Author: Kirkpatrick Sale

While division between both political parties has been accepted as a norm for decades, we have witnessed a level of intensity in 2017 that has dwarfed anything remotely similar in recent American history. While it appears to be boiling over, perhaps many are ready to set aside their differences in a way reminiscent of the Declaration of Independence. Over Labor Day Weekend, a nationwide poll of 800 likely voters, conducted by John Zogby Strategies asked, among other questions, which view is closer to their own on the topic of secession; Statement A: If a majority of residents within a given state prefer … Continue reading →

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The latest terroristic bombast out of Donald Trump about unleashing “fire and fury like the world has never seen” on North Korea is very dangerous stuff and is leading the United States in the completely wrong direction. Agreed that North Korea is making foolhardy moves to prove that it has nuclear weapons capable of reaching Guam and will use them if the U.S. continues its threatening posture toward the tinpot dictatorship of the unstable and slightly ridiculous Kim Jong Un.  Agreed that it is vital that the U.S. make some response to defuse this confrontation and avert a war, whether … Continue reading →

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For more than two thousand years the Parthenon has stood atop the Acropolis, an enduring monument to the imagination and craft of humankind and to the complex civilization that gave it birth. Artfully placed against the backdrop of two dramatic mountains, on a large stone outcrop 500 feet above the Aegean’s Saronic Gulf, it was purposefully built at an angle to the entrance gate so that you see it first not head on but in perspective, the columns receding in order and harmony, their delicately fluted lines etching a series of shadows in the Attic light against the bright, creamy … Continue reading →

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Now that we see that Donald Trump is going to abandon the platform on which he won his election, and return the Republican Party to its establishmentarian—globalist, neo-conservative—ways, we are once again given proof of the fundamental loss of citizenship in this nation. The people, the supposed citizens—even those who vote—have no real influence over the candidates they put in office.  It is for certain that they elected Trump with the idea that he would keep us out of foreign wars, maybe even out of NATO and Japan,  that he would get rid of Obamacare (and no one said he … Continue reading →

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It all depends on what you think of the china shop. If you believe it is a neat, ordered operation, providing beautiful and necessary things for discerning and deserving people, then you will like it—and be fearful of any bull that might be sniffing at the door. If on the other hand, you regard it as a worn out, dated collection of obsolete knick-knacks that have long since lost their value and are merely gathering dust, then you won’t mind what the bull will do or how clumsily he does it. Washington—the political establishment—is that china shop.  And you know … Continue reading →

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I believe that the Trump triumph cannot be understood in its true meaning unless we realize that it is an opening salvo in a total restructuring of American values away from the liberal global consensus that has held sway in this country at least since 1945. That consensus, the comforting ideology of the Establishment agreed to by both parties and not substantially altered even under Reagan, was that American-style democracy, a liberalism tempered by the corporate-guided government, was the most important bulwark against international communism and the ultimate model for the rest of the “free world.” In foreign affairs, it … Continue reading →

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Of all the phenomena the 2016 election year has demonstrated, none is greater than the proof that this nation is deeply and probably irretrievably split into two political camps with very, very little in common.  It is more than blue states and red states, it goes deeper: it is the truth, jobs, security, and intelligence on one side and lies, coddling rich, porous borders, and stupidity on the other.  And vice versa. Perhaps the greatest evidence of this rift at this moment is to be found in Texas.   A Public Policy Polling survey on August 16 found that 61 percent … Continue reading →

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For at least a half-century, and demonstrably and palpably since 1972 (and perhaps since November 22, 1963), the American public, first the fringes and then the majority, has become disillusioned with the national government and apathetic or cynical about its efficacy.  The ascendency of Donald Trump in the 2016 election cycle was only the most recent demonstration of the antipathy to the government that runs deep in America beyond the reach of all the do-gooding boosters and the high-pressure media to alter or cure. Voting, that most basic and simplest of civic tasks, has been ingrained into us since the … Continue reading →

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All this fuss about Donald Trump being racist because he said he thought a Federal judge was biased against him is total nonsense.  How sick, and uncertain, we must be as a nation to react in this hotheaded way over his quite unremarkable observation about a judge’s heritage. What Trump said made perfectly good sense—that the judge was probably biased  because he was a second-generation Latino and Trump had impugned Latinos once—and was not a special case of racism but one more in  a long-standing criticism of bias in the judiciary.   It cannot be honestly held that justice is blind, … Continue reading →

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Late last month the Government Accounting Office found that more than 60 years after the Brown v. Board decision declaring “separate but equal” schooling  unconstitutional,  the segregation of black and Hispanic students in K-12 schools in America was increasing. As Bobby Scott, a black Congressman from Virginia, put it, “Segregation in public K-12 schools isn’t getting better, it’s getting worse, and getting worse quickly.”  The report found that 20 million students are now attending racially segregated schools, 16 per cent of the total student body, up from 9 per cent in 2000.  And it didn’t even deal with the large … Continue reading →

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I don’t know how brave we are as a nation, but as to free, we’re not as free as we think. At least according to the latest 2016 ratings on economic freedom put out by the Heritage Institute, a right-leaning think tank, and the Wall St. Journal. These two have been putting out ratings since 1995, and though there are some inevitable critics, most economists I know feel that they are about as reliable as any such statistics can be. And the United States does not rank Number One, as you might think since it has the top economy.  In … Continue reading →

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The Secessionist Papers, ed. Barry L. Clark,  Brian  McCandliss, Walter Block, Thomas E. Woods Jr, Kevin L. Clauson, Kirkpatrick  Sale, Forrest McDonald, Gene H. Kizer Jr., Thomas DiLorenzo, Donald Livingston, contributors.  Calhoun Review, February 2016.  Amazon Kindle, 109 pp. $0.99. Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.—Abraham Lincoln,1847 Well, Lincoln thought so—at one point.  As did … Continue reading →

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In all the recent fuss over symbols of the Confederacy, whether to honor them or get rid of the lot, not much attention has been paid to what that Confederacy was, after all, and why it might  be something that anyone would want to commemorate. Of course one side doesn’t care.  It is sufficient for them that among the attributes of that government was a devotion to the defense of slavery, and about that there is no possibility of rational discussion or gradations of judgment.  What difference do any other attributes make? And the other side is not very articulate … Continue reading →

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The principle of states’ rights, which has lived on for the last 150 years as a noble, though often sickly, memory of the Founding Fathers’ intentions, was dealt its final, fatal blow by the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision last month. Thirty-one states banned same-sex marriages between 2000 and 2012, responding presumably to the wishes of their populations, and they were easily a majority of Americans.  Those bans are now overturned and the will of the people in those states is now thwarted.  States do not have rights that a liberal majority of nine non-elected judges declares they should not. … Continue reading →

With all the anniversaries being celebrated this spring—Appomattox, Selma, Magna Carta, Hubble  telescope—it is surprising that nothing seems to have been said about the 50th anniversary of the true beginning of the Vietnam War. It was in the spring of 1965 that the first bombing raid on North Vietnam (“Rolling Thunder”) took place, the first combat troops were deployed to Vietnam, the first conventional battle between American and Viet Cong troops was engaged in the Ia Drang valley, the first teach-ins happened on American college campuses, and a new national anti-war protest movement, led by the Students for a Democratic … Continue reading →