About the turmoil in France, I have nothing original to say, because there is nothing original to say. But the unoriginal things—the platitudes, if you like—are very important.

Over the decades, brutish types have given “law and order” a bad name. This is too bad. Law and order is a beautiful, wonderful thing. Indispensable, too. Without law and order, a free society—a society worth living in—is impossible.

A government must afford its citizens physical protection. Without this, nothing else really matters. “Ordered liberty” is the name of the game—our high ideal. Both the noun and the adjective are crucial.

Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke of “freedom from fear.” Lots of people have laughed at this, for understandable reasons—it seems a little gauzy, a little pie-in-the-sky. But I believe I know what FDR was getting at.

If you can’t feel safe in your society, you are not properly free.

Civilization will not defend itself. It needs guardians, protectors. If the French government won’t defend French civilization, who the hell will?

Maybe there should be une mission civilisatrice in France.

Everyone says that if “mainstream” parties won’t keep law and order, the people, in their desperation, will turn to extremists to do the job. And everyone is right.

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***

Kimberly Guilfoyle has led an interesting life—probably too interesting for her own good. She was married to a possible future president: Gavin Newsom, the California Democrat. She was engaged to another possible future president: Donald Trump Jr. She was in the heart of MAGA. She served as ambassador to Greece. (“Served” is not the right word, at all, but roll with it.) Now she has been fired.

She is corrupt to the gills, of course. But who isn’t in TrumpWorld?

Guilfoyle should write her memoirs—telling all, in an unvarnished way. They would sell like hotcakes (including to me). And I believe they could render a public service.

How did she end up in the places she ended up in, with the people she ended up with, doing the things she did?

Fascinating.

***

Did you catch this story in the Wall Street Journal? “Ken Paxton Partied in Dubai With Fugitives Ahead of High-Stakes Texas Senate Race.” As I see it, populism is such a weird phenomenon—weird politically and psychologically. Populists rail against “elitists.” Yet the heroes of populism—they tend to live in ways that, in their extravagance, their sheer let-them-eat-cake gall, would make “elitists” blush, or retch.

An amazing con they got goin’, the populists.

***

A headline from the Associated Press: “House Speaker Mike Johnson draws on faith as he fights to hold the Republican majority.” (Article here.)

I will be blunt: Give me hard-boiled atheists who support the Ukrainians against their murderers over these a-holes “of faith” who have aligned our country with Putin.

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***

For the last ten years, I have heard more about Carl Schmitt than I had heard in the preceding 50 years of my life. Schmitt is hot. He was a German philosopher and an unrepentant Nazi. The kids—you know, the “youths”—have discovered him. Because of course they have.

Cass Sunstein, the legal philosopher, has scribbled a primer on Schmitt: here. Recommended.

***

While I am recommending Sunstein, let me tell you something—something odd: I have never much been interested in the Jefferson-Hemings question. This is odd because (a) I love American history and (b) isn’t everyone drawn to a sex scandal?

(“Sex scandal” is too trite a phrase for the Jefferson-Hemings matter, I acknowledge.)

Anyway, Professor Sunstein drew me in, here. The Jefferson-Hemings story is one of the most American stories imaginable …

***

Today is not the day to air the question of capital punishment—not in this column. I am against capital punishment, in a somewhat complicated way. But I have great respect for the arguments in favor of it—as articulated, for example, by Walter Berns, whom I have long admired.

For a few days this month, we were debating the merits of live-streaming an execution—the execution of the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan. The live-streaming, once on, is off. The execution is still on.

What if the execution—the attempted execution—of Christa Pike had been live-streamed? Might that have helped the anti–death-penalty cause? To refresh your memory, here is an article from September 30: “Tennessee Fails to Execute Woman After 2 Doses of Lethal Injection.”

They called an ambulance—an ambulance to an execution. When they failed to kill her, twice, they called an ambulance, to take her to the hospital. How screwed up is that? Why not just plunge a knife into her heart?

The death penalty is a ghastly business. I am not saying it is unjust. But it is ghastly, and there is no point hiding it. If it’s right to do, it’s right to do out in the open.

Is it?

***

Every week, there is a stream of stories detailing corruption in and around the Trump administration. A recent sampling:

“He Crafted a Crypto Law for Trump—as His Company Got Millions From a Crypto Giant.”

“Secret documents reveal donors behind $330 million for Trump’s ballroom.”

“White House preservation group took $2.5M from man who wanted to demolish East Wing.”

“Trump meme coin buyers vie for dinner with the president. Many appear to be overseas.”

“A Billionaire Wanted a Trump Pardon. His Family Gave Alina Habba a $50 Million Deal.”

I want to make a brief, gooey point: I’m grateful for a free press. So grateful. Without it, a democracy has no chance. People may not care about corruption—but at least they are without the excuse of ignorance.

***

General Mike Flynn gave us a MAGA statement for the ages. It should have its own special page in Bartlett’s. Flynn, you recall, was Trump’s first national-security adviser. He is Putin-friendly, to put it mildly.

When Mike Pence blasted Trump for betraying the Ukrainians and bolstering Putin, Flynn blasted Pence, on a variety of fronts—including this: “You certified an election the base rejected.”

Did you know that the Republican Party “base” has a veto over American elections? My civics teacher never told me that …

***

I, for one, am tired of hearing about the midterm elections. I want to get right to them, know the results. I think of a line from James Bond, in GoldenEye (1995): “No more foreplay.”

***

Most people, including Republicans, I gather, are expecting a Democratic wave. But you never know—until the votes are counted.

***

Recently, Matt Labash, my old friend and colleague, was communing with Rilke. In his column, Matt quoted a letter that Rilke sent to a friend whose brother had committed suicide.

To read the entire letter, go here. I will quote just a little of it:

All our true relationships, all our deepest experiences stretch across the whole. Across life and death. We must live in both, be deeply at home in both. …

Resolve to be brave. Be brave this very evening. Play Beethoven.

He, too, belonged to the whole.

Yes, he did. Matt had a question for me: What piece by Beethoven might go especially well with Rilke’s letter? There were so many candidates. I settled on this: the third movement of the String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132. Beethoven wrote this music in gratitude for recovery from a serious illness. He gave the movement this heading: “Holy song of thanksgiving of a convalescent to the Deity, in the Lydian mode.”

Well, that’s a “mic drop,” so I’d better sign off. Thank you, my friends, for reading, and for subscribing if you can/want. Appreciate you, mucho. And thank you, Matt. And thank you, Beethoven. And Rilke.

In 2024, an ominous thought occurred to me, and not a few others: The American voter has in his hands the fate of Ukraine. I wondered whether Ukraine could survive a Trump return to the presidency. We would be neutral at best, I thought. Could we actually be hostile—hostile to the Ukrainians? Allied with Putin and his war machine?

On Sunday, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, spoke bluntly. To fight without the support of the United States would be difficult, he said. “Very difficult.” But to fight against a Russia backed by the United States? Impossible.

“If these two countries will be together, of course we will not prevail,” said Zelensky. “And we will not be able to stand.”

***

Peter Baker of the New York Times provided a sickening summary of what the United States has just done for Putin:

I am reminded of the phrase “wish-list.”

In a 2016 general-election debate, Trump said that Putin had “no respect” for Hillary Clinton. She responded, “That’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president of the United States.” She said to Trump, “… you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish-list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do …”

Was she wrong?

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***

For years, Trumpers and anti-anti-Trumpers have accused us anti-Trump conservatives of being “hysterical” on the subject of Trump and Russia. In point of fact, we have been stone-cold sober. Realistic.

All you have to be is willing to see.

***

As regular readers know, I am a great admirer of Viktor Yushchenko, the former Ukrainian president who was nearly poisoned to death by Kremlin operatives. He is a man of tremendous courage, and considerable personal grace.

Listen to him here: “No one has expressed it better than Golda Meir: We have hardly any room for compromise—they want to kill us, and we want to live.”

***

On September 1, I wrote, “If the GOP Congress passes, and the Trump administration enforces, meaningful sanctions against Putin’s Russia, I’ll eat my hat—and enjoy the meal.” That meal never had a chance of being served.

***

For years, the Ukrainians have faced an axis of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran—the worst states on the planet. What they need is the support of Free World countries. So which side is the United States on now?

This is one of the most stomach-turning passes in our history. A repulsive low. The stain, the shame, will last a long time, I’m afraid.

***

In an essay, Ines Burrell has a phrase—a parenthetical aside—that jolted me:

After that, in 2022, came the full-scale invasion … Yet the West (back then this still included the United States) …

Devastating.

***

Also devastating was this: the word “Together,” written by Kirill Dmitriev. Dmitriev is known as “Putin’s wallet” and is a Putin envoy to the United States.

Did you see this image? Examine it:

“Together.” Russia and us against civilization. Swell.

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***

Over and over, Donald Trump says that the Biden administration depleted our supply of Tomahawk missiles by giving them to the Ukrainians. Watch him do it again here. Of course, we have never supplied Ukraine with a single Tomahawk.

In the same clip, Trump denigrates Zelensky, as he always does: “They gave to P.T. Barnum, which is Zelensky …” You never hear Trump insult or mock Putin, ever.

Zelensky is a real man and real leader, in my book. Those other two—no.

***

From the Wall Street Journal: “Putin Floats a Summit With Trump and Xi to Discuss Ukraine Deal.” The article’s subheading reads, “Ukraine’s Zelensky wouldn’t be included in proposed talks, as Russia’s leader seeks to negotiate end to war favorable to Moscow.”

Smells like another Munich. But Putin would be speaking with two allies, essentially, right?

The historian Anne Applebaum had a bracing observation:

This has been Putin’s dream for years: that his country, with GDP per capita lower than Poland, unable to conquer Donbas since 2014, will be treated as an equal to the U.S. and China.

***

“I’ve never met Vance in person,” writes Daniel Hannan, “but this clip tells me pretty much everything I need to know about him.” Yes. The clip in question is here.

Our vice president was asked about Putin—a blood-soaked tyrant and invader. Oh, the “American media” get him all wrong, said Vance! He is soft-spoken. “Very deliberate, very careful.” Looking out for the interests of Russia, as Trump looks out for the interests of America. No wonder they get along so well!

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, says,

I’ve met Putin many times and listened in on calls with him as well. I also speak Russian. Yes, he is soft-spoken, deliberate, and measured. So what? He’s still a killer. He still launched a barbaric invasion of Ukraine, which has produced a tragic loss of life not seen on this scale in Europe since WWII.

If remarks such as Vance’s are galling to us freedom-loving Americans, imagine how they fall on Ukrainian ears. Writes Illia Ponomarenko,

Must be nice to sit comfortably on your couch, fangirling over Putin like a lovestruck teenager, an entire continent and ocean away from what he and his army of death do every single day.

Ponomarenko is a Ukrainian journalist. I podcasted with him two years ago, here. Interesting, invaluable person, informed to the gills.

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There is a school that says, “The Ukrainians must continue to cajole Trump, no matter what. They must try to win him over.” Ponomarenko has penned what amounts to a response to this school—impassioned and true. Here it is.

***

“Wherever Russian troops arrive, Ukrainians cease to exist,” said a Russian lieutenant colonel, Alexey Selivanov, at an event in Moscow. Any questions? How could there be any?

***

A Ukrainian civil-society leader, Olena Halushka, writes, “Those who preach peace through capitulation won’t tell you what Russian occupation means.” Yes. Ukrainians are desperate for the world to understand this: There is nothing peaceful about Russian occupation. Quite the opposite.

***

My general view is: Oppose aid to Ukraine if you want. Hell, support alliance with Putin if you want. But don’t be ignorant of what the Russians are doing to the Ukrainians.

Here is a report from Meduza, the Russian news organization in exile: “Russia’s invasion left thousands of Ukrainian children stranded in Russia. For one 12-year-old girl, the only way out of her occupied village led away from her mother.”

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Speaking of Ukrainian mothers: This one is signaling to rescuers that her daughter is six years old. The girl was killed in this Russian strike:

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If you can bear to read about a baby killed in her stroller—here. (Her name was Angelina.)

***

Tom Nicholas wrote,

Trump has now finally made America an ally of the Kremlin and is aiding Putin in his war against an American friend and partner. Shameful betrayal of a U.S. friend, and pathetic submission to a U.S. enemy.

I keep saying: there were people on the other side—the Kremlin’s side—during the Cold War, too. But they tended to be Antioch professors, folk singers—fringe figures. Not president of the United States.

Part of me feels that the Republican Party and “conservative movement” should issue a blanket apology to Angela Davis and the rest. What were we barking on about for all those years? Did we mean it?

Some of us did, I can assure you.

***

It was controversial, and I won’t pause to weigh the merits, but, during the Obama years, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke “over the heads” of the administration to the American people, directly. In this dark, dark hour, maybe President Zelensky should do something similar.

Trump & Co. are not all of us. There is some of the old spirit yet. How much, I don’t know.

I do know this: I hugely appreciate you, my readers and subscribers. And I believe you will forgive another Ukraine column, on the heels of Friday’s. This is important stuff. An emergency, and a matter of national honor.

For years, I’ve been griping about videos—how music spoils them. Sports videos, in particular, are spoiled by music. You can never hear the sounds of sports: the crack of a bat; the squeak of shoes on a basketball court; the whoosh of a golf swing.

I can always watch videos with the sound muted. But I would rather hear the sounds of sports. And you know where muting does no good? In an instructional video. There’ll be a couple of golfers talking about the short game, for instance. And I’ll want to hear what they’re saying.

But in order to hear them, I have to put up with the music playing over them. And sometimes the music is so loud, you can barely hear what the guys are saying.

Maddening. Why do people commit such sabotage?

Well … the other day, the algorithm fed me a video that was music to my ears. There was no music at all. Just the music of golf, so to speak. Jack Drury playing nine holes early in the morning.

He is a pro at the Stratford-on-Avon Golf Club in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. (I believe a writer once lived there.) Why does the name of the club have “on” in it while the name of the city has “upon” in it? No idea. Maybe I can get back to you on that one.

In any event, thank you, Jack Drury, for this glorious, music-free video.

***

Stay in the United Kingdom for a minute. I received a lovely note from a reader that began, “Hello from Scotland!” Here is part of my reply:

Ignoring the “Nordlinger,” I am Scottish, on my mother’s side—name is Gray. Where in Scotland are you?

She answered,

I live in Perth, the gateway to the Highlands. It’s a great place to live.

So, at this late date, I have learned that the city in Australia was named after a city in Scotland.

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***

In recent times, there has been turmoil on the American right concerning Indian Americans. “Culture warriors” grumble that there are too many, and that they are too successful, and that they—heaven forbid!—study for spelling bees …

I addressed this in a column ten days ago. I would now like to share a letter from a reader—Warren S. Moore III, who is a professor of English at Newberry College in South Carolina.

WSM3 is one of my favorite correspondents.

He writes,

… I was a participant in the 1979 National Spelling Bee, representing the Kentucky Post. Back then, contestants were sponsored by the local Scripps-Howard paper. …

Although I went out on the first day, crashing on timbrel (which I spelled “timbral”—those schwas will get you every time), it proved to be one of the better experiences of my life to that point. Because I was an unusual kid, I had a lot of difficulty fitting in with my peers. For that week at the Bee, however, I was someplace where it was cool to be—let’s say “bookish.” I actually got to be popular for a few days, and that may have been one of the things that got me through adolescence: the knowledge that there were niches for folks like me.

In fact, I remain friends with some of my fellow spellers from that year, almost 50 years later. …

As a side note, I don’t watch the Bee—having been on the stage, I hurt too much for the kids when they go out. But I have no problem with the fact that the Bee has become (as an Indian stand-up comic called it) “the Indian-American Super Bowl.” I love that those kids are finding places where they can belong as well. And that strikes me as especially American.

My eyes got a little wet when I read that.

Warren signs off, “Keep on ‘truckin’.” And his motto comes from Chaucer: “Gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.”

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***

“Go ahead, make my day,” says a movie character. Well, readers often do this for me, as here:

Hi, Jay,

Just thought I’d let you know I learned a bit of language while reading your column yesterday. I’m in my late 70s but am still thrilled whenever I can correct lifelong errors.

You write: “On Monday, Trump was rallying in Ohio in behalf of Jon Husted, the Republican senator.” Something seemed strange in that sentence, and I read it again. Then it occurred to me that I’ve always said “on behalf.” So I did an Internet search asking whether there is a difference in meaning between “in behalf” and “on behalf.” Lo and behold, I discovered there is! I never knew of that distinction. Naturally, you used the correct phrase, given the meaning you intended.

Thanks for the lesson!

Sometimes, I think that my living has not been in vain.

***

Feel like a music review? I was fairly hard on the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and its chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko. Let me quote from my final paragraph:

I think the world of the BPO and Petrenko, and have the highest expectations for them. I do not write about them as I would the Dubuque Sinfonietta.

Nope.

***

Feel like another music review? This one is of the Philadelphia Orchestra, under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, which played Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. My final paragraph:

Did your grandmother or someone else in your life ever say about cooking, “The special ingredient is love”? So it is in Mahler. He was not a lovely man, according to ample testimony, but there must have been reserves of love in him, which he poured into his art. He headed one movement, of a different symphony, “What love tells me.” Bless all those who get him, including the Quebecker on the podium last night.

***

I Googled a recording of Fidelio conducted by Toscanini. (Fidelio is the lone opera of Beethoven, and Arturo Toscanini was a great conductor of the first half of the 20th century.) I smiled at the name of the man in charge of the recording’s restoration: Neville Churchill.

Seems almost like a mistake, doesn’t it? In any case, a remarkable combo.

***

“Martina Arroyo, Luminous Soprano Who Broke Barriers, Dies at 90.” That obit is here. I loved this woman. Met her once in an elevator. Bantered with her. She was amazingly personable.

Listen to what she said back in ’72:

If people think a kind of magic happens on stage, they ought to know that what they’re seeing is a lot of work. To me, “charisma” is just a fancy word for rehearsals. And if I catch you using the word “effortless” about me, I’ll laugh in your face. Maria Callas was the classic example of what I’m after. She worked for hours, but when she came out on the stage, you felt not only that you were hearing the words for the first time, but that she was singing them for the first time—neither of which was so. Every miracle that was known as a “Callas miracle” was a well‐rehearsed miracle.

Yeah, but don’t let Martina fool you. She, like Callas and all the others, had talent out the yan (as well as an exemplary work ethic).

***

I have a couple of young friends who are students of conducting. I asked one of them, “How are you doing?” She said, “I’m drowning in scores.” I said, “If you have to drown—what a great sea to drown in. A sea of music.”

And I thought of “L’infinito,” the classic poem by Leopardi. Its final lines are:

… Così tra questa
immensità s’annega il pensier mio:
e ’l naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare.

Something like: “Thus, in the midst of this immensity, my thought drowns. And the shipwrecking is sweet to me in this sea.”

Have I thanked you lately for reading and subscribing? I think it’s been a few days. Too long! Thank you, and see you later.

One of the reasons I became a conservative and a Republican, many years ago, is that I found them clear-eyed about world affairs. (When I say “them,” I mean conservatives and Republicans.) I thought they were especially clear-eyed about the Kremlin and other enemies of the West. People on the left, I thought, were fuzzy at best.

I am still a conservative, of course (in the traditional American sense), but have not been a Republican—again, of course—since 2016.

George F. Will was asked why he left the Republican Party. “For the same reason I joined it,” he answered. “I’m a conservative.”

The past decade has been topsy-turvy. The Right has often sounded like the Left of old, using the same language as, say, Code Pink. I wrote about this in a long, detailed 2024 essay titled “Our Political World, Topsy-Turvy.”

Are you acquainted with Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister? She is a Social Democrat. Yesterday, she said, “Russia unfortunately doesn’t want peace with us. Therefore, we have to continue rearming ourselves and we need to support Ukraine.”

If you had told me, short years ago, that Scandinavian social democrats would be more clear-eyed about the Kremlin and threats to the West than American Republicans and “conservatives” …

Holy-moly sakes alive, as we say in my native Midwest.

You are acquainted with James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Texas? He is an all-out hate-figure among Republicans. Also yesterday, he said,

I think we learned back in the Second World War that when we failed to stand up to an aggressor in Europe—that comes back to haunt us. We need to strengthen Ukraine. We need to strengthen our NATO allies as they stand up to Russian aggression, so we don’t have to. In some ways, I see this as a cost-saving measure. If we can stop this aggression, if we can stop Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, then we’re not going to have to stop him elsewhere.

My friends, this is exactly how Republicans and conservatives talked until ten years ago. Exactly. I swear, I was there (and did a lot of talking myself).

***

Our president, Donald Trump, has partnered with Putin in an oil deal. This aids Russia’s war machine, which is murdering innocents every day. Are we complicit? Of course we are. Trump demands that Ukraine stop bombing Russian oil refineries. He never, ever demands that Putin stop murdering civilians.

I believe our beloved country has joined the side of evil. That is the strongest of all words (on the negative side). (On the other side, it would be “love,” I think.) But I believe it applies.

About a month ago, I wrote an essay about President Reagan’s “evil empire” speech. Sometimes, the occasion, the facts, call for such language.

You know who else does not shy from the word “evil”? Elon Musk. Last year, when he was a senior adviser to Trump, he said the following about the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization founded at the urging of Reagan: “That evil organization needs to be dissolved.”

Here is Musk yesterday:

Does Musk ever say a word of criticism about the slaughterer? No. Neither does Trump. They only slam people who are defending themselves.

Listen to Mike Waltz, Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations: “The Ukrainians have been attacking Russian refineries as part of the war. The president has been clear in asking the Ukrainians to stop, and asking, you know, from the perspective of the global economy suffering …”

Not a word—not a word—about the daily murder of innocent men, women, and children.

I thought of an acronym: “AINO,” meaning, “America in Name Only.” This is not the America we have known and loved.

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***

Putin is a hero to many. A “guardian of Christian civilization,” they say, a scourge of “wokeness.” Trump and his party—and their media, etc.—have done something remarkable: they have turned Volodymyr Zelensky, a genuinely heroic leader of our time, into a villain while boosting and perfuming the blood-soaked monster Putin.

In explanation, I can only draw on Milton: “Evil, be thou my good.”

***

Katie Zacharia is Trump’s new press secretary. She has a rich tweeting past, as this article details. Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Zacharia retweeted a post that said,

Which side are you going to stand on! I don’t know fully what is going on but I will tell you that Putin is at war with the CABAL - and the Ukraine is in bed with them.

Yup. That’s how it goes. Heard a lot of that.

***

Neutrality between Ukraine and Russia—invaded and invader, victim and aggressor—would have been bad enough. But to join Putin’s side … This shame, this stain, will cling to America for a long time, I believe, and deserve to.

Once, William H. McRaven, the retired admiral, was teaching a class. He asked the students to define the essence of America in world affairs. After some discussion, with people making this point and that, a young fellow blurted out, “We’re the good guys.”

Still true?

Daniel Hannan, the British Conservative, writes,

This is not neutralism. Neutralism, in the sense of “Putin’s a bastard but wake me up if he invades Seattle,” I understand. It’s not my cup of tea, but I can respect it. No, this is backing the totalitarian aggressor against the victim.

(I myself have made this point repeatedly—for example, in this 2023 column.)

***

Zelensky is now speaking of betrayal by the United States. Many people have said to him, “Hush!” I spent years among such people—the “anti-anti-Trumpers” who insisted that Zelensky had to kiss Trump’s behind at every turn.

Well, how did that work out? What did that gain the Ukrainians? Trump is partnering with Putin anyway.

Might as well tell the truth. Polite fictions and bitten tongues have proven unavailing.

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***

About 25 years ago, Michael Walzer asked a plaintive question: “Can there be a decent Left?” In that same spirit: Can there be a pro-Ukraine, anti-Putin Right? Yes.

Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, exemplifies this. On Wednesday, she said,

We all want peace. The difference lies in how we intend to achieve it. As I see it, supporting Ukraine is not an alternative to peace; it is what makes peace possible. Because if an aggressor expects its opponent to surrender, why would it negotiate? Surrender is not peace. It is conquest. If Ukraine stopped defending itself tomorrow, as many propose, we would not have peace. We would be discussing the occupation of a European nation and the return of Soviet imperialism.

Personally, I do not miss those times. I do not miss Russian tanks crushing uprisings in Prague and Budapest. I do not miss the Berlin Wall. And nobody will ever convince me that the abandonment of those defending their freedom can be called “peace.”

Meloni makes me think of Kossuth, that Hungarian leader of the 19th century: “I am a man of peace—God knows how I love peace. But I hope I shall never be such a coward as to mistake oppression for peace.”

After Meloni’s remarks, Zelensky wrote,

I thank Giorgia Meloni for the support and a clear, unequivocal, principled stance. Thank you for understanding who the aggressor is and what it means to build a dignified and lasting peace. This is possible only through strength and joint efforts for our security.

To hear Meloni deliver her remarks, go here. And lemme tell you: she does it in a honking Roman accent. I rather like that she is so “local,” rather than “standard.” This is not “anchorman” Italian. It is very particular—straight from the Roman streets.

Of course, Romans don’t regard themselves as local but central. Universal!

***

Radek Sikorski, the foreign minister of Poland, is another conservative—a conservative of the Reagan-Thatcher stripe. (They still exist. We could hold our convention at a mid-sized Denny’s.) He said,

We appreciate President Trump’s involvement in trying to end the Russia–Ukraine war. But in Poland, we believe that it will bear fruit if you put pressure on the aggressor and not on the victim of aggression.

“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.”

***

Boris Johnson, too, is a conservative, and a Conservative—a former prime minister of the United Kingdom, and a former foreign minister, too. Last Saturday, he wrote,

It is sickening that the USA is now lifting sanctions on Russian fuel, and transparently ridiculous to blame Ukraine for the spike in prices that obviously began with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Putin is murdering innocent Ukrainian civilians every day. The Ukrainians are fighting for their lives. And yet the White House is apparently determined to force American drivers to bankroll Putin’s slaughter. It won’t work and I doubt it will make much difference to the price of fuel.

If we want Russian oil and gas back on the world market then let’s end this war—with a free, sovereign and independent Ukraine.

Note Johnson’s first three words: “It is sickening.” That is the way a lot of us feel.

(One note on Johnson’s last sentence—a mere language note. Perhaps a moment of relief. Though Johnson went to Oxford, he apparently does not use the Oxford comma.)

***

Well, I’ve been quoting a lot of foreigners—foreign conservatives. Any American conservatives? Yes, Mike Pence:

President Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Russian fuel amidst Putin’s ongoing and brutal attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine makes no sense …

America should not be throwing a lifeline to Putin’s war machine. …

Putin doesn’t want peace. Putin wants Ukraine.

That, my friends, is realism. And it’s amazing that self-styled “realists” tend to lose touch with reality when it comes to Putin and the Kremlin.

***

Over the years, I have been asked, “Do you think Trump is a Russian asset?” No. But he is certainly an asset to Russia. In a brief video, I explained the distinction.

Bear with me for a moment—this is a little offbeat. I have a friend who’s a professional golfer. When he loses a ball—a ball he thinks he should find—he says, “It’s not that I want to play that shot, play that ball. It’s not that I want to avoid a two-stroke penalty. I just want to know where it is!”

One fine day—or un-fine day, whatever—I want to know the truth about Trump’s obsequiousness before Putin. It is simple affinity? Admiration of dictators, or even envy of them? Or is there … something else?

I just want to know, as Tom just wants to know where his ball is.

***

The plain truth is, Donald Trump is on the other side—the side of an expansionist, murderous Russian dictator against the Free West. During the Cold War, there were plenty of Americans on the other side. But here’s the thing: they were likely to be professors at Antioch or folk singers. They were not president of the United States.

***

An old saying goes, “You are what you eat.” I say, “You are the media you consume.” A Fox News personality named Rachel said that Ukraine has killed “a million kids on the Russian side.” This is a weird, gross lie. But I know people who are hooked up to that network as to an IV, day and night.

***

In Ukraine, Putin’s forces have committed mass murder, mass rape, mass kidnapping, mass terror … Atrocity after atrocity, war crime after war crime. The day may come when recognition of these atrocities is so widespread, no one will admit to having been against helping the Ukrainians, or having made excuses for Putin.

I think of Edda Mussolini. I wrote about her in a book about the sons and daughters of dictators. She was a flaming Nazi. In her autobiography, she said that an expression arose in Germany after the war: “Hitler? Don’t know him.” But “I myself prefer to say, ‘Hitler, Goering, Goebbels? I knew them.’ It is more honest.” Yes, and she loved those men, too.

James Talarico is the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Texas. His opponent is Ken Paxton, the attorney general of the state. For some reason, it is very important to Republicans that Talarico be gay or transgender. I’m not sure why this is so. We are in a bizarre psychological realm here.

On Tuesday, a member of JD Vance’s crowd called out, “I love you!” He answered, “I love you too, sir. In a totally platonic way, to be clear. I’m the vice president, not James Talarico.”

The crowd ate it up, of course.

Is Talarico gay? This is a matter of indifference to me. But why would the vice president of the United States say such a thing?

The first word in his Twitter bio is, of course, “Christian.”

The first words in the Twitter bio of Kari Lake are, of course, “Follower of Christ.” Lake was the Republican nominee for governor and then for the U.S. Senate in Arizona. Today, she is the senior advisor to the U.S. Agency for Global Media (meaning Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, etc.).

James Talarico was off the campaign trail for nine days with the flu. This gave rise to conspiracy theories on the right. This is what Kari Lake posted:

Bear in mind: Lake is not some random Internet kook. There are a billion of them. She is a top Arizona politician and holds an important position in the federal government.

I think of Arizona Republicans past: Barry Goldwater, John McCain, Jon Kyl. I admired them tremendously. I think of the people I have known who have been leaders of our global media: Jim Buckley, Jeff Gedmin, Tom Kent, Jamie Fly.

Kari Lake?

The Republican Party and “conservative movement” are in a dark, dark place.

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***

As regular readers are no doubt tired of hearing me say—I am tired of saying it—two of my main prayers for the American Right are these: that they recover a proper sense of manliness and that they recover a proper sense of patriotism.

Manliness is not a strutting brutishness; patriotism is not a braying jingoism.

Let me paste two sentences from an article in The Atlantic published last Sunday. The article is about the scheduled livestream of an execution—that of Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood murderer:

Are we so weak, so insecure, that we must convince the world that we are still powerful by making a public spectacle of an execution? Or maybe Secretary Hegseth and President Trump intend this as a spectacle for the American people: a show of just how much testosterone the two men have surging through their veins.

I am of two minds about public executions—but maybe we can leave that subject for another day. The above words were written by William H. McRaven, the retired admiral who is best known for the operation that killed bin Laden.

He is no cupcake, McRaven.

In my observation, genuinely manly men such as McRaven reserve their greatest contempt for macho, faux-manly bullsh**. I knew a fair number of these men when I was growing up. They had fought in World War II. They did not strut or bray—ever.

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***

I am going to unload. Perhaps I am unwise to do so, but I’ve “had it up to here.”

On Monday, Trump was rallying in Ohio in behalf of Jon Husted, the Republican senator. Said Trump of the candidate:

I don’t do this with men very often. I started examining his body, because I didn’t know he was a great athlete. And I looked, and I watched up and down, and I looked at his a** …

Look, I don’t care. It was kind of funny, actually. But from the Trump Right—the nat-pop, postliberal Right—conservatives like me have heard nothing but “Fag! Fag! Fag!” for ten years.

And who is the masculine ideal of this Right? A man who dyes his hair, cakes on makeup, prances around to “Y.M.C.A.,” hails other men’s backsides …

Day after day on social media, people with Greco-Roman nudes as their avatars heap sexual abuse on me, and all the other conservatives of a pre-Trump stripe.

Something weird is going on here. If someone has an explanation—I’m all ears.

Yesterday, I was writing about the wanton slaughter of Ukrainians by Putin’s military, now with the blatant help of the United States. A reader replied,

Five years of enduring infinite amounts of faggotry from people with Ukrainian flags in their bios have made me numb to the concept of caring about these people.

Another “follower of Christ,” no doubt. I’ve had it up to here—have I said this recently?—with people who hang a cross around their neck, put an American flag on their lapel, and conduct themselves as nastily as possible.

Really.

I ain’t so great. But I know that it’s wrong to invade and murder innocent people.

***

Would you like to move on to sports, music, language, and the other topics I routinely cover? Or should I leave this column short and sweet (more like short and bitter)? I think I’ll opt for the latter. And I promise you a nice column or two in the near future.

Thank you so much.

Today’s Republicans often portray themselves as free-speech champions, fighting against the wokesters and the cancelers. Sometimes they are. But rare is the person who is consistent on free speech—who wants it for himself and others, too.

Let’s talk Gulf politics, and I do not mean the Middle East.

On the first day of his second term, President Trump signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” This was an early sign of the unblushing Caesarism that would characterize this second term.

(Mobutu renamed his country “Zaire.” Trujillo renamed his country’s capital after himself. The renaming business makes an interesting study—all too.)

The Associated Press, being a media organization in a free country, decided that it would keep “Gulf of Mexico” in its stylebook. After all, this body of water had been called the “Gulf of Mexico” for 500 years. The White House then banned the AP from presidential press conferences and the like.

There is an old French term for what the AP had committed: lèse-majesté. The AP had offended the sovereign.

Fast-forward to a few days ago. Did you see this story?

Alabama’s Gulf of America Act took effect last week, making it state policy to use President Trump’s preferred term for the Gulf of Mexico.

House Bill 2 requires “all state and local entities and their employees” to “refer to the body of water that borders the coast of Alabama as the ‘Gulf of America,’” and to reflect this “terminology in all newly created maps, documents, educational materials, websites, official communications, and other resources.”

There’s more. And if you feel a chill, you are not alone:

The page-and-a-half-long law has one exception for the public schools, colleges, and universities it impacts: They can use “Gulf of Mexico” “for historical purposes” during instruction. Otherwise, the law doesn’t exempt Alabama faculty or other university employees, including reporters, from its restriction on what they can call this body of water.

You know what I think a genuine, red-blooded American would say? “No.” In fact, “Hell, no.”

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***

On the subject of renaming, I wonder whether you saw this, from our president yesterday:

Can anyone defend this, anyone at all? “THE ENEMY!”? Is this the way an American president ought to talk about his fellow citizens who don’t immediately conform to his linguistic decrees?

***

On Wednesday, Trump said, “I view the presidency as a very sacred position.” The Founders did not. It is a civil position. And the president, as a citizen, is not above the law. What was the American revolution about, at its heart? What separated us from the Old World and its ways and notions?

I believe that modern Americans, too many of them, have forgotten who we are.

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***

Kevin D. Williamson had a nifty, offbeat essay on King Henry VIII and his court, making some comparisons to TrumpWorld. One of his points about Henry was this: “Henry was all about Henry.” Kevin did not put it that way; I am paraphrasing him in modern parlance.

I thought of something that a reader said last month. Allow me to “set the scene.”

Trump has a habit of running down America, and doing so on foreign soil. On a recent trip to Ireland, he claimed that the 2020 election had been “rigged” (of course). I commented:

For years, our dictatorial enemies—Russia, China, et al.—have said that our democracy is a sham. What need is there of Kremlin propaganda, for example, when the U.S. president himself says the same things?

A reader, a tweeter, named Andrew—no last name given—replied as follows:

Nothing like a nationalist who runs down his own country.

But he was never a nationalist, really. Just a him-ist. The country is great when, and only when, it serves him personally.

Just a him-ist. That is really well put.

***

One more word on Henry VIII—not from me, or Kevin, but from David Pryce-Jones, the late British historian and man of letters: “He was as close as this country has ever come to a proper tyrant.” (DPJ said this to me when, somehow, we had gotten on that atrocious king.)

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Do you know what a “groyper” is? If you don’t, lucky you. It is a young American who is into far-right politics. Now, I have been called “far-right” throughout my life because I admire Goldwater, Buckley, and Reagan. This is not groyperism. Groyperism is—you know, Hitler and the boys.

With regularity, there are news stories exposing congressional staffers and the like as groypers. There was one the other day, leading David French to say:

This is happening so much that it’s almost dog-bites-man at this point in the Right’s devolution. It’s the same story again and again and again and again.

I replied,

Yes. Many of us watched the groyperization of young people—a disquieting percentage of them. It’s one of the things that gave me second thoughts about “American exceptionalism.” Our degree of immunity to the ills of the Old World.

I have an idea for grad students in political science who are casting about for a topic. See what you think:

In Cold War years, there were “mainstream liberals” who treated left-wing extremists as “liberals in a hurry.” They had a sneaking admiration for the extremists. They might even have been a little shamed by them. “Why am I not doing as much? Why am I not as bold?” There were “coat-and-tie liberals,” as Bob Tyrell said, who put a patina on what the extremists, the commies, were doing.

After 2016, something similar happened on the right. “Mainstream conservatives” convinced themselves that the extremists were “moving the needle.” They were maybe a little rough around the edges, but their hearts were in the right place. The “mainstreamers” even thrilled to these guys, got a kick out of them—these beer-hall types who were “saying the quiet parts out loud,” etc.

Anyway, an idea—an idea for a topic.

***

There will be a presidential election in France next year—and it may come down to Jean-Luc Mélenchon vs. Marine Le Pen. Left vs. Right. Now, by “Left vs. Right,” I don’t mean, say, Reagan vs. Mondale or, in the subsequent election, Bush vs. Dukakis. I mean—the real Left and Right.

Between Mélenchon and Le Pen, who is more anti-NATO? Who is more anti-Ukraine? Who is sweeter on Putin?

An item from a couple of weeks ago:

Jean-Luc Mélenchon blames Ukraine’s “deep strikes” on Russian territory for intensifying the Russian threat in Europe.

Sure.

In American politics, we often speak of the “horseshoe”: Left and Right bending toward each other. In France, the horseshoe seems more like a circle …

***

My friends, this has not been a very “up” or hope-filled column. My apologies. Maybe I can sign off with some flowers, from Tucson, Arizona, from where I am writing you? My vast horticultural knowledge tells me that they’re “orange-red jobbies.” Anyway, they’re appealing to me, and I bet you will find them the same.

Thanks for writing, thanks for subscribing, thanks for corresponding—thank you.

In recent weeks, there have been many articles noting an upsurge in anti-Indian bigotry—by which I mean nativist bigotry against Indian Americans. Let me quote a few paragraphs from a column by Sadanand Dhume in the Wall Street Journal:

The parallels with antisemitism are striking. Like Jewish Americans, Indian Americans are highly educated and have extremely low crime rates and welfare dependency. Both groups are “resented because they are successful,” journalist Jay Nordlinger said in a phone interview.

In 2004, Mr. Nordlinger wrote an article in National Review in which he called Indian Americans “entrepreneurial, hard-working, striving, traditionalist, family-oriented, religious, assimilationist, patriotic”—therefore natural GOP voters. That hopeful time “feels like a thousand years ago,” Mr. Nordlinger said. “The GOP has become a populist-Right party.”

Mr. Nordlinger may be overly pessimistic. … But there’s no question that many GOP-inclined Indian Americans are wondering if the party has room for them anymore.

If you are interested in reading that article from 2004, go here. It’s like a relic, dusted off by the Leakey family in Tanzania.

I wish to quote another article, this one published three days ago in The Atlantic. Its title is “The Mainstreaming of Anti-Indian Bigotry.” Let me paste a paragraph, then give you a memory from almost 25 years ago—a memory of Donald Rumsfeld:

Indian Americans, Rufo argued, are “going to grind on spelling-bee words like unlimited hours,” whereas American culture says, “You’re not supposed to study for the spelling bee.” Keeperman agreed: “What actually makes America so dynamic—it’s not the kid who studies all night for the spelling-bee test. It’s the kid who is the fullback on the high-school football team, who puts his head down and is willing to run through a freaking wall on behalf of his teammates and then spends the night drinking beers at the kegger and wakes up in the morning and gets a 1500 on his SATs, okay?”

Okay. Does America, this great star-spangled country, from sea to shining sea, have room for both? Both the spelling-bee studier and the fullback?

(Bill Buckley liked to draw on the phrase “from sea to shining sea” when indicating the continental vastness of our country and its remarkable variety.)

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In 2002, Donald Rumsfeld was secretary of defense. (He had held the same position 25 years before under President Ford.) I interviewed him as he flew from one event in Colorado to another in California.

He had just seen a movie—a documentary—called “Spellbound.” First, his wife saw it, and then she said, “Come on, you have to see this.” And they went together.

The documentary is about the National Spelling Bee, and, naturally, it features Indian-American kids, among others.

Rumsfeld said that if some Martian or other stranger asked him, “What is America all about?,” he would recommend watching Spellbound.

One could certainly do worse. And I hope and trust that the spirit represented by Rumsfeld and Spellbound is still alive in our country, even in lowdown, boobish times.

***

Well, stick with Indian Americans for a moment. There is a video of Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor in Ohio. It is actually an ad—a campaign ad for Ramaswamy. One friend said to me, “How in the world could his team approve this?”

The ad shows the candidate taking cuts in a batting cage—and to use the word “cuts” is very generous. The poor fellow shows virtually no acquaintance with a bat and ball.

What’s my point? To knock a guy for his batting swing? No, it is to say this: There are some offspring of immigrants who go overboard in trying to prove how “American” they are. But think of the son of immigrants in this case: He went to Harvard and Yale. He became a billionaire. Now he is in politics, another demagogue and blowhard.

Can you really be more “American” than that (I’m sorry to say)?

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***

I saw this poster in a New York diner:

***

At the beginning of this column, I said that there had been a spate of articles about anti-Indian bigotry. Here is the tweet that started it all—a tweet from a Republican nominee in Texas:

The federal government, in the form of the Education Department, followed that up with a tweet of its own:

I trust this needs no explanation or interpretation.

You know what one big problem is, as I see it? Judging people as members of ethnic or racial groups rather than individuals. Now, some generalizing is necessary—a person can hardly think, talk, or write without generalizing. In that 2004 article, I generalized that Indian Americans were “entrepreneurial, hard-working,” etc.

But you know what we all are? Individuals. This ought not to be forgotten, and I regard it as very American (and classically liberal).

***

Let’s do a little language, and praise Ken Paxton at the same time. Yes, I will. Paxton is the attorney general of Texas and the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate. He is the perfect specimen of the corrupt MAGA politician. He is so corrupt, he was impeached by the Republican house in his state, before being let off the hook by the Republican senate. Naturally, Republican primary voters wanted him to be their nominee for the U.S. Senate.

A recording has been leaked in which Paxton explains that he does not have genuine control over his campaign, because everything is coming “from D.C.” But my interest is grammatical. At the end of the recording, Paxton says that “we are maximizing every cent so that people understand the difference between him and me”—meaning between him and his Democratic opponent.

Well, score one for Paxton. In this age of vanishing grammar, he knows how to use his pronouns.

Pronouns are an issue in our politics, aren’t they? (But not the ones I’m talking about …)

***

“Bob Pettit, N.B.A. Great for the Hawks, Dies at 93.” For that obituary, published in the New York Times, go here. By the way, I find it interesting that the Times still puts periods in “N.B.A.” I do not. Also, I write “CIA,” “not C.I.A.” But I am inconsistent.

I always do “U.S.,” not “US,” because the latter reminds me of “us,” to rhyme with “fuss.” I also do “U.N.” But, abbreviating “United Kingdom,” I do “UK.” Why?

To heck with abbreviation and back to Bob Pettit. I wish I had been at this game:

Pettit turned in one of the most brilliant playoff performances in N.B.A. history on April 12, 1958, when he scored 50 points, including 19 of the Hawks’ last 21, in a championship-clinching 110-109 victory over the Boston Celtics at Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis in Game 6 of the playoff finals.

Many years later, Pettit said, “In the last quarter, I wasn’t sure what was happening. I was getting the ball, shooting it, and it was going in. I wanted the ball because I didn’t think there was anything they could do to stop me.”

We have a word for that now: “unconscious,” with the first syllable usually drawn out, when spoken.

Bill Russell said, “Bob made ‘second effort’ a part of the sport’s vocabulary. He kept coming at you more than any man in the game. He was always battling for position, fighting you off the boards.”

Many of us could use some of that quality in life—life “its ownself,” as Dan Jenkins would say.

Finally, I want to quote a portion of the obit concerning Bob Pettit’s upbringing:

He did not make the Baton Rouge High School basketball team as a sophomore, but he joined a church league and practiced nightly by shooting tennis balls at a makeshift hoop in his back yard, bending a wire into the shape of a basket.

I just love that, and I believe I can see it. I had a friend who, as a boy, practiced in the freezing cold—outdoors in Michigan—until he got frostbite in his fingers. With the onset of every winter thereafter, he felt his fingers tingle, a reminder of his earlier diligence (or foolishness?). He welcomed the sensation, too—for it meant, “Basketball season has arrived.”

Thank you for reading, thank you for subscribing, thank you for being.

In the Soviet Union, and, later, Russia, Garry Kasparov was in an unusual position. From 1985 to 2005, he was world chess champion, and therefore a national hero. He was also a dissident. Kasparov left Russia in 2013, because it was getting ever more dangerous for him to be there.

Over here, in America, he founded the Renew Democracy Initiative and its publication, The Next Move. Kasparov is a friend of mine and I am affiliated, I’m grateful to say, with RDI and TNM.

A Kremlin plot to murder Garry and others has been uncovered. A dictatorship such as Putin’s doesn’t care where you live; if you are a dissident, particularly one with influence, you are in that dictatorship’s crosshairs.

Garry wrote about this two days ago, here. Today, I will say merely this: He has stuck his neck out, for the cause of freedom, democracy, and human rights. He could have rested on his chess laurels. He did not. I admire him immensely and consider him invaluable.

He has his enemies, in Russia (obviously), the United States (less obviously?), and elsewhere. He has earned them. Sticking up for freedom, democracy, and human rights is not for the fainthearted. Garry’s heart is strong and big.

***

It should go without saying that democratic governments often have to maintain diplomatic relations with dictatorships, even monstrous ones, genocidal ones. We have relations with China, for example. But do we have to be lovey-dovey with them? No, not at all.

Here is a tweet from President Trump a week ago:

Our president has the kindest, tenderest words about Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong-un. About democratic leaders—Free World leaders—practically none.

In an interview with Bob Woodward during his first term, Trump said, “It’s funny. The relationships I have—the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them. You know? Explain that to me someday, okay?”

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Last week, I had a piece in which I took the liberty of issuing a reminder:

Who is Xi Jinping? He is the boss of the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP imprisons, tortures, and kills some of the best people in China—democrats striving for basic freedoms. The CCP is committing genocide against the Uyghur people. (This was the determination of the U.S. State Department in 2021.) The CCP has crushed Tibet and threatens to do the same to Taiwan.

This government, the Chinese government, is a mortal enemy of the United States and all free countries.

But, again, you have to engage in diplomatic relations with them. The question is: How should those relations be conducted?

In 2011, Hu Jintao made a state visit to Washington. Along Pennsylvania Avenue, U.S. flags and Chinese flags were flown side by side, which nauseated some of us. We cursed President Obama for it.

Have you seen this, from last week?

“Over the top” is the politest thing you could say about that scene. If Chinese political prisoners, or Uyghurs in the gulag, saw it: what would they think about us Americans?

Or as Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet-era dissident, said (I will paraphrase): “As Western governments go about their business, doing the necessary, they should occasionally pause to wonder: How will it look to the boys in the camps?”

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***

I think I have read more about tribalism in the last ten years than in all the other years of my life—and I was an anthropology major. The tribalism of blood, I think I understand (even if I don’t like it). But the strength of political tribalism astonishes me.

A report from the Wall Street Journal begins,

The Trump administration used federal funds from the Department of Homeland Security to finance a set of controversial pro-Trump advertisements that recently began airing on television, according to people familiar with the matter.

The taxpayer money used to fund the ads that started airing last week came from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an arm of DHS that oversees the Border Patrol and customs and immigration at airports, the people said.

If a Democratic president did this, every Republican and conservative in the country would call for an impeachment inquiry. But political tribalism has an almost mesmeric power.

I have learned this, as I think many others have as well.

***

By now, you have probably seen this photo, quickly famous, or infamous:

You can read about the matter elsewhere, and I will be brief: Senator Eric Schmitt (R., Mo.), who is the guy sitting in the middle, was questioning Jack Smith, the onetime special counsel overseeing criminal investigations into Donald Trump. The guy on the right, with his right arm on the poster, is Senator John Kennedy (R., La.).

Is “poster” the right word? It is one of those blow-up things that public officials use.

Those two faces—Schmitt’s and Kennedy’s—say a lot. The senators thought they had trapped Smith in perjury. A moment of triumph! It would live in Fox News immortality! But they’d gotten it all wrong and got egg on their faces.

I have roughly a hundred points to make about this episode, but I will make just one of them. Schmitt, I expect little of. He “is what he is”—basically, another guy in the bar. A political blowhard and lout. I expect he will be reelected forever.

But Kennedy? He is splendidly educated and has many talents—intellectual, verbal, etc. He could have been a genuine statesman, a “lion of the Senate.” Instead, he chose to be a blowhard and lout: just another Fox troll, with cornpone.

Our current political era is, among other things, diminishing. It makes people very small. Or, put differently, and better: it leads people to make themselves very small.

***

I’ve got a ton more for you, but I have to run, and so do you. Maybe I could throw a music review at you: here. It’s of a concert by the New York Philharmonic, a gala affair. It was introduced by Alec Baldwin. I had a conversation with him, beforehand. I’ll tell you about it later. Kind of interesting (nothing political).

***

A little language? I’ve been hearing, and reading, “core tenets.” The thing about tenets: they are core. No need for the “core.”

***

On social media, I wrote,

A thought (not original): Many of us read great novels when we’re in high school and college—and have relatively little experience of life. We would understand and appreciate them a lot more at age, say, 50. The system seems backward in this respect!

This little jotting received many responses, and interesting ones, too. Would you like to respond? Send me a note? I would welcome it: mail@jaynordlinger.com.

Thank you so much for reading, and subscribing, if you can/want. And corresponding! Have a good weekend. Back at you soon (“not a promise but a warning,” as a friend of mine would say).

Over the years, I have written a fair amount about golf, and a fair amount about golf and honor. I did so as recently as August, here. The subtitle of that piece: “Did Trump really have a round of 70? Did Kim Jong-il have a 34?”

You may have heard about Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1 golfer in the world, and his act of sportsmanship during the Presidents Cup. For an article about this, go here, and for a video, here. I’ll be brief …

Scottie was paired against Nico Echavarría, from Colombia. An American fan yelled in the middle of Nico’s backswing, prompting an errant shot. When the two golfers reached the green, Scottie conceded to Nico a very long putt—32 feet—resulting in a tie on the hole. (Neither golfer gained or lost ground.)

Scottie was making up for the fact that the fan had done Nico dirty.

That’s golf. Scheffler is a genuine golfer, in addition to a great and historic one.

***

I was thinking about the Iran war, and thinking: you and I have a right to know what our war aims are. Can you say with confidence what those aims are? Has the president articulated them, or have others in his administration done so?

Early on, Trump & Co. talked about the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program and the liberation of the Iranian people. What about now? This is no light matter.

I, for one, don’t know what our war aims are. And I think I’ve done a pretty good job of paying attention.

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***

You may have seen this news. I have linked to a report by Michael Crowley in the New York Times, and I will quote at some length:

For decades, the flags of the 190 or so countries with which the United States maintains diplomatic relations have hung above the State Department’s main atrium, greeting visitors with a menagerie of symbols, creatures and colors.

Today, however, they are gone. Each one has been replaced by an American flag, forming a red, white and blue row perhaps 100 feet long in what could be the highest density of stars and stripes anywhere outside a flag factory. …

The change has touched a nerve in diplomatic circles, where many State Department veterans call it an embarrassing symbol of the Trump administration’s showy brand of nationalism.

I remember seeing those flags—the flags of the world—when I was a student. I thought the array was impressive.

And what the Trump administration has done is far from patriotism. It does not even qualify as nationalism. It is childish, bespeaking an insecurity that ought to be foreign (pardon the word) to the American.

(Have you read the Evelyn Waugh novel Put Out More Flags? It’s a winner—which does not distinguish it from other Waugh novels.)

***

A friend of mine asked whether I knew about Manuel Quezon. I did not—had never heard of him. Quezon was the president of the Philippines from 1935 to 1944. I’m very glad to know about him now.

My friend sent me this article by Matt Neal, which begins,

In 1939, more than 1,200 Jews were saved from the horrors of Nazi concentration camps by a man with a list.

While many people know of Oskar Schindler—the hero made famous by Thomas Keneally’s novel and Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film Schindler’s List—there was another man with another list.

Namely, Manuel Quezon. All honor.

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***

Kevin D. Williamson and I are on the same beam, as usual (I’m glad to say). He writes,

I never have liked, accepted, or used the label “Never Trump.” That is not because I have any reservations about the principle that one should never support a man with the character and temperament of Donald Trump for any public office, much less that of president of these United States. … Rather, I prefer to describe myself and my views in my own words and resist the descent into semiliterate hashtag-based conversation.

Do you know? I have never used the phrase “Never Trump” about myself or anyone else. Ever. I think there is something petulant about it, bringing to mind a child stamping his foot and saying, “Never, never!”

I am anti-Trump. I have stated and explained this from the beginning—for example in this article, written in May 2016. Trump had just clinched the GOP presidential nomination, and I was leaving that party, for the reasons I gave.

Still, for some years, people asked me, “Why don’t you like Trump?” What they meant was: “We are on the right, he is the leader of our team, why don’t you get with the program? You’re not a commie, are you?”

Obviously, they never knew me or read me (not that I blame them). (Some of my nearest and dearest don’t read me, although they do know me.)

Listen to the president, speaking yesterday: “Kim Jong-un is a friend of mine. He likes Trump. Doesn’t like a lot of other people. I’m about the only person in the entire world that he likes. And I like him.”

I won’t get into a lot of autobiography—I published a piece called “A Political Testimony” on Election Day 2024—but let me say this: A major reason I became a conservative, many years ago, was anti-communism. Opposition to monstrous dictators, moral clarity on the subject.

That has vanished on the right. Gone with the wind.

***

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names. I did not originate that sentence. Socrates did. Or Confucius did. Someone did, ages ago.

And it is true. President Trump is a big renamer of things. “Say ‘Gulf of America,’” not “Gulf of Mexico.” “Say ‘Department of War,’” not “Department of Defense.” “Say ‘Lake America,’” not “Lake Ontario.” And now: “Say ‘super intelligence,’” not “artificial intelligence.”

Trump’s people have hopped to on that one, as on everything else. Watch the ambassador to the U.N., Mike Waltz, here. Pathetic.

As for me, I quote Nancy Reagan: just say no. No. To take merely the latest change: I will not go from “AI” to “SI,” in part because “SI,” to me, means “Sports Illustrated.”

***

All right, let’s turn to something truly controversial: opera. You think there’s fanaticism in politics? In the last few days, I have reviewed two performances at the Met—of La bohème, here, and Così fan tutte, here.

Enter the fray …

***

When I was leaving the opera on one of those nights, the ballet was letting out too. Across the Lincoln Center campus, a father walked with his daughter. She must have been nine? She was in ballet “gear,” dancing along—dancing across the plaza. What could be better? Bliss.

Thank you for reading, my friends, and subscribing if you can/want. Hugely appreciated. Later on.

Last week, President Trump held a summit with Xi Jinping of China. (“Summit” is probably too grand and serious a word for what took place.) Also, Trump has invited Vladimir Putin to the meeting of the G20 in Florida this December.

I will have more to say about these things soon. For now, I would like to recall Nancy Astor, who, on meeting Stalin in 1931, said, “When are you going to stop killing people?”

That, to me, seems the best question for Xi and Putin.

***

Here is a statement from Daniel Hannan, the British Conservative, and conservative:

The US wages economic war against Canada while cosying up to Russia and, now, China. There was a time when this would have shocked the world. How our expectations have sunk.

Yes. To regain a sense of shock—the ability to be shocked—is a high aspiration. Numbness is an enemy.

***

I sometimes forget that 25-year-olds were born in the 21st century. To me, it seems like the 21st century started yesterday. Young Americans have known no Republican Party except Trump’s, and barely any conservatism except for the Trumpified one.

Before 2016, we often decried “moral equivalence,” by which we meant a false moral equivalence—between democracy and dictatorship, aggression and defense, right and wrong, good and evil.

I thought of this when listening to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations—a Republican who holds the position that Jeane Kirkpatrick, Vernon Walters, and distinguished others once held:

There is a difference between invader and invaded, persecutor and persecuted, occupier and nation, murderer and murdered.

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***

The American president is now circulating material that labels the Strait of Hormuz “Trump Strait.” (For a news story, go here.) Trump is an inveterate renamer.

Instead of renaming the strait, or doing push-ups in front of our troops, as the secretary of defense does, or quoting Scripture at them, as he also does—how about winning the war?

Of course, Trump, his officials, and many other Republicans won’t even call it a war. One curious thing about this is that the secretary of defense insists on calling himself the “secretary of war.”

Well …?

***

This is Trump, speaking in Ireland: “We had a rigged election. As you know, it was totally rigged. Because I won three times. I didn’t win twice. I won three times.”

If the American president himself is saying that our democracy is a sham—and saying it on foreign soil, no less—what need is there for the propaganda of our enemies, such as Russia, China, and Iran?

***

New York mayor Zohran Mamdani circulated something bizarre: this video. It shows Mamdani and the prime minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, shooting crumpled-up pieces of paper into a wastebasket. The caption reads, “Being a leftist means taking big shots. And making them.”

A lot depends on what you mean by “leftist.” Medicare for All? “Free false teeth,” as Bill Buckley would say? When I was coming of age, Mao, Brezhnev, Castro, and Pol Pot were taking “big shots” and piling up the corpses.

Elie Kedourie told David Pryce-Jones, who told me: “Keep your eye on the corpses.”

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***

You may know this expression: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.” The headline reads, “Germany’s AfD partners with radical Italian ‘sister party.’” For the article, go here.

That sister party, in Italy, is the Futuro Nazionale, meaning “National Future.”

Uh-huh. There is a song from a musical: “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” Let’s hope it doesn’t—belong to them (again).

***

As I and many others have noted, Republicans have come up with a technique for criticizing President Trump, if such criticism is ever strictly necessary, in mildest form: they blame his advisers. “The president is getting bad advice.” “The president has not been well advised.”

Some refer to this technique as “Good czar, bad boyars.”

I think of a story from William Safire. Nixon liked to say, “Some have counseled that I take the easy way. But …”

His staff used to joke, “Maybe a few of us should counsel the easy way, so that what he says is true.”

***

The Bayeux Tapestry has arrived in London, making a big splash. I have been splashing in the history of the Norman Invasion and Conquest. And I would like to make one point, here and now. (It is a point that has been made by many over the years.)

If Winston Churchill had not spent one day in politics, he would still be known as a great—truly great—writer. (I’m thinking in particular of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.)

His Nobel prize, in literature, was well deserved.

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***

This is a story that a lot of people would snort or snicker at. “Do-gooders.” “What about all the human needs? The needs of people?” But I think it says something remarkable, and great, about our species:

Muddy, sweat-soaked and occasionally bloody, the dedicated staff at a Mississippi wildlife center are drill sergeants. And their soldiers? Baby raccoons.

Welcome to raccoon boot camp, where the goal is to help sick or injured animals learn to survive in the south Mississippi wilderness—a skill set they would have learned from their mothers, most of whom died or were separated from their kits by storms, traffic accidents or other traumatic events.

***

A little language? I have written to Santa—months in advance:

Dear Santa,

All I want for Christmas is that people stop saying—and professional writers stop writing—“the reason is because …” (instead of “the reason is that …”). I don’t ask for a shiny red fire truck or a baseball mitt or anything else.

Thank you!

***

This is mighty good:

***

I had a very strange encounter a few days ago. I was leaving a medical center, having visited a friend. This was in New York. And a little girl was standing outside the entrance—by herself.

She said, “Hi, would you like to buy some lemonade? Or maybe you’d like to contribute a couple of dollars to get me closer to my goal?” Obviously, she was repeating lines that she had been given. I did not see any lemonade. I was confused, frankly—but I decided against asking any questions.

I reached into my wallet. She was looking at something in her hands—it might have been a piece of discarded costume jewelry. Like a hair clip. A little rusty. She said, “My brother found this in the park.” She said it in her genuine, little-girl voice—not the voice in which she had spoken her lines.

I said, “It’s sparkling and nice, just like you.”

I gave her a couple of dollars and looked around. She joined a group that was probably a family—her family. Couple of adults, a few kids. The mother was holding a gross-looking jar of lemonade. The group spoke in what might have been an Appalachian accent.

Man, was it bizarre. I wonder what will become of those children.

This week, President Trump is meeting with Xi Jinping. U.S. presidents have met with leaders of “the People’s Republic of China”—bosses of the Chinese Communist Party—since 1972. In February of that year, “Nixon went to China,” to use a phrase that soon entered our language. His days in that country were “the week that changed the world.”

That was a popular phrase for some time. President Nixon himself used it.

I have been writing about U.S.-China “summits” since the Clinton years. I wrote about Trump and Xi last May, here. In October 2020, as Trump’s first term was winding down, I wrote a general piece called “Trump and Dictators”: here.

Let me quote the opening of that piece from last May:

Since we are adults, let us stipulate that democracies often have to engage with dictatorships, and that foreign policy is not for the pure. A lot of nose-holding is involved. Paramount is the national interest, and realism is required.

There is a “but” coming—or rather a “yet”:

Yet America has long been a nation apart—not merely “another pleasant country on the U.N. roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe.”

That was a line from the first President Bush.

Today, I would like to spend some time on 1972 and William F. Buckley Jr.—who went along on that trip, when Nixon traveled to China and “changed the world.”

WFB “went along” in only one sense, the physical.

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I will quote from an article published by the Richard Nixon Foundation (without signature) in 2008:

[Buckley] had been invited to join the trip largely through the influence of Nixon aide Pat Buchanan, who himself had serious reservations about the whole initiative. Apparently the idea was to somehow bring Bill Buckley, and by extension the conservative movement, into the China card fold.

It didn’t work. Buckley didn’t budge. In fact, quite the contrary—he was emboldened in his anti-communism.

WFB did a lot of writing from China, in February 1972, and kept writing about these matters after he got home. Some of the issues are still very fresh: the relationship between the United States and Taiwan; the whys and wherefores of U.S. foreign policy.

To put it mildly, WFB thought that the U.S. had given up too much. What had the PRC given up, in return? Virtually nothing (and maybe we can do without the “virtually”). Henry Kissinger, WFB wrote, “recited Chinese obeisances to the good international life. He might as well have cited the Soviet Union’s guarantee of civil liberties as listed in its constitution.”

Kissinger, in 1972, was Nixon’s national security adviser, soon to be secretary of state. WFB was very critical of “HK” when the latter was in government. Later they became fast friends. I myself was at several Buckley social gatherings at which Kissinger was the honored guest.

In 1972, WFB said that we had, in short, sold out Taiwan. The U.S. and the PRC “issued a communiqué in which the Red Chinese asserted and re-asserted their absolute right to conquer Taiwan.” Meanwhile, we Americans “uttered not one word” on “the applicability of our principles of self-government and independence to the people of Taiwan.”

It was a “staggering capitulation,” said WFB.

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But there was worse—the “atmospherics,” if that is not too light a word. We were treating a monstrous, murderous regime as we would a decent, civilized country. Buckley:

We have lost—irretrievably—any remaining sense of moral mission in the world. Mr. Nixon’s appetite for a summit conference in Peking transformed the affair from a meeting of diplomatic technicians concerned to examine and illuminate areas of common interest, into a pageant of moral togetherness at which Mr. Nixon managed to give the impression that he was consorting with Marian Anderson, Billy Graham, and Albert Schweitzer.

(Everyone reading Bill’s words in 1972 would have known those names. They can be Googled today.)

When Nixon toasted “the bloodiest, most merciless chief of state in the world”—namely, Mao—“he did so in accents most of us would reserve for Florence Nightingale.”

One more blast from Bill (the inimitable):

It is unreasonable to suppose that anywhere in history have a few dozen men congregated who have been responsible for greater human mayhem than the hosts at this banquet and their spiritual colleagues, instruments all of Mao Tse-tung. The effect was as if Sir Hartley Shawcross had suddenly risen from the prosecutor’s stand at Nuremberg and descended to embrace Goering and Goebbels and Doenitz and Hess, begging them to join with him in the making of a better world.

Above, I mentioned that Bill had addressed “the whys and wherefores of U.S. foreign policy.” Let’s get into it this way:

A reporter seated at the table with me in Hangchow, after listening to Mr. Nixon’s toast to Mao Tse-tung, whose revolution he bracketed with George Washington’s, leaned over and said: “That should dispel the last suspicion that there is a trace of ideological conviction left in Richard Nixon.” He wasn’t suggesting that Nixon is not committed, within the United States, to the usual ideals—self-government, a private sector, a bill of rights. Merely that he is utterly indifferent to whether these ideals are practiced elsewhere in the world: indeed, that he apparently cares not at all if these ideals are persecuted in other parts of the world. How far, far away Nixon is from being the “last Wilsonian” that Garry Wills thought him to be, a year or two ago.

All right, here is WFB on schools of foreign policy:

There is the school of thought that says we should go out with our Marines and make the world safe for democracy. The soldiers in that school are very few, and tatterdemalion, and there are volunteers only when freedom in Israel is jeopardized.

That is the kind of barb you can hear today (sometimes with justice, usually not).

Continues WFB,

There is the school at the other extreme, which is quite simply indifferent to the practices of other governments—the school in which Richard Nixon has apparently enlisted.

And in between?

In between there is the main army, composed of those who, while not prepared to go to war merely to relieve an oppressed people, are prepared to distinguish between those governments that make an effort, however clumsy, to acknowledge the role of the individual, and those others that make the individual the objective of their extirpative passions.

Lately, I have been quoting from a speech that President Reagan gave in 1987. He gave it during Captive Nations Week at the Ukrainian National Catholic Shrine in Washington, D.C.:

Our global commitment to freedom does not mandate the sending of arms or troops, but at the very least it means that any people whose liberty is denied or whose independence is violated—that these people know we Americans are on their side.

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On March 1, 1972, two days after Nixon’s China trip ended, the New York Times published a report headed “William Buckley Critical.” WFB was a household name. He made news, and his opinion counted.

The Times’s report, written by Bill Kovach, was filed from Manchester, New Hampshire, where WFB was endorsing a candidate in that state’s Republican presidential primary, to be held on March 7. That candidate was John Ashbrook, a congressman from Ohio. Ashbrook was mounting a challenge to Nixon from the president’s right.

(We had different ideas of “left” and “right” in those pre-Trump days.)

The Times report begins,

William F. Buckley Jr. charged today that President Nixon’s desire for political publicity at home had forced him into concessions in Peking that undermined the “whole moral basis” of United States treaty commitments in Asia.

In a scathing commentary based on his observations as a member of the press party on the trip, the columnist, publisher of the influential conservative magazine National Review, accused President Nixon of making consort with the devil and “doing it with the excessive moral enthusiasm that marks Mr. Nixon’s approach to all problems.”

Before we end, I’d like to fast-forward to December 1972, when WFB made an appearance at Harvard. Here is the Crimson (the student newspaper):

A crowd of 400 filled the Currier House Fishbowl last night to hear William F. Buckley Jr. state that Nixon’s trip to China marked an historic turning point in American values.

At a talk originally scheduled for a 25-member Institute of Politics seminar, Buckley said that Nixon “managed first to explain, then to tolerate, then to apologize for that which was formerly thought axiomatically repugnant.”

Buckley said the United States had shown for the first time a willingness to grant totalitarian systems moral parity with Wilsonian democracy. The change may have augured the end of “the Wilsonian idea” in this country, which prescribes limits to state intervention in the lives of citizens, he said.

Pause for a moment. Today, “Wilsonian” is a swear word on the American right. This was not always so.

A bit more, from the Crimson’s report:

Asked if the United States should have continued to ostracize China instead, Buckley replied, “No, I was trying to suggest that the Chinese leaders have not earned our admiration.”

This week, President Trump will meet with the leader of a one-party dictatorship with a gulag (laogai, in China). That dictatorship is committing genocide against the Uyghur people.

I will quote Roger Wicker, the senior senator from Mississippi. He is a Republican of the pre-Trump variety (and thus rare). Yesterday, Wicker said the following:

I know the president intends to discuss trade and AI with the Chinese leadership—and rightfully so. Perhaps some progress will be made. But, during every minute of dialogue, our commander-in-chief should keep in mind that his guest is a brutal, unelected, and oppressive dictator who seeks to dominate his neighbors and whose military arsenal is aimed directly at the United States of America.

The Ukrainian military has revealed Operation Vivaldi—a series of counterattacks against the Russian invader and occupier. The operation is called “Vivaldi” because it will take place over four seasons—and The Four Seasons is a famous work by that composer, Antonio Vivaldi. It is a group of violin concertos, expressing the various seasons.

To read about the Ukrainian operation, go here.

And I can tell you this: I like Operation Vivaldi a lot better than I do the Wagner Group, which is a Russian “private military company” that complements the official Russian military. Both the official and the unofficial militaries commit barbaric acts in other people’s countries.

***

When I made this point on Twitter—when I stated a preference for Operation Vivaldi over the Wagner Group—Doug Heye replied, “The most Jay Nordlinger tweet possible!”

I guess that is so …

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***

Did you hear this story recounted by Mike Pence? He told President Trump he was praying for him. Trump looked at him and said, “Don’t bother.”

I thought of President Wilson. When he was very ill, a group of Republicans went to see him. Albert Fall (a particular antagonist) said, “We’re all praying for you, Mr. President.” Wilson murmured, “Which way, senator?”

***

Yesterday, I was talking with a young friend of mine, with whom I used to discuss language—the finer points of English. In the course of our conversation yesterday, he said, “The reason is that …” Then he paused. He said, “Did you catch that, Jay?”

What a moment. I had drummed out of him “The reason is because …” I could have shed a tear. My living has not been in vain.

Do you know that song?

If I can help somebody as I pass along,
If I can cheer somebody with a word or a song,
If I can show somebody he is traveling wrong,
Then my living shall not be in vain!

To hear Bryn Terfel sing it, go here.

***

Evidently, The New Yorker has fallen for “to advocate for” and “to advocate against.” The mighty, august New Yorker—Mr. Shawn’s magazine—has succumbed.

There is worse news: in the same article, the word “reticence” is used to mean “reluctance.”

Lights out, my friends. We’re finished.

William Shawn is long gone, and so is William F. Buckley Jr. (who esteemed Mr. Shawn).

***

On the street in New York, one young man was thanking another—he said, “You’re a real one.”

I loved that. (Must relate to “keeping it real.”)

***

I once said to the father of a girl I was seeing, “She’s something else.” He said, “True. But I can’t figure out what.”

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***

In the Senate, members of the Judiciary Committee were having a discussion with the FBI director about—sorry—bestiality. To read about this, go here.

I have just one, simple point to make: They were all saying “beast-iality.” In truth, that word is pronounced “bess-chee-ality.”

***

Our president likes to call Democrats “Dumocrats”—he’s like that. He also says, repeatedly, “Nobody knows there’s a ‘b’ in ‘dumb.’” He said it again, on the stump, the other day.

For a populist, he takes a very, very dim view of the people. (Or should that be “dimb”?)

***

On the street, I heard a young woman say, “He got off scotch-free!” That’s a variation (on “scot-free”). A legitimate one? No, but I found it charming …

***

Eons ago, when I was a kid, I heard that comedians like to use funny-sounding place-names, the more consonants the better. The two examples most commonly given were “Poughkeepsie” and “Schenectady.”

Yesterday, I was listening to a routine by Aziz Ansari. And he used … Poughkeepsie. He used it in the phrase “kimchi in Poughkeepsie,” which is really inspired.

The better comedians take great care with language. There is poetry in their work. Or: They have a natural, unconscious feel for language.

***

Maria Elvira Salazar has cut a campaign ad. She is a congresswoman from Miami—a Cuban American and a Republican. In her ad, she lightly criticizes President Trump for ICE tactics. She is in a competitive race.

I have a lot to say. But I’d like to confine myself to a point about her name, and its pronunciation. She has a Spanish way of saying it and an americano way. At the end of this new ad, she says it American-style.

Back in 2018, when Salazar first ran for Congress, I went down to Miami to report on the race and to interview her. The candidate, I said, is

known universally by her first name alone—or rather, by her first and middle names together: “Maria Elvira.” She has been a television journalist for 35 years. She is a striking woman with a big personality. How do you pronounce “Elvira,” by the way? Well, in Spanish, it’s “El-vee-rah.” But for Anglo audiences, the candidate goes with “El-vie-ruh.” This name is established in American culture, she points out to me. Think of the country song, a hit for the Oak Ridge Boys in 1981: “Elvira, Elvira, my heart’s on fire, Elvira.” Think, too, of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the horror-movie hostess from the 1980s. She brought serious cleavage to television, as the candidate notes.

That was an enjoyable conversation.

***

A quick word about Salazar’s opponent this year, the Democratic nominee: He is Eliott Rodriguez, and he, too, is a Cuban American, and he, too, was for many years a television journalist.

Gives a person a leg up, you know?

So, we have “Eliott,” and “Elliott,” and “Eliot,” and “Elliot”—have I missed one? I wish they could agree, I swear …

***

It is a pleasure, an ongoing pleasure, to read Henry Oliver, of The Common Reader. He has written (once more) about Samuel Johnson. Let me quote from the subheading of his post: “I am unashamed to call him a great man, to say that he is my hero.”

As they say on social media, “Endorsed.” Or “+1.”

***

Did you see this story? Holy cow.

For more than two decades, truck driver Joe Macken spent his free time building a massive scale model of his native New York City out of balsa wood and foam board.

When he finished, his daughter convinced him to show off the sprawling basement creation— encompassing over 800,000 structures—on TikTok. The video clips almost immediately went viral.

Now Macken’s model is on display at the Museum of the City of New York …

Truly wonderful. Hats off, Joe Macken.

***

Congresswoman Haley Stevens (D., Mich.) failed to win her party’s Senate nomination over Abdul El-Sayed, I’m sorry to say—but she is engaged to be married and has hinted that she will honeymoon in her home state (and mine).

Do you know what’s the traditional honeymoon site in Michigan? Saugatuck. (Next time someone quizzes you to that effect, you’ll have the answer.)

***

Here at the end, I’d like to quote from a recent article of mine, then quote a note from a reader.

“Over the summer,” I said,

I spent some time traveling through Italy, and I noticed statues of Verdi—statues in big cities, yes, but also in small towns. There were statues of other composers, too: for example a monumental one of Bellini in his hometown of Catania, Sicily.

And it occurred to me: I have never seen a statue of George Gershwin or Aaron Copland. Or of Charles Ives or Samuel Barber. Or of Stephen Foster or Leonard Bernstein. I live in New York, the hometown of Gershwin and Copland. There is no statue of either of them.

I don’t say this is wrong—a statue is not the only way to honor or appreciate a person—and I don’t say that any of the American composers I have named is the equivalent of Verdi. We’re talking apples and oranges. Still, I find the matter curious.

“There’s a statue of George M. Cohan in Times Square,” says a reader. True, true. The composer of “You’re a Grand Old Flag” (and “Give My Regards to Broadway” and other numbers we could name).

Thank you for reading, my friends, and for subscribing—and for being real ones.

After his governorship, he established his Foundation for Excellence in Education, otherwise known as “ExcelinEd.” He is its chairman today.

We begin our latest discussion with education policy. How did he get into the subject in the first place? I also want to know: Is there a federal role in education, or should it be strictly a state or local matter? How about the teachers’ unions? Are they villains?

Jeb Bush is from old American families, on both sides. His first ancestor in America arrived in 1647. Some would call him a “Heritage American.” He thinks all of this is nonsense, as you can imagine. He has no use for nativism. (And he married an immigrant from Mexico.)

We talk about immigration, and ICE. And about our $40 trillion debt. When it comes to foreign affairs, we talk about the Iran war, Ukraine, and Venezuela. We look back at the Republican presidential primaries in 2016—could anything have stopped the Trumpian wave? We talk about the Bush family.

At the end, I ask Jeb whether he has anything else to say, anything else on his mind. Yes, he says: Don’t let social media get the better of us.

Last week, I wrote about Joshua Wong, a political prisoner in Hong Kong—heroic. Here and now, I would like to mention another political prisoner in Hong Kong—also heroic. She is Chow Hang-tung, who has been imprisoned for five years. She has just been sentenced to another seven, plus three months.

Her crime? They are two. She has commemorated the Tiananmen Square Massacre (carried out by the Chinese government on June 4, 1989). And she has called for an end to one-party dictatorship.

These are indeed crimes in China—very much including Hong Kong.

In court this month, she had an exchange with the judge, Alex Lee. Perry Link has translated this exchange. He is the eminent American scholar of China, who has also been a friend to dissidents. I wrote about Professor Link in 2023, here.

Let me give you a taste of the exchange in that Hong Kong court. And, by the way, when Judge Lee refers to “sentences,” in the plural, he is referring to the sentences of Chow Hang-tung and her fellow prisoners from the Hong Kong democracy movement.

Chow: “If my actions violate the law—if the law truly cannot accommodate my beliefs—then I would rather be a criminal in a prison than a hypocrite groping my way through a sea of lies for the rest of my life.”

Judge Lee: “You’re going to persist in these beliefs?”

Chow: “Yes.”

Judge Lee: “And you believe that what you are pursuing is justice?”

Chow: “More than justice.”

Judge Lee: “You seem to feel no remorse whatsoever … How does this help with the sentencing? Will it make the sentences lighter? Heavier?”

Chow: “Each time you put another of us in prison, or add time to our sentences, you turn up the volume on our microphones. …”

Judge Lee (smiling): “Well, then, you ought to thank us, no?”

Chow: “Yes, exactly. Our thanks to the court!”

Judge Lee: “But this is no joke. We are going to handle this case rigorously.”

Chow: “I, too, am rigorous when I say I should not have been in prison a single day.”

Let me repeat something that this brave woman said: “If my actions violate the law—if the law truly cannot accommodate my beliefs—then I would rather be a criminal in a prison than a hypocrite groping my way through a sea of lies for the rest of my life.”

We are lucky to have people such as Chow Hang-tung among us—in the human race.

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***

Now to the United States. Much has been written about the below message, from a Republican nominee to a statewide office in Texas:

Let me recommend a piece by Nick Catoggio, in The Dispatch: here. I would like to say just a few things about the topic.

1. In my experience, Indian immigrants and their offspring are much better and truer Americans than our nativists. (I have had ample experience with each.)

2. Will that candidate’s message—his tweet—help him or hurt him on Election Day? He must have calculated that. This is sobering, to me, certainly.

3. A friend of mine—an American of South Asian origin—said to me, “Gee. I thought they wanted us to assimilate.” I have noticed a progression, in recent years. Goes like this:

I’m not against immigrants, mind you. Just illegal ones.

What I insist on is assimilation. Being legal isn’t good enough.

Oh, hell, just kidding: I’m against immigration.

4. A critic of mine on social media—one of these people who style themselves “based”—told me I had no idea what it means to be an American.

I think I do. And I will call on President Ford, in a speech he gave on the occasion of our Bicentennial:

To be an American is to subscribe to those principles which the Declaration of Independence proclaims and the Constitution protects—the political values of self-government, liberty and justice, equal rights, and equal opportunity. These beliefs are the secrets of America’s unity from diversity—in my judgment the most magnificent achievement of our 200 years as a nation.

Today, there are people who boast of being “Heritage Americans.” I suppose they are “based,” too. I wonder whether these people are acquainted with our heritage—in particular the Declaration and the Constitution.

I think of Akhil Reed Amar, that son of Indian immigrants, and the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale. He may know more about our Founding and its purposes than all the “Heritage Americans” put together.

(For a podcast I did with Professor Amar in 2022, go here.)

5. Texas Republicans were forced to respond to the noxious tweet. The governor, Greg Abbott, did not criticize the tweet directly, nor did he criticize the tweeter. He opened with “That is not my message.” And he closed by pointing out that he had frozen H-1B visas at Texas universities—a freeze that affects Indians in particular.

Governor Abbott’s response seems to me a perfect snapshot of the GOP in our times.

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***

In recent days, our vice president, JD Vance, has had favorable things to say about Huey Long and unfavorable things to say about Milton Friedman. In 1968, William F. Buckley Jr. had a famous debate with George Wallace. Which way would the Right go? Which would be “conservatism” in the United States?

Today, Long and Wallace have the upper hand. But Friedman and Buckley are waiting—to be rediscovered and returned to.

***

Yesterday, I was thinking about Israel, and … Hang on, let me tell you a story, before I continue.

Once, President Johnson called up Abba Eban and said, “I was a-scratchin’ of my ass and thinkin’ about Is-ra-el.”

How do I know this? Because Eban told David Pryce-Jones—complete with LBJ accent—and David told me.

Anyway, I was thinking about Israel—and wishing for the appearance of a new party. Then I thought, “If I were an Israeli, founding a party, what would that party look like? What would the party stand for?” Then I thought, “Hell, what if I were founding a party right here at home?”

Back-of-the-envelope kind of thing, these would be the party’s leading principles—its planks, its tenets, its raison d’être:

the rule of law
constitutionalism
the separation of powers
federalism
individual rights
a free economy
international trade
fiscal responsibility
personal responsibility
honesty
good character
intolerance of corruption
a strong national defense
the national interest
democratic alliances
championship of human rights
equality of opportunity
equality under the law
colorblindness (not to be confused with naivety)
civil society (its flourishing); endless little platoons
genuine patriotism (free of jingoism)
pluralism—and yet E pluribus unum
ordered liberty (the lodestar)

I will close by quoting Lesley Gore, singing in 1963: “It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to.”

Bless you all, dear readers. Thank you for reading and subscribing—and being.

… our guest today is one of my favorites: Steven B. Smith, the scholar of political philosophy. He is a Chicagoan—not a North Shore kid but a gritty South Sider, who would earn his Ph.D. at the local school: the University of Chicago. Since 1984, he has taught at Yale, where he is the Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science.

He is the author of many books, including Modernity and Its Discontents. Back in 2021, we talked about his then new book Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes.

He has now written On Statesmanship. It is a beautiful, learned book, which distills years of study and thinking. And raw human experience, I would say.

For Professor Smith, I have many questions, starting with “What is statesmanship? Who is a statesman? Not just any politician or officeholder, right?” We talk about a range of particular statesmen, including Pericles, FDR, and Lee Kuan Yew.

What was the impetus for this book? Why did Smith write it? I will abbreviate and paraphrase his answer:

For two reasons, really. One is relevant to our public life, and the other is more relevant to academic life.

Clearly, we are suffering from a dearth of great leaders—not just in America, but in many other places as well. In the last generation, there has been a rise of authoritarian leaders, but no rise on the other side: no rise of true statesmen.

We have seen a slow degradation of our politics and our public life. This book is an attempt to say, great democracies need great leaders—and we have lost the language for it. We have lost sight of what the qualities for great leadership are. We barely know how to talk about it.

On to academia:

From the beginning, philosophers have discussed the concept of the statesman. The history of philosophy is replete with profound reflections on statesmanship.

Think of Plato’s philosopher-king. And Machiavelli’s prince. And Rousseau’s lawgiver. And Weber’s thoughts on charisma, etc.

That has all but disappeared from the academy. We think a lot about democracy, and the problems of democracy, but not very much about leaders in a democracy. If you think that democracies don’t require great leaders—think again.

If there is one thing that keeps Steven Smith from despair, it’s this: you never know who will rise, and how. You never know who’s out there, to save the day—or at least to make the day better than it would have been.

Who would ever have identified Lincoln? Yet “he both rose and mastered the occasion,” says Smith.

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He also talks about de Gaulle:

Nobody had any idea who he was. He was a military officer, with no public visibility. When he spoke over the BBC from England, people didn’t even believe that that was a real name: “de Gaulle.” They thought it was made up. Yet through force of his personality and intellect, he created Free France and then the modern state.

At the end of our Q&A, I bring up a mysterious and touchy subject: “American exceptionalism.” I have always believed in it, and counted on it, but my faith is waning. And I’m not even sure what it is.

I will give Smith’s (excellent) answer—again, in my abbreviation and paraphrase:

I’m a little bit hesitant to put it this way, but I’ll go ahead: I believe that, in many ways, “American exceptionalism” is our foundational myth.

The Founders believed that they were creating something new and different. Hamilton said, We’re going to prove that a society doesn’t have to rely on accident and chance. It can be created through reflection and choice. This will be a different kind of society from others in the past.

There’s an old joke. Someone asks a philosopher, “Do you believe in free will?” He answers, “Of course I do. I have no choice.”

I feel a bit that way about American exceptionalism. Of course I believe in it—we have no choice. We have to regard ourselves as an exceptional people who are engaged in a mission that is a light unto the nations. We are a city on a hill …

This is a long conversation—like a seminar—but I feel it is not long enough. You can learn a great deal from Steven Smith, without paying Yale tuition. And the price of the book, On Statesmanship? Worth every penny.

If you haven’t heard, the midterm elections are coming—and they are important (all too). This distresses me. I think midterm elections ought to be yawneroos.

The older I get, or the more I experience, the more I like “boring.” I don’t think elections ought to be death struggles—not in a constitutional republic such as ours.

Does politics played “between the 40-yard lines” sound boring to you? It sounds optimal to me: where left-of-center Americans and right-of-center Americans agree on our basic constitutional order.

Two cheers—no, a full three—for “boring.”

***

I was thinking of an expression the other day—an expression that many of us conservatives used, way back: “social engineering.” (We were against it.)

Let me link to a news article, headed “Trump Officials Draft Plan to Pay At-Home Parents, Using Funds for Working Ones.”

I have read a fair amount of commentary about this, and I have one dominant thought:

I never liked social engineering from the left; I don’t much like it from the right. There is no end of people who are loath to let others live their own lives in an atmosphere of ordered liberty.

This is an ongoing problem, a pebble in our national shoe.

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***

Alexander Dugin is a leading Putinist ideologue in Russia, admired by many in the Free West, I’m afraid. (Of course, Putin is too.) Here is a statement from last Tuesday:

Kate Bohuslavska, a Ukrainian blogger, had the following reply: “ ‘Why doesn’t Ukraine just negotiate peace?’ they said.”

Yes. And they are still saying it. The recognition that Putin and his allies desire the erasure of Ukraine is the beginning of realism.

***

Did you see this, by chance?

I think of an expression I grew up with: “Famous last words.”

***

“Elections have consequences”—there’s another expression. The election last April in Hungary was hugely consequential. Under its new government, Hungary has departed from Putin and rejoined the West.

A story from last week begins,

A new government in Hungary formed after the election defeat of the country’s Russia-friendly former prime minister, Viktor Orbán, ordered the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats on Tuesday, signaling a sharp turn away from previously cozy relations with Moscow.

Hungary’s foreign minister, Anita Orbán, said without elaborating that the diplomats had been told to leave because they had “engaged in activities in Hungary that are unacceptable for diplomats under the Vienna Convention.”

Uh-huh.

Yes, Hungary’s new foreign minister is named “Orbán.” When she was introduced to Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, he said, with understanding, “My name is Donald.”

A neat response.

(By the way, Anita Orbán’s predecessor, Péter Szijjártó, who served Viktor Orbán for twelve years, is now working for a Chinese military company, as I discussed in an article earlier this month: here.)

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***

Elections have consequences, indeed—and Germans are electing members of the AfD, the populist-Right party (to characterize that party as politely and generously as possible).

Peter R. Neumann, a German academic who teaches at King’s College London, makes an interesting point: “If you think the AfD is a ‘normal’ party, look at who’s just been elected.” You’ve got neo-Nazis, porn producers, Putinists, “a former full-time Stasi officer”—quite an assemblage.

This leads me to an old point of mine: The terms “Left” and “Right” make little sense these days. We have many proud right-wingers who admire the KGB colonel in the Kremlin.

What we are seeing, I think, is simply the age-old conflict between freedom and unfreedom.

***

“Wow!” said our president. I will quote him in full:

“Make Germany Great Again!!!”? Hmmm. We’d better talk about the meaning of “great” …

***

Back to Dugin—who last year said,

Swell.

***

On Friday, I received the below text. Did you get one?

Unfortunately, I was a few minutes late …

***

Daniel Hannan, the sterling British Conservative, had a perturbed and forlorn comment:

For better or worse—and I say, often worse—language belongs to the people. But if our nat-pops—our nationalist-populists—are conservative, then I’m Tiger Woods.

***

I’m sometimes accused of being a “zombie Reaganite.” Well, when I saw this story, I thought back to the Reagan administration.

The story? “In Major Leak Hunt, Pentagon Gives Polygraph Tests to Joint Staff Members.” The subheading of the article reads, “About 50 people were tested, an unparalleled inquiry that comes in the wake of news reports about the war with Iran and the U.S. military’s diminished stocks of munitions.”

I realize that a polygraph test can be a useful, justifiable tool. I also know that such tests can indict the honest and exonerate the lying.

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Bill Casey—William J. Casey, the director of the CIA—used to amuse guests by tricking the polygraph.

And George Shultz, the secretary of state? He felt strongly. Let me call on a news article from December 20, 1985:

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that he had ‘”grave reservations” about polygraph tests and would resign “the minute in this Government I am told that I’m not trusted.”

His open dissent from a directive signed by President Reagan requiring polygraph, or lie-detector, tests by officials with access to highly sensitive information touched off an unusual public debate in the Administration.

A “senior White House official” was quoted as saying, “Shultz has strong feelings. This is one thing that sends him through the roof. It touches a nerve.”

These issues perdure.

And I think that the Trump administration should concentrate on winning the war—the war against Iran—and making sure our defenses are adequate, rather than playing these games.

***

Some sports news—actually, more like social-policy news:

Aryna Sabalenka finally found something that could stop her at the U.S. Open: the smell of marijuana.

The two-time defending champion complained to the chair umpire that it was bothering her early in her third-round victory over Kamilla Rakhimova on Friday. Sabalenka said she had never smelled the odor so strong as she did while serving early in the match.

Those are the opening paragraphs of a report from the Associated Press. And Ms. Sabalenka is singing my song—a song I sing almost every day, although I am not on a tennis court but out on the streets.

To be continued (the issue, that is) …

***

Care for a language item? It comes courtesy of another tennis player, and I will again quote an AP report:

Naomi Osaka may not have gone out of the U.S. Open with much of a bang. But she surely went out with a burst—of color, and a bit of swag. …

… she arrived on court Monday in a coat of many colors: a fur-trimmed cloak designed by Brooklyn-based label KidSuper.

“I felt really swaggy when I put it on,” Osaka said after the match.

That’s a new one on me—“swaggy,” meaning, I gather, confidently stylish, or stylishly confident.

***

More language? Have a look at the below, and then let me scold:

No, no, no. There is no such thing as “caffé.” “Café,” yes, “caffè,” yes. But “caffé,” no.

And let’s not even get into the second word …

***

This got my goat even worse:

In the 1990s, President Clinton and others started talking about “growing the economy.” It was wrong then, and it is wrong now.

While you’re growing soybeans, you can make the economy grow, but …

“Grow Your Mind”? Oh, grow up!

***

A Longhorn friend of mine—an alumna of the University of Texas—said, “Jay, we have a player with a name you’ll love.” She meant a player on the UT football team.

She was, of course, right. Hollywood Smothers.

(The Smothers Brothers, Tom and Dick, were entertainment stars for years.) (A nice rhyme, right? “Smothers Brothers.”) (Then there was Dr. Joyce Brothers, but that was something else.)

***

A speck of music? Slightly more than a speck? Here is my “New York chronicle” in the September New Criterion. Various composers, performers, and issues are under discussion.

***

So, I’m at the golf range. In the stall immediately to the right of mine is a kid, a lefty. Therefore, we’re facing each other as we swat away. Turns out he is ten years old and that his name is Calvin.

We talk for a minute or two about lefty-righty issues. A short while later, he calls out, “You want to play Bay vs. Bay?” “Huh?” I say. Well, as Calvin explains, there is a computer system at the range that allows people in different stalls, or bays, to play a little competitive match: “Bay vs. Bay.”

“Sure,” say I. And as we part, I say to Calvin, “Look forward to seeing you on the Tour.”

To be asked by a spirited ten-year-old, “You want to play Bay vs. Bay?”—that is really a day-maker.

And I hope you have a good one—day, that is. Thanks for reading, subscribing, and “keeping it real,” to use some old slang, which is the only slang I have, except for, now, “swaggy.”

“The very least important thing about 9/11 is how I, personally, spent that day. But you may find it interesting, and I can certainly vouch for it.”

That is the opening of a piece, published yesterday at The Dispatch. The magazine (for I think of The Dispatch that way, whether it is published in physical form or not) asked me to write a piece about 9/11 and New York. That piece is mainly personal, though it also has general applications.

Today, I would like to say a little bit more, mainly about the GWOT—the Global War on Terrorism, as we used to call it. (The term now sounds antique, doesn’t it? Almost like “Peloponnesian War” …)

I have no intention of rearguing it all—Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. That would take a series of pieces, or a series of books.

Speaking of books, I recommend Decision Points, by George W. Bush. He explains what he was facing, step by step. He tells you what it was like to “sit at the desk,” meaning the one in the Oval Office—the desk at which the buck stops (or is supposed to).

The highest praise for that book came from the author’s immediate predecessor as president. Bill Clinton said that Bush “gives readers a good sense of what it’s like to be president, to take the responsibilities of the office seriously, do what you think is right, and let history be the judge.”

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***

In my Dispatch piece, I have a couple of paragraphs about Bush—in relation to New York, specifically.

On September 14 (i.e., three days after the attacks),

Bush came to town to speak to the rescue workers at Ground Zero. He was speaking through a bullhorn. One of the men called out, “We can’t hear you!” Bush answered, “I can hear you. I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

A second paragraph:

In late October, Bush came back to New York to throw out the first pitch in a World Series game at Yankee Stadium. He appeared confident. Though encumbered by a bulletproof vest, he fired a strike. The effect on the crowd, and the city in general, was oddly inspiriting, close to electrifying.

Let me quote a commenter at The Dispatch: “The account of the conversation between GWB and the rescue workers brought some tears to my eyes.”

Well, I have a confession. When I was preparing my piece, I watched a video of Bush at Ground Zero—and the same happened to me. (What I mean is, my face might have been slightly wet.)

It was rather emotional to prepare that piece anyway—to relive 9/11 and its aftermath.

***

Bush spoke at Ground Zero on the 14th. On the 17th, he went to a mosque in D.C., to say that we were not at war with Muslims at large. No, we were at war with Islamist terrorists, or rather, they were at war with us, as they had long been, and we were now fighting back.

Some people thought that Bush was being “politically correct.” (That was the term we used before “woke.”) Others thought he was being prudent, practical: we would need the help of a helluva lot of Muslims in the days, months, and years ahead.

That was right.

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***

My sense is, people have forgotten the atmosphere after 9/11, if they ever knew it. People were screaming at Bush to DO SOMETHING. They said that he and his administration had failed to “connect the dots.” That was the buzz-phrase: “connect the dots.” They should have known that these attacks were coming, in precisely the way they came!

No, wait a minute: they knew all along! And decided to let the attacks happen!

Here was the New York Post, in full tabloid mode:

“9/11 Bombshell”! Yeah, right.

Hey, did you know that 9/11 was an “inside job”? Lots of people believed it, and believe it still. They include a dear friend of mine. Some things cannot be talked about.

***

In the run-up to the Iraq War, Bush said that he had to weigh “the risks of action and the risks of inaction.” People tended to know the risks of action. But did they consider the risks of inaction? Of doing nothing?

The president had to, even if the rest of us didn’t.

***

Some of us thought that the 9/11 attacks required a response more comprehensive than we had entertained, or carried out, before. Something beyond police work and counterterrorism. We spoke of a “9/10 mentality”—a mentality we could not afford, a mentality that was dangerous, actually.

More on this in a moment …

***

On the first anniversary of 9/11—now we’re up to the 25th—I gave a speech in Salonika, Greece. Under State Department auspices, I spoke at a conference called “September 11: Media and Terrorism.” That speech can be read here. And I would like to quote a single paragraph:

Above all, I think that covering and commenting on this war has meant an end to pretending—an end to pretending that everyone’s a friend, or potential friend, that every grievance is just, that a certain kind of hatred can be appeased, that America is to be blamed for humanity’s woes, that radical Islam is just another viewpoint, that there is never right and wrong, only personal subjectivity. When the prime minister of Italy said that a free, open, pluralistic society is better than a closed, stifled, lied-to one, everyone professed shock and indignation. This is the kind of pretending that gets harder to do.

Later that day, an American diplomat, a Foreign Service officer, shook my hand and said, “I think the primary message of your speech was: Time to cut the shit.”

I appreciated that, and still do.

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***

As some of us saw it, 9/11 was the latest and worst—not the first. Let me explain what I mean.

In fact, I’d like to quote again from that speech in Greece:

In 1993, the World Trade Center itself was bombed, but only a few died. Everyone kind of shuddered, and then promptly forgot about it. Our men were murdered in the Khobar Towers, on Saudi soil. Many more people were murdered at the U.S. embassies in Africa. Then, the U.S.S. Cole, in Yemen, was attacked. And yet these incidents were far away, and, besides, weren’t most of the dead soldiers? They were in a dangerous business anyway.

At the World Trade Center, in 1993, six people were killed—seven if you count an unborn child.

In Khobar Towers, 19 were killed.

At our embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, 224 were killed.

On the USS Cole, 17 were killed.

I will continue to quote that speech of mine, starting with a couple of sentences already quoted:

And yet these incidents were far away, and, besides, weren’t most of the dead soldiers? They were in a dangerous business anyway.

But this thinking itself was dangerous. Some people said, at the time of the Cole, that this was not an act of terror—there’s a vague word, “terror”—but an act of war, and ought to be treated as such. And yet the U.S. did little; there was a collective shrug. And that undoubtedly emboldened America’s enemies for more. A colleague of mine pointed out the old French expression, “L’appétit vient en mangeant.” Appetite comes with eating. So it proved.

That colleague, by the way, was David Pryce-Jones.

How do you declare war, or wage war, against a terror group? Isn’t that kind of gauzy, like declaring and waging war against poverty? It’s easier—more logical—to deal with a state, right?

Yes. And what George W. Bush said was: If you arm, shelter, or otherwise abet terrorists, you are the equivalent.

***

It is important to remember: Most of us assumed that 9/11 would not be a “one-off.” We did not think our enemies would say, “That was nice. Murdered a few thousand of the bastards. We’re done now.” No, we figured they would do it again and again, as long as they could.

Here is a paragraph from my Dispatch piece:

Lots of people were on alert, nervous. I had a friend who was reluctant to travel to or from Grand Central Terminal, because the building made an inviting target for terrorists. Some people wondered, “Will anyone rent office space in the Empire State Building again?”

I liked what Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, said on different occasions. I will paraphrase him:

Look, we’re not going to bring the dead of 9/11 back. And we’re not going to war in order to avenge them. This is not about retaliation, retribution, or revenge. Those are three wrong R’s. It’s about self-defense. They have pledged to hit us again and again, and we can either defend ourselves or not. We vote: yes.

***

Shortly after 9/11, I happened to moderate a panel that included Vernon Walters, the distinguished Army general, CIA man, and diplomat. I asked, “What do we owe the dead? What do we owe the murdered of 9/11?” Walters answered, “That it never happen again.” In other words, we had to do the necessary to ensure, to the extent possible, that there would not be a repeat.

Amazingly, there has not been. There have been close calls, however. There was a string of close calls on the heels of 9/11.

An attack in Singapore was foiled. An attack on our embassy in Rome was foiled. Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber,” failed. José Padilla, the “dirty bomber,” failed.

Were we lucky? Or good? Some blend?

I can tell you this: On 9/11, 9/12, 9/13, etc., few of us could imagine that we would not be hit again, in something like a protracted, bloody struggle.

I am grateful to everyone—in the military, in the CIA, in the FBI, in elected offices—who has worked and sacrificed to keep our country safe, or as safe as possible. God bless them.

And God bless you all.

“Flicka” is Frederica von Stade, the great mezzo-soprano, and she is the subject of a new documentary: Flicka: A Love Letter. How does she feel about this?

Well, there’s a certain amount of embarrassment, but basically pure joy. It was a wonderful experience. I was treated royally and spoiled incredibly, and it gave me a chance to look back. It was a wonderful, wonderful trip down Memory Lane, and I’m so grateful.

(I have paraphrased—tightened—but only slightly.)

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Flicka is an octogenarian, but she is also, if I may, an eternal babe. She is always involved in projects of a charitable nature. On September 26, she will be giving a benefit concert in Fairfield, Iowa.

In our Q&A—not our first and I hope not our last—we cover a range of issues. We talk a fair amount about repertoire: songs and operas.

I say to her,

Flicka, it occurs to me that you are a singer without specialty. You may be known for French songs and French opera roles, and for Mozart, but you have sung pretty much everything under the sun, song-wise and opera-wise. You have done Italian, French, German, English. Any Russian or Czech? Have you done those?

Czech, yes, she answers, but Russian, no. Also: she has sung in Yiddish.

Are there songs she would have liked to sing, but didn’t, or opera roles she would have liked to have, but didn’t? Any “omissions,” any “lacunae,” as Bill Buckley would say?

No.

I feel maybe a little bit arrogant saying so, but I feel that my life has been blessed by opportunity, and I’m grateful for every song I sang and every aria I sang. Every performance I did. I couldn’t want for more, I just couldn’t. It would be indecent, in my mind.

She works with many young singers, at conservatories as far away as New Zealand (where her friend Kiri Te Kanawa, the soprano, lives). “I’m so glad that none of these kids were around when I was beginning,” says Flicka, “because I would never have had a job. They are out of this world.” But “I tremble for their future.”

Why? Because there ain’t jobs. They are getting scarcer and scarcer, as the opera world and the recital world shrink and shrink. Some young singers are starting their own programs, their own series. There is a return to house concerts—music in the parlor.

No matter what, “we have to keep on trekking,” says Flicka. I love this variation on “keep on trucking.” I hope always to remember “keep on trekking,” and to do it.

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Are there composers she feels especially close to? Composers who really speak to her? Yes, and one is a living composer, and, not only that, a friend of hers: Jake Heggie. Flicka also names Poulenc, famously (and accurately) described as “half rascal, half monk.”

Frederica von Stade is one of the most recorded artists of our time. She has over a hundred of them—over a hundred recordings. Does she ever listen to them? No, she says (as I thought she would). She does not like to listen to her recordings. She’s apt to feel that her intention—her musical, emotional, or theatrical purpose—does not come through.

It should be a consolation, I tell her, that she’s the only one who knows …

Before Flicka rose to prominence, there was a triumvirate of great mezzo-sopranos (in my mind): Janet Baker, Christa Ludwig, and Marilyn Horne. Could she say something about each of them? She does indeed.

She has sung with many famous singers—as famous as she. Can she give me the name of a singer, a colleague, who is underrated? Who should be a bigger deal than he or she is? Yes: Richard Stillwell, the American baritone.

How about younger singers—singers now in their primes? Who stands out? Von Stade cites, among others, Sasha Cooke and Quinn Kelsey. The former is a mezzo-soprano from Texas and the latter is a baritone from Hawaii (yes, Hawaii, our 50th state).

I can second those nominations if a second is needed, which it isn’t.

At the end of our podcast, I give Flicka a little quiz: When did she first appear in Carnegie Hall? She whiffs the question (as I figured she would). (This woman is not self-absorbed.) The answer: February 1973, with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.

In the new documentary, Jake Heggie says, “When Flicka walks into a room, it’s like your best friend just walked into the room—although you may be meeting her for the first time.”

True, so true. Enjoy your friend Flicka.

A couple of weeks ago, I was writing about Angie Nixon, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Florida. I said I didn’t like her politics (at all). But I liked the way she spoke.

“Her voice is redolent of the American South, and of the black American South in particular,” I said. “Ms. Nixon was born and raised in Jacksonville.”

I proceeded to say the following:

I love English, wherever it is spoken—and there is a huge variety of “Englishes.” In our own United States. In Great Britain, of course. In India, Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere.

What is your favorite English, or your top three, say, “Englishes”?

Before I gave others a chance to weigh in, I weighed in myself (which is different from weighing oneself):

I love the varieties of Irish English. Once, I interviewed Ann Murray, the mezzo-soprano. (Not to be confused with Anne Murray, the wonderful pop singer, who is Canadian.) Ann Murray is a Dubliner. She speaks the most beautiful English—it sounds a bit like singing.

But my favorite English—the English closest to my heart, I think—is that of black American southerners. (True, there are different types of such English, even as there are different types of English in Dublin, to say nothing of the whole of Ireland.) In the black American South, you find my favorite “English music,” so to speak.

Anyway, “What are your ‘Englishes’?” I asked. “If you’d like to let me know, please do.”

Well, thank you to all who let me know.

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One reader votes for the English of Newfoundland—its “rural bay communities,” in particular.

“The Rock,” he writes (meaning Newfoundland), “was settled by Irish, Welsh, and English. They went there for the fishing.” And the speech that developed “is the most enchanting English I have ever heard.”

Makes me want to take a trip.

I also received a note from Donald Mace Williams—the poet, novelist, journalist, etc. (I podcasted with him last March, and you can listen to him here.) Writes DMW,

In a small Colorado town—Pagosa Springs, I think—about 25 years ago I was talking about bears with a hardware store owner named Henry. He told me that one day his employee, a woman from Texas, came to the back of the store where he was working and calmly informed him: “Hinry, there’s a bea-yer in the sto-wer.” He said he scooted out the back door. She went back to the front and shooed the bear away.

That woman, in what must have been his perfect imitation, was an aunt I loved, or a nice neighbor lady in one of the small Central Texas towns I grew up in. I seldom hear such an accent these days, and I miss it.

In the last few years it has also come to me that what she said was a rather unusual thing in English poetry, a perfectly trochaic line, DUM-dee, DUM-dee, etc., all the way through. (Partly trochaic lines, with the last dee missing, are common enough.) Maybe it takes a bea-yer and a nice Texas lady to make it work.

I agree with you, by the way, about the beauty of southern black people’s accents, though those, too, are getting scarce.

A lady writes,

The soft country voices of central North Carolina hypnotize me.

(That itself is a beautiful, almost hypnotizing, sentence.)

Says a different reader,

I’m enamored of British voices, especially the wild Englishes of Mike Leigh’s films. At times, they’re almost unintelligible. David Thewlis’s in Naked, Katrin Cartlidge’s in Career Girls, Gary Oldman’s in Meantime—these Englishes are provocative, almost entrancing, to my ears. I recognize something plaintive, lyrical, and old in them that my English, withered by “Newspeak” and “bureaucratese,” regrettably lacks.

Here is an example from Naked (and pardon their French).

A reader writes,

About a year ago I attended a funeral service conducted by a minister who was a native of India. I would guess he was middle-aged. After the service I commented to him about his British accent. His response: “Ah, yes. The British educational system.” The entire experience was wonderful for me.

But then again, I once was a regular viewer of PMQs on C-SPAN.

Oh, yes. (Those letters stand for “Prime Minister’s Questions.” You can hear the most diverse and wonderful Englishes in those sessions.)

Another reader:

During my IT career, many of my colleagues were from India. I grew fond of their musical accent and their turns of phrase such as “do the needful” and “I have no doubt.”

My late friend Paul Johnson, the great historian, knew a lady from the Caribbean who lived in London and whose children were sometimes embarrassed by her “old-fashioned” phrases. For example, instead of saying “Hurry up,” she’d say “Make haste.”

Johnson loved that.

Says a reader,

My personal favorite English is the Scottish variety. Such a treasure trove is Scottish TikTok, I can practically hear it. “Aye, he’s oan the protein.”

(In other words, he’s getting bigger.)

Finally, a colorful, lively letter from a colorful, lively reader:

Hi, Jay,

… After living in a total of eight states so far, I have to say that I find a southern drawl charming, though that may be because my wife spoke that way when I met her. Alas, 42 years of exposure to me and the states we’ve lived in has eroded her drawl to the point of non-existence.

Not to mention the determination of some of her supervisors to eliminate that drawl at work.

(When she started dispatching at the police department, after a few years working for the sheriff’s office, her bosses, not being able to find anything else to criticize, settled for harassing her about saying “yalla” for “yellow”—yellow frequency being one of two main frequencies at the PD. She asked me what to do about it and I suggested thinking “Jello/yellow” before she spoke.)

(One day, she slipped and said “yalla,” then corrected herself to “Jello.” Hilarity ensued.)

I find that I have adopted a lot of regionalisms or localisms into my routine speech, having acquired them from various places. I tend to say “Flah-ri-da” and South “Kah-lina.” When someone makes a mistake, I’m likely to say, “Why’d you did dat?” This comes from my time in New Orleans. My speech is dotted with, interchangeably, “y’all” and “youse guys.”

But I do like a southern drawl, and the “yat” dialect of Orleans and Jefferson parishes [in Louisiana] amuses me. A Michigan accent is immediately identifiable and puts me in mind of the coney joints on Jefferson Avenue near the federal courthouse.

That’d be Detroit—or “Dee-troit City,” as we sometimes say (with the accent on the “Dee”).

Great thanks to my readers, who are, to me, a pleasure, a privilege, and a balm.

Jonathan Martin, that ace political journalist, has done an interview with Susan Collins, the senior senator from Maine. She is a Republican. The interview is worth reading in full—or seeing in full—but I’m going to concentrate on a small part of it.

Collins is not a Trump Republican, but she is not exactly a Trump opponent either. She is “navigating the Trump era,” as they say.

Of Liz Cheney, Collins said to J-Mart, “What influence does she have today? Really none.” She further said, “It’s not just that she lost her seat; it’s that she has no impact, in my view.”

Okay. I’m not sure how “impactful” Senator Collins has been. But I want, again, to quote Henry Hyde, the late congressman, a conservative Republican from Illinois. I quoted him in a piece about Lindsey Graham, and I quoted him in a subsequent column.

Hyde had the role of addressing new congressmen at their “freshman orientation.” In 1990, he said,

This may sound odd, even ironic. You are here in the flush of victory. And yet it is precisely now that I ask you to contemplate the possibility of defeat—perhaps even the necessity of defeat.

Further on in his remarks, he said,

I feel obliged to put the matter more sharply still: If you don’t know the principle, or the policy, for which you are willing to lose your office, then you are going to do damage here.

Liz Cheney thought that Trump was unfit to be president—grotesquely so—and said so. This, of course, cost her her leadership position in the House and, soon after, her seat.

But, you know? She stood for something. She took a stand. And she won the admiration, and gratitude, of many of us.

I have an easier time excusing politicians such as Susan Collins than I do their counterparts in the media—Republicans who have swum along with Trump in order to keep their audiences and their jobs.

Said Charles Krauthammer, “You’re betraying your whole life if you don’t say what you think—and you don’t say it honestly and bluntly.”

Bless him.

When Collins first ran for the Senate, in 1996, she pledged to serve only two terms. “Twelve years is long enough to be in public service, make a contribution, and then come home and let someone else take your place.”

She is now completing her fifth term and running for a sixth.

That’s the way it goes …

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***

I’d like to cite one more thing from J-Mart’s interview of Collins. Speaking about her opponent this year, Troy Jackson, the senator said, “I’m not going to bring up the fact that the mother of his two children is his second cousin. I don’t know whether people know that or not.”

(1) Classy lady. (2) Do you think the issue will hurt Jackson? I’m not sure.

***

By now, you have probably heard about Pierre Damas Bel. I will not dwell on the details. “Haitian Student, Despondent Over Ankle Monitor, Dies in Apparent Suicide.” That is a headline in the New York Times. The subheading reads, “The 20-year-old was fitted with a tracking device under a Trump administrative initiative targeting Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.”

For the article, go here. In the last two years—since the 2024 presidential campaign—there have been many, many articles about Springfield. Trump and Vance have put it on the map, so to speak. Today, I would like to say just one thing.

“America is great because America is good.” That line has been attributed to Tocqueville, who did not say it. Nevertheless, I have always thought there is some truth in it.

And if America ceases to be good …

What makes America great? Seizing Venezuela’s oil? Threatening Greenland? Renaming Lake Ontario?

For crying out loud.

***

Of supporters of our mass deportations, I ask one thing: that they acquaint themselves with the facts, the details. No matter how discomforting it is.

“Deportees Recount Harrowing Journeys to Africa: Shackles, a ‘Freezer’ and Blows.” That report is here. And here is another report, which begins,

A 37-year-old Cuban man who lived in South Florida and spent seven months in U.S. immigration detention says he was placed on a plane in handcuffs and deported to the Central African Republic—a country he had never heard of.

Most people have not. (I wrote about the country’s onetime dictator, who crowned himself emperor, in a book. A monstrous man named Bokassa.)

Here is another report, headed “Cubans living in Florida are being deported to Africa.” I propose a little thought experiment: What if, say, the Obama administration were doing this? Or an AOC administration? What would the Republican Party and its media say?

I can tell you that, for Cuban Americans in Miami, this situation is mightily awkward. (That community, to which I have long had close ties, is overwhelmingly Republican.)

But back to my point: Support deportations if you will (say I)—but none of us should be ignorant of what, precisely, our government is doing.

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***

Milo Yiannopoulos, the right-wing provocateur, has been deported back to the United Kingdom. He had been all for Trump’s deportations. Had egged them on, cheered them on. Then he himself was arrested and subsequently said,

I don’t think I’ve ever been frightened like that before. I didn’t really understand the physical reality of how institutionalized the brutality is in America. The manner in which they arrest you. They put you in manacles—your hands, your feet, chained together. Everybody is arrested like an MS-13 gang member. …

It was humiliating and it was disorientating, all the rest of it. It was physically degrading. It was frightening.

I’m sure it was. And I think of an aphorism from Ben Franklin: “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”

I would also like to quote a wise man from our own day, David French:

This is one reason why the attack on empathy is so evil. If we have to wait for person after person to experience the brutality of this administration before we wake up, then we’ll inflict an immense amount of pain on our country. But if, instead, we could place ourselves in the shoes of the immigrant in chains, then we can see the injustice more plainly.

David went on to say,

And no, this does not mean that we can’t or shouldn’t deport illegal immigrants when appropriate. It doesn’t mean we must have open borders. But we can’t lose our own humanity and decency in the process, and we must not use brutality as an instrument of enforcement.

***

Gloria Steinem has died at 92. One line from her sticks out in my memory—not the most important thing she ever said, but something that stays with me: When the New York Times at last relented and accepted the honorific “Ms.,” she said, “I no longer have to be ‘Miss Steinem of Ms. magazine.’”

***

“Macron and King Charles III hail their nations’ ties as they view the Bayeux Tapestry in London.” That is the heading over a report from the Associated Press. The reporter, Jill Lawless, had a little fun with words:

The two heads of state viewed the embroidered depiction of the 1066 Norman conquest of England alongside new prime minister Andy Burnham, who is eager to restitch bonds between Britain and its European neighbors that have been frayed by Brexit.

Have one more sentence, after which I will recall an admonition from Churchill:

Charles praised the agreement between Britain and France that brought the priceless, fragile tapestry to London, and called its presence there “a precious symbol of trust at a time when trust seems sadly to be in short supply between nations.”

Churchill despised the phrase “in short supply” (which I think was then relatively new). He said it took three words to say “scarce.”

***

I saw a long line of people on a sidewalk in New York. It turned out to be a line of people waiting to receive free food. Bunch of vagrants, right, most of them black and Hispanic? No. They were people of various races and ages. Some of them were well dressed.

A sight to make one ponder.

***

We have all seen crazy people on the street, talking to themselves, or holding imaginary conversations. These days, however, people might be having phone conversations, hands-free. They may well have buds in their ears.

I was waiting at a bus stop with a man who was having an animated conversation. Something about morality and ethics. I assumed he was on the phone. But there were no buds in his ears.

Oh, dear.

Later on, my friends. Thank you for joining me, and for subscribing if you can or want. Talk to you soon.