Breaking things and burning buildings is enjoying a vogue it hasn’t had since the late 1960s or early 1970s. Arson and looting are a perennial feature of urban unrest, but they have been pretty universally condemned for decades now — until the past week or so. Forced to choose between criticizing the George Floyd protests […]

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” — The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution Those words have […]

Riots have an interesting history. At the Boston Tea Party, patriots stood against tyranny of the British by destroying tea on American ships. July 14 — the French celebrate Bastille Day — a day citizens burned down a police station and prison. We celebrate May Day, May 1, which commemorates the 1894 labor riots in […]

Which of the following would you consider the most unusual and least likely to occur? 1) President Trump calls Speaker Nancy Pelosi to invite her to lunch. 2) Rioters and looters agree to pay for the damage they caused to businesses and individuals. 3) Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh appears on “The Breakfast Club,” […]

Sweden offered hope that the coronavirus could be reined in without great inconvenience or economic pain. Unlike its neighbors in Scandinavia and elsewhere, Sweden didn’t put its people in strict lockdown. Restaurants, bars and shops buzzed with their usual customers. Gyms stayed open, and kids under 16 went to school. Images of Swedes sunning themselves […]

Restoring order to America’s cities isn’t a complicated proposition. All it requires is resources and determination, and a firm rejection of the longstanding progressive fallacy that an overwhelming police presence is “provocative” and “escalatory” and must be avoided. As has been established across decades of civil disturbances, it is police passivity that emboldens mobs. When […]

That Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro remains in power is a testament to his military’s guns, secret police repression, torture of his pro-democracy opposition and the malign charity of four buddy dictatorships, Russia, Iran, Cuba and China. As late as January 2020, the month during which a Maduro ally hired fancy lobbyists to gull Congress […]

After George Floyd became the latest unarmed African American killed by police. After cars were overturned and cities were burned. After armies of angry people filled our streets with raw screams. After all that, a white man with an impressive title went on CNN to explain things. “I don’t think there is systemic racism,” opined […]

It was a night I shall never forget. The date was April 4, 1968. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis and I was flying home to Washington, D.C., from Atlanta. As the plane descended over National Airport, I could see flames. Part of the city of my birth and capital of […]