On the off chance anyone’s been watching for my articles to appear here at The American Spectator Online, I want to offer my apologies. I was, as Gandalf said, “delayed.” And not in an entirely dissimilar way. I’ve been grappling…
There was a time once when our country split along an east-west line, between north and south, and the upshot was a devastating civil war. Today we’re divided by something that transcends regional boundaries. We no longer agree on what…
“Well, I suppose a human being isn’t the best judge. You humans do it differently from us. We are not kind. But deep down you are utterly ferocious on a level we Kzin can’t reach. All the truly frightful things…
It would be misleading to describe Andrew Klavan as a neglected novelist. He’s doing very well, thank you, turning out thrillers for adults and young adults, and snagging the occasional movie deal. But there was a time when he was…
“Science is better than faith,” the scientist told me. “Faith is about opinions and beliefs that have no rational foundation. There’s no way to prove one is better than another, so everybody just ends up yelling. And when the argument…
You know the scenario. In a frontier settlement, far from the authority of central government, one man murders another. Then a friend or relative of the victim kills the slayer, and soon a range war sweeps across the land. Men…
On the Fourth of July a friend and I visited Historic Fort Snelling in St. Paul, a reconstruction of the old fort as it looked about 1820. An interpreter, greeting us in uniform and shako, asked us if we’d ever…
I had a couple arguments online recently, and came away with bruises. The upside of insult, though, for a writer, is always that you can plow it back into your work and make it pay you. It’s petty, I’ll admit,…
The scenario is classic, even hackneyed. Two families have been feuding for generations. Then a young man from one family meets a young woman from the other, and by their marriage the parties are reconciled. Peace reigns. Children (one imagines)…