F.H. Buckley

There’s a fine Howard Pyle painting called The Nation Builders, which shows a bedraggled line of Patriot soldiers in the Revolutionary War, preparing to meet the enemy’s volley. You have the sense that many won’t survive, but for Pyle they…

The Trump Derangement Syndrome has now gone full bat-dung crazy. Here’s what those wonderful, kooky kids at the Washington Post had to say. “The Republican candidate for president [ahem] has invited a hostile foreign power to conduct an unlawful cyberattack…

I gave a talk to a conservative group not so long ago, when the NeverTrumper still lived in his fantasy word. They believed that the voters and delegates would finally come to their senses and nominate the amiable Ted Cruz,…

Does anyone remember Richard Nixon’s campaign slogan, in the bitter and unhappy summer of 1968? It was a cheerless time of assassinations and riots, of a Vietnam War which killed 17,000 Americans that year, more than in any other year….

Fans of louche bar songs would have been delighted to learn that the Queen knighted Sir Rod Stewart yesterday. Had they looked more closely at the Honours List, they would also have seen the name of our old friend, Roger…

“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist,” wrote John Maynard Keynes. Today we’re witnessing a populist backlash against political establishments, especially in the Republican Party, and…

The sad isolation of the NeverTrumpists. These are trying times at the Trump Tower, with Republican Establishment types lined up all the way down Fifth Avenue to stack their arms and surrender. It brings to mind France in 1940. Mein…

Without the police, would any lives matter? Some years back my friend Michael Pack made a superb documentary about the biggest battles of the Iraq War, Najaf and Fallujah. He called the film The Last 600 Meters because, after all…

Who but an artful negotiator has the political skill and constitutional sense to get things right? In 2014 I wrote that political power was increasingly centered on a king-like presidency. I called my book The Once and Future King. That rubbed…

I love the way the NeverTrump people have set about trying to persuade the Republican delegates to switch their votes. In a way, that’s almost admirable, in a crazy way. It’s like the Russian soldier who froze to death before…