by Tom Piatak As a child of the 1970s, Saturday nights on CBS were a delight. Theyfeatured The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show.The first was the first prime time TV show I remember liking. The second I eventually came to like even more. I found Newhart, who played psychologist Robert Hartley—knownuniversally on the show as “Bob”—to be instantly likable. I also found the weekly...
Hawley: Whistleblowers Confirm Lax Security at Trump Rally
By R. Cort Kirkwood (The New American) Whistleblowers have revealed that security at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where an assassin almost murdered former President Donald Trump, was “loose” and that most of the personnel on Trump’s protective detail were not Secret Service (USSS) agents. In a letter to Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, GOP Senator Josh Hawley...
What to Make of All This? (Some thoughts on the current scene)
By Wayne Allensworth I’m trying to keep my head above water in the flood of information about recent events spurting out of mass media, including social media, and here are some thoughts that have crossed my mind: Judging by what the investigation into the Trump assassination attempt has come up with so far — that Thomas Matthew Crooks was a loner, was bullied at school, posted a creepy message...
Vance Goes There: America is not an Idea
By Wayne Allensworth Yes, it was just a speech, and Vance is a politician, but he went to the core of the problem we face in the political realm in his remarks at the Republican National Convention: Vance was heartfelt and, I believe, sincere in what he said last night. America is not an abstraction, we shouldn’t be asked to fight and strive and die for abstractions, but instead for a place and a...
A Few Thoughts on the Trump Assassination Attempt
By Wayne Allensworth Initial reports on an event of this magnitude are usually garbled or erroneous, and we will undoubtedly learn more about what took place in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday soon enough. But, as of Monday morning, there is enough to go on to offer some preliminary thoughts. Trump probably put this election away by surviving the attack and showing some grit in doing so. The...
Re-enchanting Our Disenchanted World
The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world. — Max Weber: Essays in Sociology By Wayne Allensworth I craned my neck to see the magnificent ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I felt the exhilarating sensation of a tingle running through my scalp as I gazed at the Creation, the Fall, the Expulsion from the...
The End of Innocence
By Wayne Allensworth That time is past,And all its aching joys are now no more — William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey Sometime in the 1990s I admitted to myself that a return to our golden age, however one might imagine it, could never happen. Not a golden age, not even a silver one. A baser metal would have to serve. In researching my book, The Russian Question: Nationalism...
A Matter of Truth
By Wayne Allensworth To this end I was born, and for this cause came I into the world,that I should bear witness unto the truth — John 18:37 I had come to see Mr. K knowing that his birthday was in June, so I asked him what the exact date was. He couldn’t remember. He took a notebook from the old-fashioned TV tray that sits by his recliner and thumbed through the pages. A thin smile passed...
War and Remembrance (The Good War and the Bloody Shirt)
By Wayne Allensworth If there be any glory in war, let it rest on men like these — Dedication to Audie Murphy’s To Hell and Back The elaborate and politicized commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, held on a bluff overlooking what had been Omaha Beach on that momentous day, provoked a wave of memories and emotions in me that I had not anticipated...
Ideology Skews Foreign Policy
By Wayne Allensworth Professor John Mearsheimer is a leading proponent of a realist foreign policy based on national interests and maintaining a balance of power among the major countries. In the video below, however, Professor Mearsheimer admits that the theory, which assumes that the great powers act according to a realist view of the world, doesn’t always work. A number of wildcards can skew...
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