My father’s prophet was Karl Marx, who was himself descended from a long line of rabbis. Like my father, Marx disdained the religion of his ancestors, regarding them as the comforting myths of weak-minded men. But the icon he chose for his secular faith was a mythical figure all the same. His hero was Prometheus, [...]

To eliminate affirmative action, [Jesse Jackson has claimed], is to invite the “resegregation” of American life.
Yet consider these unruly facts:

In 1940, 87 percent of American blacks lived below the poverty line. By 1960, five yearsbefore the Civil Rights acts and 10 years before the first affirmative action policies, the figure was down to 47 percent. That [...]

The collapse of the Communist system, which brought the Cold War to an end, was a watershed event in the life of the international left. The catastrophe of Communism included the creation of a totalitarian state; the reintroduction of slave labor on an epic scale; politically induced famines and government-created poverty of unprecedented proportions; political [...]

A 6-year-old African-American boy shoots and kills a 6-year-old white girl in Michigan. The 6-year-old shooter has been suspended before for stabbing another child with a pencil. Police discover that he lives in a crack house with his uncle, a criminal with outstanding arrest warrants. The boy’s father is in jail. His mother is a [...]

It was also during the 2000 election that Soros made his most dramatic move yet to win support for the McCain-Feingold Act. He did this by sponsoring the so-called “Shadow Conventions.” Organized by author, columnist, socialite and political switcher Arianna Huffington, the Shadow Conventions were counter-cultural events that gave a spotlight to radical opponents of [...]

There are, of course, undeserving rich, just as there are deserving poor. But most people with money are busily producing more jobs and conveniences for others, and taking great risks to do it. That’s why the market rewards them as it does.
And that is why redistributing their wealth — i.e. socialism — is quite simply [...]

On a shelf in my living room is a rotogravure portrait featuring a spirited teenager in a 19th Century frock, brashly showing her skirt. This is my grandmother Rose who was still a young woman when I was born, and had a fatal stroke when I was in my twenties. Other than this photograph I [...]

Whatever happened to the triumph of conservatism?
…
The short answer is that there is confusion in the ranks. [Bill] Kristol and [David] Brooks identify three “tendencies” in the current conservative mix: anti-government, “leave us alone” sentiment; the family values movement, which wants to “re-moralize” society; and the federalists, who want to give power back to the [...]

One reason…historical facts have been obscured by the left is that the nostalgists don’t really want to take credit for electing Richard Nixon. As a matter of political discretion, they are also willing to let their greatest coup — the capture of the Democratic Party — go unmemorialized. Instead, they prefer to ascribe this remarkable [...]