There is very little new under the sun. The monument and statue destruction that we are witnessing has been witnessed in other times and other places. A tyrant's first battlefield is to rewrite history. Most notable were the political purges of Joseph Stalin. The Soviet government erased fig…

"Nobody likes me." – Donald Trump

Capping a week of deserved tributes, the funeral for Rep. John Lewis in Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church brought me back a quarter-century to another funeral for another revered member of Congress, former House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill.

What a moment in America.

Traditionally, funerals are supposed to serve at least three purposes: honor the life of the deceased, comfort those who mourn his passing and preach a message about eternity and the brevity of life.

Decent Americans who are feeling perplexed today shouldn't be ashamed about it. There is good reason to be perplexed.

My friend David French, one of the most admirable voices in America today, argues that conservatives need not vote against Republican senate candidates in order to send a message about Trumpism. I disagree. He writes, "A rage, fury, and a 'burn it all down' mentality is one of the maladies t…

"Protestors in California," tweeted ABC News, about an incident in Oakland, "set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified."

In 2016, Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, said, “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed… and we will deserve it.”

She was a teacher in Michigan.

It would take quite a spectacle to upstage America's humiliating failure to contain the coronavirus. It's not every day that the Bahamas labels U.S. tourists as carriers of disease to be kept out.

I doubt whether any American would defend the police treatment of George Floyd that led to his death. But many Americans are supporting some of the responses to Floyd’s death – rioting, looting, wanton property destruction, assaults on police and other kinds of mayhem by both whites and Blacks.

It is clear we have real racial problems in this country, problems that need to be worked through as we try to restore some semblance of harmony and understanding among the population.

The violence perpetrated in the streets of cities across America continues because state and local elected officials (all Democrats) refuse to do what is necessary to stop it. These acts no longer fit the definition of protest. Rather, sedition defines them: “incitement of discontent or rebe…

Donald Trump has said he has “no responsibility” for the coronavirus pandemic, fobbing it off on governors and mayors whose repeated requests for federal help he’s denied. Yet he’s now sending federal troops into cities he says are controlled by the “radical left,” even as mayors and governo…

A wave of hasty firings is sweeping across the country, driven by demands from what some call the “cancel culture.” The New York Times editorial page editor James Bennett ran an op-ed from Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., that displeased the paper’s readers and some colleagues, so he lost his job. T…

We are watching a show. It's important to keep that in mind.

President Donald Trump has a point. People are being injured. The property damage runs into the millions. Things are out of control. Local governments are not able to handle this on their own. It demands a federal response. When sacred things are desecrated, it takes a toll on the national spirit.

If things had proceeded according to schedule, we'd be checking the polls this week to see if Joe Biden had gotten a bounce from his acceptance speech in Milwaukee. That's because the Democratic National Convention was originally scheduled for July 13-16.

The logical process begins with asking, “What should we make of Mitt Romney’s vote, at the end of the impeachment trial, to remove Donald Trump from office?”

The European Union summit meeting, called to discuss recovery funds for the member countries, has dodged the bullet that was about to shake up the very foundations of the union. The tempestuous marathon of the Council in Brussels demonstrated once again, in very serious terms, that United Eu…

Bari Weiss brought keen intelligence and broadminded liberalism to the editorial pages of The New York Times. So, naturally, she had to go. The right will cackle that this proves how dangerous the left is. They're not totally wrong, but they need to look in the mirror.

You could say it's all Donald Trump's fault. His bad qualities -- his carelessness about facts, his obstinance about admitting error, his contempt for others' views -- have turned out to be contagious, to the point that you could argue they're more damaging to his opponents than to him.

Patrick Henry famously presented “Liberty” and Death” as alternatives. But lately in America we’ve seen a troubled and troubling notion of Liberty in which Liberty and Death come packaged together.

In a few days, on July 21, I will be one year older than my mother was when she died.

Dan Buck is a philosopher friend of mine with a rare gift for explaining the political world. Back when Ronald Reagan was an enormously popular president (carrying 93 out of a possible 100 states in two national campaigns), I marveled at how voters were so unfailingly tolerant, even forgivin…

President Trump's decision to commute the prison sentence of his longtime friend and political adviser Roger Stone just days before Stone was to begin a 40-month prison sentence - he and the president say he was falsely accused – reminded me of another man who was as loyal to his president a…

The debate now surrounding the Emancipation Monument that stands in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C., is a critical discussion in which I believe all Americans of goodwill and those who want racial harmony should engage.

Fate has been unkind to the United States. The nation is grappling simultaneously with a pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 136,000; the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression; and mind-numbing police brutality, which has generated the largest outpouring of gr…

Florida, Arizona, Texas and California are among the states that thought they could reopen early. They also got sloppy with requirements for wearing masks and social distancing. Now their ICUs are stretched to breaking with coronavirus patients.

Before I sat down to write this column, I looked out our front window and found our hydrangeas in a state of despair.

A number of conservative commentators have rushed to defend President Donald Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech. Incensed by press depictions of the speech as “divisive and dark,” figures such as Mollie Hemingway and Tom Fitton rode to the president’s side, assailing The New York Times as a “left…

I’ve never observed anyone as closely as I’ve studied Donald Trump. Not just because he’s president, but also because I’ve never seen anyone like him, and because Trump poses puzzles I’ve found difficult to solve.

As near as I can tell it began in 1995, when Republicans won control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years and captured a Senate majority.

So now, Karen’s got a gun.

Donald Trump said last week's jobs report, which showed an uptick in June, proves the economy is "roaring back."

Christopher Slutman, 43, had always wanted to be a firefighter. He was that kind of kid, the kind who wants to save people. He was also a Marine Reserves staff sergeant who had served in Iraq. Last year, he was assigned to duty in Afghanistan.

 If you're still opposed to wearing a face mask in public, this column is for Very Special You.

This week marks the 219th birthday of the great 19th-century French economist Frederic Bastiat. It's the perfect time to talk about his famous essay, "That Which is Seen, and that Which is Not Seen," published in his book, "The Law." This timeless work remains an essential guide to thinking …

When American tourists return to Europe (whenever the European Union authorities decide that Americans will not bring with them the virus that is devastating the United States), they will find some surprises, including lower prices owing to the incentives offered by tourist-starved countries…

Rabbits. Rabbits! They’re hopping all over New England, my yard included. They need to eat and, being rabbits, have lots of mouths to feed. What more could a rabbit want than a fresh head of cabbage, organically grown by my calloused hands?

In an earlier piece, I wrote that “I seem to yearn – more intensely than most people – for the world to be as it should be.” That was about people being “constructive, not destructive; kind, not cruel; fair, not unjust; honest, not deceptive.”

One of the recently vandalized monuments is a statue of poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Someone smeared "BLM" and "(expletive) Slave Owners" on the seated figure prominently displayed in the city named after him, Whittier, California.

The time for serious police reforms has come. There is no ignoring that fact. Cities and states around the nation are already working on what those reforms will look like.

As a run-up to the Fourth of July, Americans typically buy beer, barbecue meats and fireworks. This year, as so many have become overwhelmed by the anxiety and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans are buying guns at a record pace.

On the television crime drama "FBI," Special Agent Jubal Valentine brusquely orders an underling to run a photograph through facial recognition to identify a suspect. Boom! After a rocket-speed search, the computer spits out a name and address. Field agents get to work, and in no time, the b…