Sorry, Progressives, But America Isn't Intersectional By Michael Barone
America isn't intersectional. That's something the left-wingers who call themselves progressives have been learning, painfully, over the past 18 months.
Commentary by Michael Barone
Most Recent Releases
July 29, 2022
July 22, 2022
Sure, Ron DeSantis Could Beat Donald Trump in 2024 by Michael Barone
How inevitable is a third consecutive nomination of Donald Trump? Partisan commentators, when it suits their purposes, tend to assume it is so.
July 15, 2022
James Madison, 21st Century Pundit by Michael Barone
Could America's Founding Fathers see far, some 234 years, into the future? In declaring independence and fashioning a constitution, they were certainly trying to do so. And, in some cases, they succeeded. Consider this 78-word sentence written by James Madison and published as part of "Federalist 63" on March 1, 1788:
July 8, 2022
Who's Behind Joe Biden's Leftward Lunge? by Michael Barone
What's going on with Joe Biden? Why is a president who ran and was elected as a centrist Democrat supporting one left-wing proposal after another? What has prompted the politician whose sensitivity to public opinion was finely honed for four decades to take one unpopular stand after another?
July 1, 2022
United States of Diversity: The Founders and Dobbs by Michael Barone
DEI -- "diversity, equity and inclusion." University administrators, corporate human resources facilitators and politicians of a liberal stripe all assure us that America is now, suddenly, for the first time in history, a nation of diversity, equity and inclusion .
June 24, 2022
Can Government Build Things Again? By Michael Barone
Give the New York Times's Ezra Klein credit for identifying a problem with big government institutions. "Our mechanisms of governance have become so risk averse that they are now running tremendous risks because of the problems they cannot, or will not, solve," he tweeted. The subject was San Francisco's attempt to make permanent the parklets, or parking spaces used as outdoor restaurant space, through 60 pages of regulations.
June 17, 2022
The Secular Right Versus the Woke Left By Michael Barone
This month, I've come across two outstanding articles by writers I had not previously known on important trends on the political right and political left.
June 10, 2022
What Was the Left Thinking? By Michael Barone
Whether you're contemplating San Francisco voters' recall of left-wing District Attorney Chesa Boudin or the plight of Democrats nationally as they face voters' dismay at out-of-control inflation, immigration and crime, the question is liable to come to mind: What were they thinking?
June 3, 2022
Politics as the Leisure of the Theory Class Michael Barone
Politics has increasingly become, for many Americans, the leisure of the theory class. That's a phrase from the early 20th century sociologist Thorstein Veblen, which I turned on its head in a recent column. He was condemning the showy consumerism of the contemporary rich for having no economically practical purpose. I, on the other hand, was describing the political preoccupations of contemporary people, mainly high-education liberals but also low-education populists, as having no practically achievable goals.
May 27, 2022
Primary Results: Trump Repudiated, Republicans Enthused, Democrats Focused On Theoretical Issues by Michael Barone
Complete and utter repudiation. That's what a record number of Republican primary voters in Georgia administered to former President Donald Trump this Tuesday. The man he blamed for not contesting his narrow 2020 loss in the state, Gov. Brian Kemp, won renomination with 74% of the vote.
May 20, 2022
It's Not Exactly Trump's Republican Party by Michael Barone
Is it Donald Trump's Republican Party? You can make the case it is, as partisan Democrats do, from the victories of various candidates endorsed by the former president in Republican primaries. But it's not an airtight case, and Trump's batting average is inflated by the dozens of endorsements he has made of incumbents with no significant primary opposition.
May 13, 2022
Progressives' Version of 'Democracy': 2 Plus 2 Equals 5 by Michael Barone
They may or may not have been playing the song "The World Turned Upside Down" when Lord Charles Cornwallis's troops surrendered to Gen. George Washington at Yorktown in 1781, but there's good reason to sing it now.
May 6, 2022
Redistricting Proved To Be Much Ado About Not Very Much by Michael Barone
The congressional redistricting wars are mostly over. Much of the hoopla surrounding it is proving overheated.
April 29, 2022
People Are Fleeing the Self-harm Progressives Inflicted on Their Own Cities by Michael Barone
In recent weeks, I've noted how, as COVID-19 mask mandates fall by the wayside, the nation has been moving away from what now seems excessive risk aversion. And I've described the National Bureau of Economic Research paper assessing how the costs of the lockdowns have exceeded the benefits.
April 22, 2022
The Yankee Reform Impulse Gets Some Issues Right, Some Wrong by Michael Barone
People talk about culture war politics as if it were a recent development -- a novelty, an exception to a historic rule that American politics is mostly about economics (who gets how much) and only occasionally gets sidetracked into culture (what people should or shouldn't be allowed to do).
April 15, 2022
The Verdict on Lockdowns: High Cost, Minimal Benefits by Michael Barone
What were the benefits and costs of the COVID-19 restrictions implemented over the last two years? It's a good time to ask that question, especially now that the masks are coming off and the lockdowns are canceled.
April 1, 2022
Turning a Corner, Away from Excessive Risk Aversion by Micahel Barone
It feels like we're turning a corner.
March 25, 2022
Another Party Hack President by Michael Barone
"The language people speak in the corridors of power is not economics or politics. It is history." So says former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, quoted in a column on Ukraine by historian Niall Ferguson.
March 18, 2022
Ukraine Suggests Dangers of the Eurasian Heartland Axis by Michael Barone
"Who rules the Heartland rules the World Island. Who rules the World Island commands the world." So wrote the geography professor and occasional member of Parliament Halford Mackinder in his 1919 book "Democratic Ideals and Reality."
March 11, 2022
Ukraine Shows We Live in a Nationalist World by Michael Barone
It turns out that we live in a nationalist world. That's one of the lessons people are learning from the surprise early results of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
