2017 Columns

Give Me that Old-Time Unitarianism
by Joe Sobran
December 25
, 2017

Nativity, Costa The Wanderer, 11/28/1996 -- Have you noticed? Our Lord has made the cover of The Atlantic Monthly, in an excerpt from a book by Charlotte Allen. The article concerns the theories of contemporary theologians about the “Q” gospel, the supposed source of the Synoptic Gospels.

The book, I gather, will show how the vain quest for the “historical” Jesus keeps producing a series of stripped-down images of an ahistorical Jesus whose actual teachings conform suspiciously to the political attitudes of modern liberals. The “Jesus Seminar”, for instance, consistently deems inauthentic those Gospel passages that make supernatural and messianic claims.

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Resisting Jesus
by Joe Sobran
December 15
, 2017

Joseph and Mary Griffin Internet Syndicate, December 23, 2004 -- As always in our time, Christmas is provoking dissent from people who don’t want Christian symbols on public property or Christmas carols sung in public schools.

Many Christians find this annoying and churlish. Some even feel that Christianity is being persecuted.

The columnist Michelle Malkin writes, “We are under attack by Secularist Grinches Gone Wild.” Pat Buchanan goes so far as to speak of “hate crimes” against Christians.

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Why Roy Moore Matters
by Patrick J. Buchanan
December 1
, 2017

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Why would Christian conservatives in good conscience go to the polls Dec. 12 and vote for Judge Roy Moore, despite the charges of sexual misconduct with teenagers leveled against him?

Answer: That Alabama Senate race could determine whether Roe v. Wade is overturned. The lives of millions of unborn may be the stakes.

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The 10 Commandments Judge: Roy Moore
by Patrick J. Buchanan
November 10
, 2017

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When elected chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2000, Judge Roy Moore installed in his courthouse a monument with the Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai carved into it.

Told by a federal court his monument violated the separation of church and state, Moore refused to remove it and was suspended — to become famous as "The Ten Commandments Judge."

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Not Your Average Joe
by Ann Coulter
September 30
, 2017

Ann Coulter Human Events, October 6, 2010 -- My friend Joe Sobran died last Thursday, and the world lost its greatest writer.

To my delight, some obituaries noted that he had influenced my writing style. I only wish I had known he was so close to the end so I could have seen him again to let him influence me some more.

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The Cross and the Swastika
by Joe Sobran
September 14
, 2017

Joe Sobran Griffin Internet Syndicate, February 2, 2002 – When the Communist Party seized control of Russia more than 80 years ago, it tried to eliminate two things: Christianity and “anti-Semitism.”

Tens of thousands of priests and bishops were murdered, ancient churches were razed to the ground, believers were forced to worship secretly, and atheism was taught to children in the state schools. Though “anti-Semitism” was never precisely defined — like many key terms in the Soviet vocabulary — whatever it was,it became a capital crime.

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Disintegrating America
by Patrick J. Buchanan
September 8
, 2017

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Decades ago, a debate over what kind of nation America is roiled the conservative movement.

Neocons claimed America was an "ideological nation" a "creedal nation," dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal."

Expropriating the biblical mandate, "Go forth and teach all nations!" they divinized democracy and made the conversion of mankind to the democratic faith their mission here on earth.

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Dianne “Ms. Snowflake” Feinstein
by Robert L. Hale
September 1
, 2017

Minot, ND – Some lawmakers in our nation’s capital have a difficult time understanding the concept of the rule of law.

The United States of America was created on the foundation of rule of law, not of men. The law should always trump the wishes of special interests, personal ambition, aristocracy, and elite socialist fantasies.

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Where Have All the Statesmen Gone?
by Robert L. Hale
August 25
, 2017

Minot, North Dakota – Recently violence erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia. Following that violence our political leaders committed violence upon reason, logic, and civil and rational discourse. Rather than address the violence they attacked the President. Rather than bring calm and bring the two sides together, they actively and aggressively did the opposite.

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Erasing Our History
by Patrick J. Buchanan
August 17
, 2017

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When the Dodge Charger of 20-year-old Nazi sympathizer James Alex Fields Jr., plunged into that crowd of protesters Saturday, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, Fields put Charlottesville on the map of modernity alongside Ferguson. Before Fields ran down the protesters, and then backed up, running down more, what was happening seemed but a bloody brawl between extremists on both sides of the issue of whether Robert E. Lee's statue should be removed from Emancipation Park, formerly Lee Park.

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Is the Pope Square?
by Joe Sobran
August 11
, 2017

Joe Sobran Griffin Internet Syndicate, August 5, 2003 – Speaking as a Catholic, I wish the Vatican would say nothing about same-sex “marriage.” It’s beneath its dignity to enter into debate with a sick joke, and when it does so it only allows progressive-minded fools to change the subject.

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Violent Religions
by Joe Sobran
August 4
, 2017

Joe Sobran Griffin Internet Syndicate, October 6, 2006 – In the modern West, Islam is thought of as a violent religion, and I’ve done my part, along with some fanatical (but not necessarily typical) Muslims, to reinforce this view. It’s fatally easy to mistake the nuts for the norm. But I think there may be a better way to look at the situation.

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Humanae Vitae Foresaw the Culture of Death in 1968
by Christopher Manion
July 27
, 2017

FRONT ROYAL, VA -- This week we celebrate the 49th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, the brave and beautiful encyclical of Blessed Paul VI promulgated on July 25, 1968.

Brave? Absolutely. This eloquent articulation of the teaching of the Church and the fundamentals of the Natural Law constituted a direct challenge to what Pope Benedict has called “the spirit of the age.”

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My Cane
by Joe Sobran
July 20
, 2017

Joe Sobran Griffin Internet Syndicate, May 15, 2007 – Two years ago, after foot surgery, I started walking with a cane. The ankle has healed, but I’ve kept the cane. I like it. It helps my balance, it’s funny, and it strengthens my faith.

In this allegedly Darwinian world, where life is a ruthless competition for survival, my cane is magic. It causes young people, fitter than I am for physical existence, to call me “sir” and hold doors and show me a respect I’ve never enjoyed before. Nobody ever told me a stick of wood could exert such spiritual power. I think I’ll keep it.

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Belloc’s Prophecy
by Joe Sobran
July 14
, 2017

Hilaire Belloc
Hilaire Belloc
Griffin Internet Syndicate, October 25, 2001 – Back in the 1930s, when white men were preparing for another round of mutual slaughter, few of them paid any attention to the Muslim world. They assumed it to be a backward region that history had long since passed by.

One man saw it differently. The great Catholic polemicist Hilaire Belloc, an Englishman of French ancestry, remembered Islam’s past and predicted, in his book The Great Heresies, that it would one day challenge the West again.

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Are We Still One Nation Under God?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
July 06
, 2017

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In the first line of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson speaks of "one people." The Constitution, agreed upon by the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia in 1789, begins, "We the people..."

And who were these "people"?

In Federalist No. 2, John Jay writes of them as "one united people ... descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs..."

If such are the elements of nationhood and peoplehood, can we still speak of Americans as one nation and one people? READ MORE

Buzz Lightyear for President
by Joe Sobran
June 30
, 2017

Joe Sobran Griffin Internet Syndicate, January 27, 2004 – In 1960, when I was 14, I was nuts about JFK. The first one, John F. Kennedy, not the current one, John F. Kerry. I got about thirty JFK buttons from the local Democratic headquarters, pinned them all to my shirt, and wore them to school.

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A Long History of Leftist Hatred
by Patrick J. Buchanan
June 22
, 2017

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, who aspired to end his life as a mass murderer of Republican Congressmen, was a Donald Trump hater and a Bernie Sanders backer.

Like many before him, Hodgkinson was a malevolent man of the hating and hard left. READ MORE

Deep State Sabotaging Trump Agenda
by Patrick J. Buchanan
June 15
, 2017

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- President Trump may be chief of state, head of government and commander in chief, but his administration is shot through with disloyalists plotting to bring him down.

We are approaching something of a civil war where the capital city seeks the overthrow of the sovereign and its own restoration. READ MORE

Patriotism or Nationalism?
by Joe Sobran
June 8
, 2017

Joe Sobran Griffin Internet Syndiate,10/16/2001 -- This is a season of patriotism, but also of something that is easily mistaken for patriotism; namely, nationalism. The difference is vital.

G.K. Chesterton once observed that Rudyard Kipling, the great poet of British imperialism, suffered from a “lack of patriotism.” He explained: “He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English.”

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Dishonoring Confederate War Dead
by Patrick J. Buchanan
May 29
, 2017

Confederate General Stonewall Jackson surveys a battle scene WASHINGTON, D.C. -- On Sept. 1, 1864, Union forces under Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, victorious at Jonesborough, burned Atlanta and began the March to the Sea where Sherman's troops looted and pillaged farms and towns all along the 300-mile road to Savannah.

Captured in the Confederate defeat at Jonesborough was William Martin Buchanan of Okolona, Mississippi, who was transferred by rail to the Union POW stockade at Camp Douglas, Illinois.

By the standards of modernity, my great-grandfather, fighting to prevent the torching of Georgia's capital, was engaged in a criminal and immoral cause.

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Trump and Brexit: a Revolt Against the Elites
by Robert L. Hale
May 25
, 2017

MINOT, ND -- I sense a new and real revolution brewing. It is, in some ways, not unlike the American Revolution. America’s Revolution was pushed by the revulsion for arrogant King George III and his insistence that colonists give him their money (taxes) to impose his will on them, without their representation.

There is a reason that the current tension in the EU and America’s rejection of the left/progressivism is so threatening to the U.S. and EU power structures.

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Trump, Watergate, & Comey
by Patrick J. Buchanan
May 18
, 2017

Patrick J. Buchanan: Nixon's White House Wars WASHINGTON, D.C. -- History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, said Marx.

On publication day of my memoir of Richard Nixon's White House, President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Instantly, the media cried "Nixonian," comparing it to the 1973 Saturday Night Massacre.

Yet, the differences are stark. READ MORE

Christians Being Driven Out of the Holy Land
by Patrick J. Buchanan
May 12
, 2017

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?)" Those are among Jesus' last words on the Cross that first Good Friday. It was a cry of agony, but not despair. The dying Christ, to rise again in three days, was repeating the first words of the 22nd Psalm.

And today, in lands where Christ lived and taught and beyond where the Christian faith was born and nourished, the words echo. For it is in the birthplace of Christianity that Christians face the greatest of persecutions and martyrdoms since the time of Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin.

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Crime and Mercy
by Joe Sobran
May 3
, 2017

Joe Sobran CLASSIC, 6/24/2008 -- Reports of some criminals in the news media fill me with furtive delight and admiration: the clever embezzler who bilks a huge corporation, the gifted swindler who passes off his forgery as a Picasso. I can almost excuse a crime that requires talent or wit, as long as nobody gets seriously hurt. Part of me whispers enviously, "Why didn't I think of that?"

But now and then a reported crime will move me to murderous indignation.

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Guilt Trip Over the Crusades
by Sam Francis
April 26
, 2017

CLASSIC, 4/27/1999 -- One anniversary that’s not on this year’s calendar is the 900th observance of the capture of Jerusalem by Christian crusaders on July 15, 1099. As a matter of fact, it’s an anniversary that’s probably never been on any year’s calendar, since virtually everyone forgot about it sometime around the year 1600. But some never forget, and they’re getting ready to do what 20th century man is supposed to do, at least in the West: apologize for it.

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Christianity and History
by Joe Sobran
April 19
, 2017

CLASSIC, 9/28/1999 -- Ignorance is often hidden behind an urbane surface. Many otherwise educated people lack the most elementary understanding of certain subjects. One of these is religion.

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Thoughts on a New Dark Age: A review of the Sobran collection, Subtracting Christianity
by Jason Jewell
April 13
, 2017

Subtracting Christianity MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA – “On the whole, the secularist media the papacy” (210). This line, written in 2005 shortly after Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, is vintage Joe Sobran. It is not just extremely witty. In a few words, it communicates so much: the stability of Roman Catholic doctrine, the hatred of that doctrine by so many moderns, and those moderns’ reluctant acknowledgment that the church is not inclined to change in order to suit them.

Subtracting Christianity: Essays on American Culture and Society, where this line has most recently appeared, is the latest published collection of the essays of Joseph Sobran (1946–2010), one of the most dynamic and controversial journalists of the last generation. READ REST OF ARTICLE

Philippines’ President Wages A Real War on Drugs
by Robert L. Hale
March 30
, 2017

MINOT, ND – Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the U.N. Human Rights Council, and various international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are up in arms at the assault by Philippines president, Rodrigo Duterte, against drug dealers and criminals in his country. READ REST OF ARTICLE

Let's Make Russia Our Sister Country
by Ann Coulter
March 23
, 2017

Ann Coulter The more hysterical liberals become about Russia, the more your antennae should go up.

Their selective misgivings with Russia are just like their selective alarm with (our ally) Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the nationalist Chinese government, and (our ally) Ngo Dinh Diem, president of South Vietnam. READ REST OF ARTICLE

Violent Attack on Free Speech at Middlebury College
by Allan Brownfeld
March 16
, 2017

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA – Attacks on free speech, particularly on the nation's college and university campuses, seem to be mounting.

In early March, hundreds of students at Middlebury College in Vermont shouted down Charles Murray, the widely read and controversial social scientist.

When Dr. Murray rose to speak, he was shouted down by most of the more than 400 students who packed into the room. They chanted, “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Charles Murray, go away.” READ REST OF ARTICLE

Sober Wisdom in Sobran’s Subtracting Christianity
by Yvonne Lorenzo
March 7
, 2017

Joe Sobran Special from LewRockwell.com – Perhaps Fox TV viewers and readers of his bestselling books think that Bill O’Reilly is a Renaissance Man. However, there is a far more intelligent and profound voice we can all listen to that thanks to Lew Rockwell I discovered; that voice belongs to Joseph Sobran. READ MORE

Two Classic Sobran Articles: Pensées, and Lincoln and His Legacy

Publisher’s Note: To commemorate the 71st anniversary of Joe Sobran’s birth on February 23, we are pleased to provide a link to his classic essay, Pensées: Notes for the Reactionary of Tomorrow, and the below article.

Lincoln and His Legacy
by Joe Sobran
February 22
, 2017

Joe Sobran CLASSIC, 2/19/2008 -- At this point it is probably futile to try to reverse the deification of Abraham Lincoln. Next year, if I know my countrymen, the bicentennial of his birth will be marked by stupendously cloying anniversary observances, all of them affirming, if not his literal divinity, at least something mighty close to it. READ REST OF ARTICLE

Trump's Travel Ban
by Patrick J. Buchanan
February 3
, 2017

WASHINGTON, D.C. – That hysterical reaction to the travel ban announced Friday is a portent of what is to come if President Donald Trump carries out the mandate given to him by those who elected him.

The travel ban bars refugees for 120 days. From Syria, refugees are banned indefinitely. And a 90-day ban has been imposed on travel here from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen.

Was that weekend-long primal scream really justified? READ MORE

Trump's Inaugural: America for Americans!
by Patrick J. Buchanan
January 27
, 2017

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As the patriotic pageantry of Inauguration Day gave way to the demonstrations of defiance Saturday, our new America came into view. We are two nations now, two peoples.

Though bracing, President Trump's inaugural address was rooted in cold truths, as he dispensed with the customary idealism of inaugurals that are forgotten within a fortnight of the president being sworn in.

Trump's inaugural was Jacksonian. READ MORE

Sacraments and Sodomy
by Joe Sobran
January 18
, 2017

Joe Sobran SOBRAN'S, DECEMBER 2003 -- Andrew Sullivan has established himself as the most eloquent voice of “gay” Catholics in the American media. He recently wrote a piece on the op-ed page of the New York Times to bewail what he chooses to call the Church’s “hostility” to homosexuals.
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Love and Marriage
by Joe Sobran
January 12
, 2017

Joe Sobran CLASSIC from The Wanderer, December 19, 1996 We are hearing an unusual amount of nonsense about same-sex marriage these days, thanks to that Hawaiian judge. The best way to get to the heart of the problem may be to examine a typical sample of the nonsense.
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Black Economist Thomas Sowell -- Champion of A Color-Blind Society
by Allan Brownfeld
January 06
, 2017

Sowell Thomas Thomas Sowell, one of America's foremost public intellectuals and most outspoken black conservatives, submitted his final column in December after 25 years in syndication. At age 86, he said, he thought that the time had come to retire from this enterprise. Hopefully, his other literary pursuits will continue.

For more than 50 years, Sowell has published books and journals on race, economics, and government policy. READ REST OF ARTICLE

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