Sobran Columns -- Archive, 1999 & 2000

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December 28, 2000	•	Free Virginia! What happened to “consent of the governed”?
December 26, 2000	•	Memoirs of a Heretic There is nothing more satisfying than recovering a buried truth.
December 21, 2000	•	How Washington Thinks Anyone who would suggest that maybe we already had all the government we needed in the days of (say) Jimmy Carter would be deemed a right-wing extremist.
December 19, 2000	•	Abe Lincoln, White Separatist Lincoln believed that freed blacks couldn’t stay in America.
December 14, 2000	•	Popular Election of Presidents? Imagine this past election without the Electoral College.
December 12, 2000	•	Stealing an Election Electing a new people
December 7, 2000	•	Meet Your Enemy Where does the immediate peril to our freedom reside?
December 5, 2000	•	Accuracy and Other Illusions Our liberty should never depend on who wins an election.
November 30, 2000	•	Why Can’t the Americans? Should they teach remedial English in the Ivy League?
November 28, 2000	•	Symptoms of Tyranny Most tyrannies subsist less by committing atrocities than by creating dependents.
November 23, 2000	•	A Heartbeat Away Maybe they elect corpses in Missouri, but the rest of the country still prefers live specimens, or at least Gore.
November 21, 2000	•	The Silent Revolution Ignorant people don’t understand The Federalist Papers, but they understand government checks with their names on them.
November 16, 2000	•	Amnesia at the Paper of Record How the New York Times has substituted Soviet propaganda for its own reporting
November 14, 2000	•	The Democrats’ Ethics The Democrats haven’t become conspicuously scrupulous during the last eight years.
November 9, 2000	•	Now What? The Electoral College is an anachronism — but not for the reasons we’re hearing.
November 7, 2000	•	A Rare Scholar “My conclusions are not infrequently at war with my predilections.”
November 2, 2000	•	Putting Israel First When it comes to Israeli interests, some otherwise partisan politicians can rise above party.
October 31, 2000	•	Liberal versus Conservative? You read it here first: “The election may still be decided by a few flukes in the final days.”
October 26, 2000	•	Electoral Mischief In this country, voting is a futile gesture.
October 24, 2000	•	Tyson, Golota, and Hamlet A seductive voice invited me to watch Mike Tyson fight Andrew Golota.
October 19, 2000	•	Clinton’s Levitas Our politicians are lighter than air; that’s why they rise to the top.
October 17, 2000	•	Beware of Allies The wisest foreign policy is simply to avoid making enemies.
October 12, 2000	•	How to Avoid Lying Why new and previously unsuspected meanings in the Constitution all tend to enlarge the power of the federal government
October 10, 2000	•	The Few and the Many Who knows what causes the dominant Few may adopt in the years ahead?
October 5, 2000	•	Does the Constitution “Grow”? A government that can change the very meaning of old words is tyrannical.
October 3, 2000	•	History’s Winners We don’t need “great” presidents.
September 28, 2000	•	Freud and the Constitution What do they have to do with Shakespeare?
September 26, 2000	•	The Death Penalty Does it deter? Of course it does. Is that the best argument?
September 21, 2000	•	“Private” Crimes Once upon a time, Bill Clinton was unimaginable.
September 19, 2000	•	Staying in the Muddle Pragmatists with conservative leanings
September 14, 2000	•	Untold Stories Shaping racial attitudes
September 12, 2000	•	Blurring the Differences Which of the Democrats’ premises does George W. Bush vigorously reject?
September 7, 2000	•	Do We Need the First Amendment? Why don’t liberals worry about violations of the Tenth Amendment?
September 5, 2000	•	The Stopping Point It’s fraudulent to demand less freedom while accusing those who want more freedom of being hard-hearted.
August 31, 2000	•	Scouting and Sodomy “Civil rights” trumps religious, moral, and other personal reservations.
August 29, 2000	•	The Sin of Joe Lieberman It’s natural to suspect hypocrisy in religious gestures that are made for show.
August 24, 2000	•	Abortion and the English Language Dishonest people instinctively prefer the abstract to the concrete.
August 22, 2000	•	Getting Personal Politics is about power, not “feelings.”
August 17, 2000	•	The Man from Nowhere Why Gore fights dirty
August 15, 2000	•	Gore’s Unwanted Friends Pornography and liberals — natural allies
August 10, 2000	•	Joe Lieberman’s Dual Orthodoxies Did Lieberman’s conscience cause him to favor legal abortion when there was a moral consensus against it?
August 8, 2000	•	Blessings in Disguise Alec Guinness — master of the invisible gesture
August 3, 2000	•	Did Lincoln Free the Slaves? Even Lincoln knew he couldn’t just simply pick up a pen and do away with slavery.
August 1, 2000	•	Our Slickest President The luster of duplicity
July 27, 2000	•	Making Sense of Shakespeare Only in the Sonnets does the Bard seem to speak candidly about his own life and intimate feelings.
July 25, 2000	•	History’s Yes-Man Even a murderer who’s clearly guilty has rights; the unborn do not.
July 20, 2000	•	Home-Run Inflation How the balance of nature in baseball has been upset
July 18, 2000	•	Hillary’s Manners Yet another transgression is normalized.
July 13, 2000	•	Wanted: A Juvenal Gays promote tolerance by demanding it for themselves, not by extending it to others.
July 11, 2000	•	Government and Greed At what point are taxes so high that they create what amounts to “involuntary servitude”?
July 6, 2000	•	Crossing Bloodlines How did this democracy get so many dynasties?
July 4, 2000	•	Let’s Debate “Basics” The crucial events in our elections are often battles in which the voters have little to say.
June 29, 2000	•	Prejudice and Precedent You are prejudiced if you don’t share Justice Stevens’s prejudice — a fine specimen of liberal reasoning.
June 27, 2000	•	Structures of Deceit Apparently, unraveling the Supreme Court’s errors is more trouble than it’s worth.
June 22, 2000	•	Dr. Johnson, Radical The technology of print signaled the end of patronage.
June 20, 2000	•	It’s Power, Not Prayer The Supreme Court, too, usurps power.
June 15, 2000	•	Day of the Yoot The prevailing ethnic prudery made the racial angle unmentionable in the respectable media.
June 13, 2000	•	The Prophetic C.S. Lewis Sheer will, even God’s will, cannot be the ultimate source of right and wrong.
June 8, 2000	•	Playing Monopoly Who will break up the federal government’s monopoly?
June 6, 2000	•	Rape, Slavery, Booze, and Interstate Commerce Nobody suspected that “interstate commerce” meant what today’s liberals insist it means.
June 1, 2000	•	The Real Al Gore Growing up, his chief contact with ordinary people occurred when he called room service.
May 30, 2000	•	You’ll Never Know All rulers keep secrets; most lie to the public; many commit crimes.
May 25, 2000	•	Hate Crimes and Love Crimes What if Juanita Broaddrick had had a derringer?
May 23, 2000	•	The Rivals John Gielgud was the Bard’s humble servant.
May 18, 2000	•	The Church of Silence Like the martyrs of Roman persecutions, the martyrs of the twentieth century not only died willingly, but often died forgiving and blessing their killers, in the very spirit of Christ.
May 16, 2000	•	Rudy in Ruins How Rudy Giuliani made Bob Dole look good
May 11, 2000	•	Can Dr. Laura Be Tolerated? The First Amendment in practice: Homosexuals may defile churches and insult a cardinal with obscenities, but the mildest disapproval of sodomy itself must be crushed.
May 9, 2000	•	Clinton the Savior Despite everything, Clinton continues to talk to us as if he were our national pastor. But finally, we saw his brazenness crack. Just a little.
May 4, 2000	•	Courage and Fashion I write what I write in the hope that I shall never have to be brave.
May 2, 2000	•	Changing the Story The real Holocaust revisionists are the writers who can’t settle on their story.
April 27, 2000	•	Why Fear Castro? Clinton doesn’t fawn over Castro the way Roosevelt fawned over Stalin, but his deference is still rather strange.
April 25, 2000	•	The Weirdest Sister The Elián uproar has witnessed a sort of reunion of the Hive. Just what do they want?
April 20, 2000	•	Subsidized Consensus The courtier intellectuals want to silence dissent. What do they have to lose? Plenty.
April 18, 2000	•	The “Dangerous” David Irving Though plenty of scholars espouse eccentric views on all sorts of subjects, apparently the world cannot affort to tolerate even one man like David Irving.
April 13, 2000	•	Happy Birthday, “Shakespeare”! Some coincidences to explain away on the Bard’s 450th birthday
April 11, 2000	•	The Critics of Christ We would be much worse without Christianity, but we wouldn’t know it.
April 6, 2000	•	Reagan v. Clinton Communism is a system that has to lock people in.
April 4, 2000	•	Fidel’s American Friends “If Castro wants you dead, you are dead.”
March 30, 2000	•	The Clinton Rap Sheet Clinton has compiled the longest rap sheet in our nation’s history.
March 28, 2000	•	Smearing a Pope Singling out specific ethnic groups — for good or ill — was, it used to be felt, the Nazis’ game.
March 23, 2000	•	Pat Buchanan: The Next John McCain? How and the why the press might help Pat Buchanan
March 21, 2000	•	Punishing “Hate” Hate — where to find the real article
March 16, 2000	•	In Defense of Bob Jones Liberals don’t know what to do with an apology when they get one.
March 14, 2000	•	The Papal “Apology” Liberal conclusions from Catholic premises
March 9, 2000	•	Plugging Myself Why I would be a good king
March 7, 2000	•	The Meaning of McCain Why I hoped McCain would win
March 2, 2000	•	Lesser Evils The case for voting for a third party
February 29, 2000	•	Who Are the Snobs?The abysmal intellectual standards that prevail in academic Shakespeare studies
February 24, 2000	•	Honoring the True Bard Evidence from Sir Thomas More that “Shakespeare” was the Earl of Oxford
February 22, 2000	•	The Romance of Dr. Crippen A love story — with a headless corpse
February 17, 2000	•	John McCain and the Autonomous State He’s not a conservative; what is he?
February 15, 2000	•	Hillary! and Humanity The Hillary! campaign is off to a rocky start.
February 10, 2000	•	The Führer Furor Defying the normal laws of causality
February 8, 2000	•	The Real Churchill “A man of blood and a politico without principle”
February 3, 2000	•	The Culture of Tyranny John Rocker and the prevailing thought-crime code
February 1, 2000	•	The Courtier Who Would Be King Al Gore has never changed his mind.
January 27, 2000	•	A Large Whiskey Bill Clinton’s addiction
January 25, 2000	•	Advancing toward Savagery How are inhibitions broken down?
January 20, 2000	•	Musidorus the Cannibal But nothing like this could ever really happen, right?
January 18, 2000	•	What About Elián? The Fugitive Slave Act still has its defenders.
January 13, 2000	•	The Rules of the Game It’s up to the individual to avoid even incurring suspicion.
January 11, 2000	•	The Nickname Game There’s no telling what phrase will join the long roster of “offensive” epithets next.
January 6, 2000	•	Heritage of Savagery Manichaean habits of thought
January 4, 2000	•	The End of a Mad Century The twentieth century was marked by its smug belief in its superiority to all earlier ages.
December 30, 1999	•	Lies, As Usual
December 28, 1999	•	The Other Einstein
December 23, 1999	•	Rocker Rocks New York
December 21, 1999	•	Murder Most Patriotic
December 16, 1999	•	Clinton’s “Mistake”
December 14, 1999	•	Authentic John
December 9, 1999	•	A Century of Psychobabble
December 7, 1999	•	Pearl Harbor Revisited
December 2, 1999	•	The Man They Still Hate
November 30, 1999	•	The History of Victimhood
November 25, 1999	•	Giving Away the Game
November 23, 1999	•	The “General Welfare”
November 18, 1999	•	The Bible and the Schools
November 16, 1999	•	Hillsdale: The Moral
November 11, 1999	•	Tragedy in Paradise
November 9, 1999	•	In Defense of Microsoft
November 4, 1999	•	“Arbiters” of Abortion
November 2, 1999	•	Forbidden Unless Authorized
October 28, 1999	•	Score One for Jesse
October 26, 1999	•	Smearing Buchanan
October 21, 1999	•	The State v. Christian Culture
October 19, 1999	•	Altering the Constitution
October 14, 1999	•	We the Victors
October 12, 1999	•	The Case for Big, Big Government
October 7, 1999	•	The Reagan Cult
October 5, 1999	•	One-Party Democracy
September 30, 1999	•	The Right to Secede
September 28, 1999	•	Christianity and History
September 23, 1999	•	Anti-Hitler Hysteria
September 21, 1999	•	One-Party Journalism
September 16, 1999	•	The Anti-Buchanan Brigade
September 14, 1999	•	Hitler’s Pope?
September 9, 1999	•	The Fallacy of “Change”
March 18, 1999	•	Who Done Shakespeare?

Column Archives, 2000 and 1999