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Ron Capshaw Subscribe

Historian Ron Capshaw is a writer in Midlothian, Virginia.

January 30, 2018|anticommunism, Arthur Schlesinger, John F. Kennedy, Richard Aldous, The Imperial Historian

Schlesinger, Warts and All

by Ron Capshaw|

The relationship of the President and his aide was one of frustration on Schlesinger’s side and irritation on Kennedy’s.

November 8, 2017|anti-Americanism, Christopher Hitchens, communism, D. Keith Mano, Socialist Anti-Communists, Susan Sontag

When Susan Sontag Told the Truth about Communism

by Ron Capshaw|

Susan Sontag 1979

It would be hard to exaggerate the Left’s evasiveness, before the fall of the Soviet Union, about the evils of communism. In this centenary year of the Bolshevik Revolution, there are other anniversaries we could note. One is that, 35 years ago, Susan Sontag shocked and dismayed her fellow leftists with her famous declaration that “Communism is in itself a variant, the most successful variant, of fascism. Fascism with a human face.”

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September 15, 2017|Censorship, Hays Code, Hollywood vs. America, Michael Medved, Patriotism, Pauline Kael

The Book that Nailed Hollywood

by Ron Capshaw|

It was 25 years ago that HarperCollins published what is today considered something of a conservative classic, Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values. The irony is that the book was written by a liberal who avoided being drafted to serve in the Vietnam war.

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June 19, 2017|George Orwell, Michael G. Brennan, Orwell on Religion, Spanish Civil War

Orwell’s Blind Spot

by Ron Capshaw|

During the torture session in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith, mere minutes away from the horrors of Room 101, states through cracked lips that Big Brother can’t last. Telling the Inner Party Member O’Brien that he doesn’t believe in God, Smith also expresses a metaphysical faith that the regime would collapse: I know  that you will fail.  There is something in the universe—I don’t know, some spirit, some principle—that you will never overcome. Smith named this “something “the “Spirit of Man.” Such a moment flies in the face of George Orwell’s reputation as a rock-solid empiricist. That his creation, Winston Smith, would rely on gut feelings over fact, about…

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August 2, 2016|Libertarianism, Senator Robert Taft, Taft-Hartley Act of 1947

A Profile in Courage

by Ron Capshaw|

Sen. Robert A. Taft

When National Review debuted in 1955, the liberal columnist Dwight MacDonald lamented that the thrust of the new magazine was not conservative. In MacDonald’s lexicon, a true conservative was one who “sticks to his principles even when the results go against his prejudices,” for conservatives do not “appeal to the hearts of men” but to the “laws and traditions of a country.”

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July 22, 2016|Bull Connor, Dinesh D'Souza, Espionage Act of 1917, Hillary's America, Michael Moore, Saul Alinsky

Fishing for an Indictment

by Ron Capshaw|

Reviewing the 2004 movie Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore’s cinematic attack on George W. Bush and the War on Terror, the late Christopher Hitchens found that its message was all over the place. The movie supposedly revealed the unsavory true motive of the U.S.-led coalition’s invasion of Afghanistan: that the Americans wanted to establish an oil pipeline connecting Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean. It also aired the complaint that not enough troops were sent for the mission to succeed. The only thing unifying its not-very-compatible criticisms was the filmmaker’s disdain for Bush’s politics and his personality.

Dinesh D’Souza’s new movie, Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, is the Rightwing version of this—a jazzy documentary that throws everything at its target but the kitchen sink. It has two agendas, both of which need work and frequently miss golden opportunities; and they don’t link up logically.

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July 6, 2016|Bernie Sanders, Christopher Hitchens, Eugene V. Debs, George Orwell, Gun Control, Martin Luther King Jr., Second Amendment

A Brief History of Socialist Support for Gun Rights

by Ron Capshaw|

Flags of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are carried through the crowd during the New York City Women's March, January 20, 2018 (Erin Alexis Randolph/Shutterstock.com)
Amidst the gun debate, we shouldn't forget that socialists feared that a weaponless working class would usher in a dictatorship by capitalists.

May 20, 2016|Hedda Hopper, HUAC, John Wayne, Morrie Ryskind, Political Correctness, Vietnam War

The Real Wayne

by Ron Capshaw|

(Photo by CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images)

On a movie set many years ago, actress Geraldine Page found herself seated between actor Ward Bond, an enforcer of the blacklist of communists then raging in Hollywood, and his friend, the conservative actor John Wayne. Page was only accustomed to being around her fellow show business liberals, so she listened to the two men’s conservative views with a sense of “horror.” But as the conversation went on, she developed a marginally more favorable view of Wayne, whom she called a “reactionary for all sorts of non-reactionary reasons.”

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April 28, 2016|communism, Josef Stalin, Joshua Rubenstein, Lavrenty Beria, The Last Days of Stalin

Last Paroxysm of the Tyrant

by Ron Capshaw|

In Martin Amis’ underrated study of Josef Stalin, he asserted that Stalin’s much larger body count than Hitler’s was based on weapons the Nazi dictator did not have. Chief among these was that Stalin lived longer.

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March 31, 2016|Abraham Lincoln Brigade, communism, Delmer Berg, Ernest Hemingway, Fascism, George Orwell, John McCain, Spanish Civil War, William Herrick

For Whom the Myth Tolls

by Ron Capshaw|

In a New York Times op-ed a week ago, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) lauded the recently deceased Delmer Berg and other Americans who volunteered to fight on the Loyalist side during the Spanish Civil War, which began 80 years ago. Berg was thought to be the last living veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a unit of American volunteers who fought in that storied but oft-mischaracterized conflict that took place from 1936 to 1939.

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Book Reviews

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

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The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

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Liberty Classics

Rereading Politica in the Post-Liberal Moment

by Glenn A. Moots

Althusius offers a rich constitutionalism that empowers persons to thrive alongside one another in deliberate communities.

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James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

In The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper defended democracy against both mob rule and majority tyranny.

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Podcasts

Stuck With Decadence

A discussion with Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat discusses with Richard Reinsch his new book The Decadent Society.

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Can the Postmodern Natural Law Remedy Our Failing Humanism?

A discussion with Graham McAleer

Graham McAleer discusses how postmodern natural law can help us think more coherently about human beings and our actions.

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Did the Civil Rights Constitution Distort American Politics?

A discussion with Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell discusses his new book, The Age of Entitlement.

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America, Land of Deformed Institutions

A discussion with Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin pinpoints that American alienation and anger emerges from our weak political, social, and religious institutions.

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Recent Posts

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  • The Environmental Uncertainty Principle

    By engaging in such flagrant projection, the Times has highlighted once again the problem with groupthink in the climate discussion.
    by Paul Schwennesen

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