Sobran Columns -- Archive, 2003

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December 30, 2003	•	The Mahdi’s Revenge The foreign policy of “Chinese” Gordon
December 25, 2003	•	Osama, Where Art Thou? What are all these multicolored alerts for? Holiday decorations?
December 23, 2003	•	A Commie Christmas Gift “Public property” doesn’t really belong to you, and “public servants” don’t really work for you.
December 18, 2003	•	Scenario for a Comeback Why did he gravitate to public service in the first place?
December 16, 2003	•	Triumph! We don’t know who’s going to try him and we don’t know what the charges will be. All we know is the verdict: guilty.
December 11, 2003	•	Israel and Rape Let’s keep Satan out of it, shall we?
December 9, 2003	•	The War We Are In Does either of these religions sound like something Christians need to get involved in?
December 4, 2003	•	The Former Confederacy A short corrective to American history
December 2, 2003	•	The Comic Critic Hugh Kenner changed the way I see the world.
November 27, 2003	•	“Attacking” President Bush Power has its magic.
November 25, 2003	•	Master of the Quiet Style The man who died on November 22, 1963
November 20, 2003	•	The Era of Bad Feelings Once you are committed to nonsense, there is no end to it.
November 18, 2003	•	The Neanderthal Creed In most of the great struggles of the past, the issue was decided by power and, sometimes, sheer chance.
November 13, 2003	•	The Age of Rage Reversing Tolstoy
November 11, 2003	•	National Service The popularity among liberals of proposals for national service is yet another reminder that the connection between liberalism and liberty is strictly an etymological curiosity.
November 6, 2003	•	Trust the Professionals Putting up with a lot of lying nonsense
November 4, 2003	•	The Spirit of Sacrifice Your patriotic duty to grab a rifle and hand it to someone else
October 30, 2003	•	Implied or Usurped? Why you don’t hear the word usurpation in Congress
October 28, 2003	•	Lansky’s Complaint Why talk about Israel’s deeds, when you can talk about its critics’ motives?
October 23, 2003	•	Airbrushing History? Returning a prize you didn’t earn honestly is not Soviet-style revisionism.
October 21, 2003	•	Clarifying Premises You can’t expect people to reach your conclusion from their own, very different premises.
October 16, 2003	•	“Compassion” and Talk Radio What would happen to talk radio if Rush Limbaugh were a liberal?
October 14, 2003	•	Limbaugh the Lawbreaker Conflating things that are essentially unrelated
October 9, 2003	•	The Sanity Gap There is simply no reason to go on living this way.
October 7, 2003	•	Partners in Paranoia Why do Jews keep migrating to anti-Semitic countries?
October 2, 2003	•	Looking Back at Reagan Strange, the way some men can make you want to believe in them.
September 30, 2003	•	A New Constitution — Coming Up! Self-government usually occurs when there are no foreigners specifying how it’s to be done.
September 25, 2003	•	Nutty Patriotism It’s only the truth that really hurts.
September 23, 2003	•	The Night I Met Gwyneth Paltrow You never know what’s going to happen next. How’s that for a profound insight?
September 18, 2003	•	Lowly Origins It’s time this country elected a president who has better things to do than go around eliminating poverty, ending injustice, and stuff.
September 16, 2003	•	A King in Close-up Not much of a tyrant, by modern standards
September 11, 2003	•	Free and Independent Not anymore
September 9, 2003	•	Victory in 2004! Our ancestors didn’t know how good they had it.
September 4, 2003	•	Bad News from Iraq Regime change, war on terrorism, the Axis of Evil, weapons of mass destruction — it all seems sooooo 2002 now.
September 2, 2003	•	Unfair, Unbalanced, and Very, Very Funny Maybe you have to be a Christian to see how funny sex is.
August 28, 2003	•	He Had a Dream I found it embarrassing then; I still do.
August 26, 2003	•	The Living Dollar Funny money is no laughing matter.
August 21, 2003	•	Abe’s Pig The key to the life of Lincoln?
August 19, 2003	•	Quagmire in the Sun Iraqi rifles and explosives could never threaten Americans at home.
August 14, 2003	•	The New Rules of Usage Dealing with the forces of Organized Touchiness
August 12, 2003	•	Can Arnold Make the Difference? It’s not too early to start the Recall Arnold movement.
August 7, 2003	•	No Respect Movie heroes never have to deal with things like overdue bills and embarrassing relatives.
August 5, 2003	•	Is the Pope Square? What is the point of “same-sex marriage”?
July 31, 2003	•	Bush, Sodomy, and Marriage The practical reason for marriage is pretty earthy.
July 29, 2003	•	A Gay Man’s Manifesto Gay people have no relish for persecuting homosexuals.
July 24, 2003	•	The Meaning of Brotherhood If I win the presidency, I don’t want my victory to be under the shadow of a suspicion that I owed it to my relatives.
July 22, 2003	•	The Boys on the Train George Bush is continuing the service of Bill Clinton of undermining the overblown prestige of the presidency.
July 17, 2003	•	Dueling Teleocrats They’re all teleocrats now.
July 15, 2003	•	Power and Trust The difference between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush
July 10, 2003	•	The Dust Settles The whole rationale for the Iraq war already sounds quaint.
July 8, 2003	•	The Kennedy Sex Scandals New Kennedy scandals keep happening at a pace that defies cataloguing, even as old ones come to light.
July 3, 2003	•	The Three Stooges Preserving the justices’ cover
July 1, 2003	•	The Court Can Do No Wrong The remedy is not a Constitutional amendment; it’s impeachment.
June 26, 2003	•	The Court versus Federalism You don’t achieve diversity by gathering mediocre people with the sort of superficial differences that interest liberals.
June 24, 2003	•	Celebrating Diveristy Why is “diversity” even an interesting goal?
June 19, 2003	•	Attacking the Rich They’re not the real target.
June 17, 2003	•	Did Bush Lie? “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”
June 12, 2003	•	A Farewell to Peck Gregory Peck was one of the last relics of the old Hollywood star system.
June 10, 2003	•	Hillary’s Abiding Commitment Relax and savor the comedy of it all.
June 5, 2003	•	Lawyer and President The most fateful speech in American history
June 3, 2003	•	Now They Tell Us So it had nothing to do with American defense and national security after all.
May 29, 2003	•	Justifying War War has become an American habit, a sort of tradition.
May 27, 2003	•	A Wonderful Man A movie doesn’t have to have horses to be good.
May 22, 2003	•	Jayson Blair and the American Dream Nobody thanks a liberal.
May 20, 2003	•	Titus and Lucrece Another indication that the scholars have gotten “Shakespeare” all wrong
May 15, 2003	•	Patriotism, Mom, and the Bums Lately, too many Americans are just talking like bullies.
May 13, 2003	•	The One and Only Roosevelt’s legacy: lasting problems that can never be solved
May 8, 2003	•	Conservatism as Exorcism The conservative movement has lost its mind.
May 6, 2003	•	War and Dramaturgy What the war in Iraq was really about
May 1, 2003	•	Olivier and His Successors There are versions that make Olivier’s seem a little old-fashioned, but they have none of his genius for making a line of Shakespeare sound like a trumpet blast.
April 29, 2003	•	What Young People Don’t Know They’ve been given the wrong answers without realizing that there were ever questions.
April 24, 2003	•	The Unmaking of Conservatism What are the key tenets?
April 22, 2003	•	Bush, Religion, and War When a Christian is praised for “success” in the Wall Street Journal, it may be time for him to take a good look at himself.
April 17, 2003	•	Shakespeare’s Social Life Oxford seems to have known everybody the Stratford man didn’t but should have.
April 15, 2003	•	Voluntary Slavery What we are really seeing is total submission to the state masquerading as patriotism.
April 10, 2003	•	The Right Feelings Moral questions are not about the Right Feelings.
April 8, 2003	•	Minimizing Civilian Casualties When you wage a “war of choice,” this is what you choose.
April 3, 2003	•	Telling the Story According to the hawks, frank reporting, if it contradicts official optimism, amounts to treason.
April 1, 2003	•	The Media War Most of the world watched the war through other lenses.
March 27, 2003	•	Benign Bombers The time for national self-congratulation is long gone.
March 25, 2003	•	The Neocons’ World War We know the sort of things they’re saying in public; what are they saying amongst themselves?
March 20, 2003	•	The Catholic Hawks Now abortion is permissible in cases of rape, incest, and the need to topple Arab dictators.
March 18, 2003	•	Saddam bin Laden I wonder why people on the winning side bother with me.
March 13, 2003	•	What Would Jesus Do? What if President Bush were influenced by the Prince of Peace?
March 11, 2003	•	Wilson, Bush, and History History is like a kaleidoscope: shake it and you get an unpredictable pattern.
March 6, 2003	•	Obsessions about Israel When you are obsessed with a subject, you lose all sense of proportion about it.
March 4, 2003	•	Phantom Enemies Millions of Americans believe that their enemies are omnipotent.
February 27, 2003	•	So Many Hitlers Making all sense of measure disappear
February 25, 2003	•	The Big Peacenik Big men, when it comes to making fun of the French! Let’s hear them make fun of a Pole!
February 20, 2003	•	Whacking Our Allies Just try to imagine any of our brave pundits speaking of Israel the way they speak of France. The very idea is laughable.
February 18, 2003	•	In Defense of Dual Loyalty Let’s all declare our interests.
February 13, 2003	•	The Right Hands What evidence is there that America’s hands weren’t the wrong hands?
February 11, 2003	•	France and the Bush Doctrine The French may not have much of an empire left, but they refuse to be an American colony.
February 6, 2003	•	What Happened to the War on Terrorism? This war requires some slippery semantics and a lot of propaganda — which is mostly sheer repetition of nonsense until resistance is worn down, and logic surrenders.
February 4, 2003	•	Mourning in America Can we stop the fake mourning now?
January 30, 2003	•	Tracing the Box-Cutters Why not high-tech weapons?
January 28, 2003	•	The School of Experience Americans saved the freedom of Europeans and now they insist on acting like free countries. The nerve!
January 23, 2003	•	The Missing Word If abortion is a “right,” it’s an oddly sneaking and shameful sort of right.
January 21, 2003	•	King and His Times Past the peak of his influence, his leadership waning, his following dwindling, by 1968 King had become a rather quaint figure.
January 16, 2003	•	White Supremacism, Liberal-Style The Democrats want to retain affirmative action — just a “temporary” measure, you understand — except it has no expiration date.
January 14, 2003	•	Loose Lips In wartime, the loosest lips are those of people trying to be patriotic. Thus does war unhinge even sensible people.
January 9, 2003	•	History and Miss Couric Pieties to become the “lessons of history”
January 7, 2003	•	“The Economy” and the Taxpayer In principle, all our earnings seem to belong to the government.
January 2, 2003	•	The Sobran Administration Elect me, and you’ll at least get a president who knows his limitations.

Column Archives, 2003