From Under the Rubble
From Under the Rubble…What Would Republicans Do?
During the Reagan years, a story circulated about a meeting between Henry Kissinger and a newly-appointed Assistant Secretary of State. “I have finally met a man more arrogant than I,” Kissinger later told his friends. Mr. Kissinger had not yet met Barack Obama. It’s sad but true that Obama’s colossal ineptitude offers an easy target…
From Under the Rubble…Is Education A Social Issue?
Dr. Richard Bishirjian serves as president of Yorktown University, an outstanding online graduate school. An advocate of innovative education for years, he recently shed light on a long-standing mystery: why don’t “conservatives” in Congress have more success in fighting the government education monolith? Bishirjian tells the Rubble that, “in 2006 and later in 2009, when…
From Under the Rubble…Race Hustlers Target Paul Ryan
It’s an election year, and liberal pundits complain of listlessness, confusion, cowardice and more in their ranks. Not to worry, says Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer. He tells Meet the Press that the party will do fine this November – if Democrats turn out. But how to make sure they do, when their midterm turnout is…
From Under the Rubble…Spring Cleaning
From the fog of a long, hard winter, questions come stumbling out of the cold. First: does the U.S. really support democracy? Take Ukraine. For a decade and more, the United States has advocated – and even agitated – for democratic elections there. And yet, as so often occurs when the Goddess of Democracy winks,…
From Under the Rubble…The Leviathan Goes Rogue
On the Sunday morning shows last week, Secretary of State John Kerry denounced Russia’s “invasion” of Ukraine as a “brazen act of aggression.” Whatever that says about the Ukraine, Kerry’s highly-charged prose could equally describe the federal government’s manifest invasions of privacy here at home, its “brazen acts of aggression” against personal liberty, and its…
From Under the Rubble…The Prophet, the President, and the Pope
A critique of the president by a well-known jurist appeared recently in the American Spectator: A man whose self-absorption is legendary, if not pathological… If the head of the most corrupt and malign administration in our history is suffered to remain in office, however crippled, it will be a clear sign that we have turned…
From Under the Rubble…Whistling Past the Graveyard of Empires
“1, 2, 3, 4, what’re we fightin’ for?” Old antiwar song. Afghanistan is an old war. Does anyone remember why we’re there? Hamid Karzai knows: we’re there to make him rich, powerful, and – oh yes, we forgot: the leader of a robust, American-imposed Afghan democracy. Are we there yet? Well, it’s a long, hard…
From Under the Rubble…Landmines in the Path of Dialogue
On August 20, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI insisted in Cologne that “Interreligious and intercultural dialogue between Christians and Muslims … is, in fact, a vital necessity, on which in large measure our future depends.” But is such a conversation possible? That question is the focus of an important new monograph, The Prospects and Perils of…
From Under the Rubble…Il Papa’s Not a Rollin’ Stone
Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office, has called Rolling Stone’s recent cover story on Pope Francis superficial, negative, and crude. That’s a good start. “The Times They Are A-Changin’, the title preens. And all change is “progress,” right? As we all know from the history of the past 100 years or…
From Under the Rubble…Lessons in Tyrrany
In January 2009, two newly-elected Republican governors took the oath of office. Immediately, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell were touted as two of the GOP’s hottest future presidential prospects. Today, they are fallen idols. The feds are investigating Christie. McDonnell and his wife have actually been indicted on federal charges…
