The election of Tony Abbott as Prime Minister of Australia, destroying the incumbent center-left Labor Government by a thumping majority (his party, confusingly for some in the U.S., is called the Liberal Party) should be a lesson for conservatives around the…
Herman Wouk’s novel of World War II, The Caine Mutiny, explores the problem of a U.S. Navy warship with a bad captain. The Navy regulations provide that in the most unusual and extraordinary circumstances — which appears to mean the…
Our trillion-dollar-spending, multiculture-obsessed, political leaders might do worse than be reminded of the colorful British Victorian politician, Colonel Charles de Laet Waldo Sibthorp, Member for Lincoln, from 1826 to 1855. Sibthorp was probably the most passionate foe of government spending…
There is usually a certain satisfaction in being able to say “I told you so.” On 1 May I published here an article on the stupidity of the senior British Tories, including Prime Minister David Cameron, in attacking the right-of-center…
British Tory grandee and Europhile Ken Clarke has joined his leader David Cameron to stigmatize the UK Independence Party as clowns and racists, making this now Tory policy. In throwing the word “racist” around in this manner to describe a…
In Herman Wouk’s classic World War II novel, The Caine Mutiny, there is a moment when a group of the ship’s officers are getting away from the increasingly eccentric Captain Queeq by relaxing ashore. Suddenly the malcontent Lieutenant Keefer asks…
After being a prey to conflicting hopes and fears, I award The Hobbit a healthy 8, perhaps 8.5, out of ten. The complaints first: like the films of The Lord of the Rings, some of the vertical scenery is impossibly…