand the basic story. Although we can't...

Let the states decide what 'marriage' is Posted: March 4, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 Newspaper Enterprise Assn. It would help if the two sides in the debate over "gay marriage" could begin by conceding that each has a point. The gay supporters of the concept are not, in most cases, out to scupper the institution of marriage; on the contrary, all they ask is to be allowed to participate in it. And its opponents are not necessarily homophobes; many people, among them not a few homosexuals, believe that marriage, defined as the union of one man and one woman, is one...