By Wayne Allensworth For nearly 40 years, your humble observer’s life has been connected in one way or another with Russia, or, better still, the Russian world, that broad cultural expanse that extends across much of Eurasia. And from the beginning of that journey, what drew me in as much as anything about Russia and the Russians were that country’s impressive cultural achievements. A tragic...
By R. Cort Kirkwood (The New American) Courtesy of an obvious plant for the Democrats or a GOP rival who appeared at Nikki Haley’s recent town hall in Berlin, New Hampshire, the new gotcha question for GOP political candidates is this: “What caused the Civil War?” And as Haley just learned, any answer but “slavery” will blow up like a plugged Confederate Howitzer at Vicksburg. And so the former...
By Wayne Allensworth The old gentleman had told me that he was very grateful. Grateful to God for all the blessings he had experienced in his long and eventful life. Grateful for the friends he had made, and grateful for his family. I had sat across from him and watched his eyes soften and then twinkle a bit. He was pale and declining, but for a moment he almost seemed hale and if not hearty, at...
By Wayne Allensworth The ghosts of Christmases past are still very much with us. I’m quite thankful they are, for those “ghosts” remind us of a time that was less sterile and less fragmented. So, it’s no surprise that the proponents of “progress” have made war on those ghosts and on that particular holiday. Tom Piatak has done great service in his efforts to note and counter what...
By Wayne Allensworth The idea of progress holds that mankind has advanced in the past … is now advancing and will continue to advance through the foreseeable future… The idea of progress is a synthesis of the past and a prophecy of the future. It is inseparable from a sense of time flowing in a unilinear fashion. — Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress The 21st Century has been...
R. Cort Kirkwood My late dear friend and mentor Howard Phillips, one of the few conservatives who went broke because he didn’t sell out to Conservatism Inc., gave me the following advice: “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance.” We must therefore not be angry with a young conservative you’ve never heard of, Jack Butler, who recently suggested at National Review that Pat...
By Wayne Allensworth I had to be careful. The ornaments were wrapped, each one in tissue paper and some of them were very old. I had dropped a couple of them and they shattered. As brittle as dried leaves. Their skins had grown thin as they had grown old. Christmas ornaments collected by my mother over time. So many Santa Claus ornaments, old St. Nick in his jolliest attire, thick beard and...
By Wayne Allensworth A light in the night sky on a prairie horizon. A falling star passing through a deep blue firmament that phases ever so subtly to lighter shades of blue bordered by a wisp of cottony clouds. The red orange hues of the setting sun. Stark tree limbs seem to reach for the star on a smoky autumn evening. Let your eyes stay riveted on the star as long as you can see its proud...
By Wayne Allensworth On Veteran’s Day, Tom Piatak reminded us of some veterans who will never be thanked for their service, men who, after heroically performing their duty on the U.S.S. Liberty, have been all but forgotten. None of the hawkish GOP presidential candidates, much less any Democrats, will ever ask for a moment of silence for the men lost, and none have or ever will demand that their...
By Tom Piatak On this Veterans Day, in a special way, I honor the men who served on the USS Liberty. Here is the very impressive list of medals they received, including one Medal of Honor, two posthumous Navy Crosses, over a dozen Silver Stars, nearly two dozen Bronze Stars, and 208 Purple Hearts. In other words, the Liberty’s crew was one of the most decorated in U.S. Navy history...
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