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Nov 27, 2024 | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | Will Thibeau |Jeremy Rabkin |Christopher Caldwell |Theodore Dalrymple
The American military is widely seen as the last bastion of institutional integrity—and even conservatism—in the federal government. Although public faith in the military has dipped by a third in recent years, over 60% of Americans still have confidence in our fighting force. Only small business benefits from a higher degree of trust from the public. In Congress, the military still enjoys vast bipartisan deference when it comes to promotions and budget votes. Even though General Charles Q.
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Nov 9, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Christopher Caldwell
In the days since the US elections, as exit polls and electoral maps have delivered a more detailed account of why Kamala Harris lost so badly, a terrified calm has descended on Democratic Party strategists in Washington. What looked for most of 2024 like a down-to-the-wire race — in which the tide could be turned by a well-crafted speech here or a little more targeted advertising there — now looks more like a rout across the board.
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Nov 6, 2024 | 
compactmag.com | Christopher Caldwell
Had the election of 2024 been a normal one, it would be easy to explain how Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, in the climax of the most closely fought election campaign in living memory. His issues beat hers. Immigration, inflation, and gender beat abortion, health care, and the rule of law.
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Aug 30, 2024 | 
thelampmagazine.com | J. Vance |Peter Hitchens |Christopher Caldwell |Leah Libresco Sargeant
In the late Sixties, engineers in the U.S. Navy proposed building a giant antenna to communicate via extremely low frequencies with the growing fleet of American nuclear submarines. “Giant” does not do it justice, really: the antenna was to cover two-fifths of the state of Wisconsin, fourteen million acres of buried grid. In the end, the Navy settled for some enormous buried dipoles in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, “only” fifteen to thirty miles long.
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Aug 30, 2024 | thelampmagazine.com | J. Vance |Peter Hitchens |Christopher Caldwell |Leah Libresco Sargeant
In the late Sixties, engineers in the U.S. Navy proposed building a giant antenna to communicate via extremely low frequencies with the growing fleet of American nuclear submarines. “Giant” does not do it justice, really: the antenna was to cover two-fifths of the state of Wisconsin, fourteen million acres of buried grid. In the end, the Navy settled for some enormous buried dipoles in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, “only” fifteen to thirty miles long.
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Aug 28, 2024 | 
thelampmagazine.com | J. Vance |Peter Hitchens |Christopher Caldwell |Leah Libresco Sargeant
In the last town in which I lived, I stumbled into a thrice-weekly game of noon basketball, populated by a hodgepodge of college students, faculty members, and townies who would descend on the college gym during their lunch breaks. Such a mixture meant that players’ ages ranged from eighteen to sixty. Rather than adopt the usual pickup method and try to blend ages, though, our game instead opted for a strict young versus old divide.
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Aug 28, 2024 | thelampmagazine.com | J. Vance |Peter Hitchens |Christopher Caldwell |Leah Libresco Sargeant
In the last town in which I lived, I stumbled into a thrice-weekly game of noon basketball, populated by a hodgepodge of college students, faculty members, and townies who would descend on the college gym during their lunch breaks. Such a mixture meant that players’ ages ranged from eighteen to sixty. Rather than adopt the usual pickup method and try to blend ages, though, our game instead opted for a strict young versus old divide.
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Aug 26, 2024 | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | Daniel Johnson |Christopher Caldwell |David Azerrad |Theodore Dalrymple
In the international academy, Sir Christopher Clark is as grand as it gets. The Australian historian made his name with Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947 (2006), which sought to demolish the idea that German history had followed a Sonderweg, or “special path,” culminating in the Nazis. A decade ago, The Sleepwalkers (2012), his history of the First World War, became a bestseller.
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Aug 25, 2024 | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | Mark Helprin |Michael Kochin |Christopher Caldwell |Will Thibeau
“It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.” Thus did the evasive Stephen Douglas, in the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, dodge the moral question of slavery by leaping into the briar patch of legality. “I’m leaving everything up to the states.
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Aug 15, 2024 | 
thelampmagazine.com | J. Vance |Christopher Caldwell |Peter Hitchens |Jude Russo
Rowan has come into a sailboat, and I’m going to make him take me out on it. Despite being a son of one of the great maritime states, I know little about seafaring, particularly marlinspike sailing; nevertheless, I plan to make myself useful in a vaguely stewardish fashion by shucking oysters, pouring stiff drinks, and making a bit of a jackass of myself for the amusement of the assembled faithful. Will I bring a yacht cap, to wear at jaunty angles and wave at passersby? You bet.
