Author: Jack Kerwick

Did you know that John McCain, Arizona senator and former presidential candidate, is a war hero? It’s understandable if you didn’t know this, for no one, least of all Senator McCain himself, ever mentions this fact. In this respect, McCain is not unlike your average combat veteran, particularly those combat veterans from the World War II era, like my late paternal grandfather who died when I was but nine years of age.  Years later, after I reached adulthood, I would ask my father if his dad ever recounted many of his experiences from the war.  My dad would reply in … Continue reading →

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Randa Jarrar, a professor of English at Fresno State, will not be fired for the harsh remarks that she tweeted following the passing of former First Lady, Barbara Bush. And it’s a good thing too. Jarrar wrote: “Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal.”  She added: “F— outta here with your nice words.” She added: “PSA: either you are against these pieces of s**t and their genocidal ways or you’re part of the problem.  That’s actually how simple this is.  I’m happy the witch is dead.  Can’t wait … Continue reading →

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Confessedly, I know virtually nothing about the Canadian publication, the National Post. Yet I know more about the Post than one of its contributors, Robert Fulford, knows about Paul Gottfried, the American conservative movement, and the so-called “alt-right,” for of these subjects Fulford knows nothing. This, though, didn’t deter him from presuming to speak to them. So, I know this much about the National Post:  It lost whatever credibility it may have had when it decided to publish Fulford’s hit piece on Gottfried, a retired academic and veteran scholar of European and American intellectual history who Fulford ominously characterizes as … Continue reading →

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Your average American generally and your average flag-waving, parade-attending American specifically, is likely to be unaware of two facts. First, when Republicans and Democrats, “liberals” and “conservatives,” in government and Big Media reference America, they have something very different in mind than that entertained by everyday Americans when the latter refer to their country. Secondly, Republicans and Democrats, “liberals” and “conservatives,” in government and Big Media, despite the appearance of consistent disagreement, actually endorse one and the same conception of America.  It is the conception of America that, for reasons that will later be disclosed, is championed by the Mono-Party, … Continue reading →

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Big Conservatism, or the Big Con, having long ago fused with the GOP, embodies its vision in the Republican Party platform.  One of the planks of the latter is the Big Con’s “pro-life” position on abortion. Now, the most fundamental reason for opposing abortion is that it consists in the killing of an innocent, defenseless human being, a yet-to-be-born child.  This being so, the circumstances in which a child in the womb is conceived are about as morally relevant to the fate of that child as are the circumstances surrounding the conception of the reader of this essay morally relevant … Continue reading →

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During a recent exchange with some essentially like-minded friends, someone—a Republican voter who is typically and appropriately critical of the conservative movement, or what I call the Big Con—suggested that we would spend our time more wisely if we reserved our harshest criticisms for the left. After all, as Barack Hussein Obama, in a rare moment of candor, revealed nearly a decade ago, it is the left that aims to achieve nothing less than “the fundamental transformation” of America. This comment of my friend’s deserves a response.  Fortunately, several are in the coming. First, thankfully, criticism of the Big Con … Continue reading →

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Over 50 years ago, Susan Sontag infamously declared: “The white race is the cancer of human history.”  Sontag explained that “it is the white race and it alone—its ideologies and inventions—which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, [and] which now threatens the very existence of life itself.” America, “the culmination of Western civilization,” alone suffices to prove that “there must be something terribly wrong with” it. “The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballets, et al., don’t … Continue reading →

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Time constraints preclude the thorough analysis of “The Big Con,” the so-called “conservative movement,” that this subject deserves.  For now, however, suffice it to say that the conservative movement is largely a fiction constructed by the merchants of Big Conservative media—to whom, from this point onward, I refer simply as Big Cons. As long as those of the Big Cons remain the faces of the official right, the left will continue to do what it has been doing for the last so many decades: It will continue cleaning house in the “cultural wars.” Of course, the Big Cons could never … Continue reading →

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As always happens in the wake of a mass shooting, last week when Nikolas Cruz murdered 17 people at his former Florida high school, commentators spared not a moment to take to the airwaves to bemoan the government’s alleged inattentiveness to the issue of “mental health” or “mental illness.” And Republicans, i.e. self-described conservatives, were at least as prone as their liberal Democratic counterparts to offer this response. Few people think through the implications of this line—yet there are many. First, it is telling that the proponents of “limited government” and “personal accountability” should lament what they evidently think is … Continue reading →

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Earlier this week, as everyone now knows, Nikolas Cruz, 19, shot up Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 members of that community while injuring several others. Unsurprisingly, the bodies of the victims weren’t even cold before the usual suspects among the political left began calling for more “sensible” or “common sense gun legislation.” As any reader of this column knows well, I’m anything but an admirer of leftist ideology.  Still, there are characteristically leftist positions on some issues that, while I reject them, I recognize as bearing at least some semblance of plausibility.  And there are … Continue reading →

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As I write this, it has been nearly 24 hours since the President has denied making his “s-hole” comment regarding countries with shockingly low quality of life.  Indeed, the only person in a room full of several people who claims to have heard the President make this remark is a Democrat, Dick Durbin, who has a demonstrated track record of lying for political purposes. Still, let’s assume that Trump did in fact make the remark attributed to him.  Would he have been wrong? Below are ten questions that I posed to those who have spared no occasion over the last … Continue reading →

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Although the President denies it, as of Thursday night, it was reported that while in talks with Congressional representatives over our country’s immigration mess, Donald Trump referred to places like Haiti, El Salvador, and at least some of Africa as “s-hole” countries. All too predictably, his nemeses in the media went ballistic, charging the President—again, all too predictably—with harboring animosity toward “people of color,” “racism,” and so forth. Admittedly, I have no doubts that this orgy of outrage, like that to which viewers were subjected this past Sunday night by Hollywood at its Golden Globes ceremony, is but another exhibition … Continue reading →

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Mercifully, the Golden Globes have come and gone. And it was perhaps the most ostentatious display of self-righteousness, hypocrisy, dishonesty, and moral cowardice that our generation has supplied to date. At a time when moral exhibitionism has become as common as the air that we breathe, particularly in Hollywood, this is really saying something. If the cheap virtue that is especially prevalent in the den of iniquity that is Tinsel Town was ever in doubt, Sunday night’s program, which featured attendees clad in black, should have dispelled it once and forever. The black attire designed to symbolize Hollywood’s awareness of … Continue reading →

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In my latest book, Christianity and the World: Essays Philosophical, Historical, and Cultural, I attempt to dispel several misunderstandings of Christianity, misunderstandings advanced by both Christians and non-Christians alike. Unfortunately, Cal Thomas wrote his most recent essay before he read my book.  In all truthfulness, however, unless he supplemented my work with a basic textbook on elementary logic, his screed against Roy Moore’s Christian supporters would have remained as bad as it is. The gist of Thomas’s argument is as follows: Christians that support Roy Moore for “political” reasons against those who accuse him of having engaged in sexually illicit … Continue reading →

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Ever since Barack Obama infamously announced his intention to “fundamentally transform” America, the merchants of Big Conservative media, i.e. The Big Con, have seized upon this as proof of Obama’s disdain for America as it has traditionally conceived itself. It’s true, of course, that this assessment of the 44th POTUS couldn’t be more correct: It is inconceivable that, being a proponent of Blackism and socialism, Obama could find anything worth conserving, much less loving, in the predominantly white, Christian, Constitutional Republic that America was originally meant to be and that it actually succeeded in becoming for much of its history. … Continue reading →

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