Hillary Clinton’s Tangle of Corruption
PETER WEHNER 2015-04-21Hillary Clinton is making her life more difficult than it needs to be.
I’m speaking in this instance of the donations by foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation. As Jonathan made note of yesterday, a New York Times story on the forthcoming book by Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash, asserts that “foreign entities who made payments to the Clinton Foundation and to Mr. Clinton through high speaking fees received favors from Mrs. Clinton’s State Department in return.”
When the secretary of state has a policy of pay-to-play, that is bad enough. It reinforces the impression that Mrs. Clinton is a tangle of corruption, dishonest and untrustworthy, and playing by rules that apply to her and her husband but not to others. That has happened time and again with the Clintons; it’s the pattern and habits of a lifetime. And there’s no indication it will change. The portrait of Mrs. Clinton is that of a hardened, brittle, unreflective, and self-justifying individual. Whatever problems she faces are always the result of others, often the “right-wing conspiracy” she has invented in her over-active imagination.
But that’s not the only complicating factor for Mrs. Clinton. The other is that she has badly damaged her ability to wage a culture war/”war on women” campaign against Republicans. Because whatever outlandish charge she makes against Republicans, they will sound positively enlightened compared to the repression of women and gays that occurs in nations (like Saudi Arabia, Oman, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, et cetera) that have given millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. It looks for all the world as if those nations gave money to buy the silence of the Clintons–and their investment paid off.
One can only imagine the political firestorm if the tables were turned and nations that brutally oppress women and gays had funneled money to a foundation of a Republican running for president in order to gain favor while he served as America’s chief diplomat–not to mention the deletion of 30,000 emails on a secret (and inappropriate) server. The coverage would be intense and unremittingly negative.
On top of all that, the Schweizer book says that even as Hillary Clinton is portraying herself as a “champion for everyday Americans,” from 2001 to 2012 the Clintons’ income was (at least!) $136.5 million. Not bad after claiming she and her husband were “dead broke” after they left the White House. During Hillary’s years of public service, the Clintons have conducted or facilitated hundreds of large transactions” with foreign governments and individuals, Schweizer writes. “Some of these transactions have put millions in their own pockets.” (“Of the 13 [Bill] Clinton speeches that fetched $500,000 or more,” Schweizer writes, “only two occurred during the years his wife was not secretary of state.”)
Unlike her husband, Mrs. Clinton is not a naturally likable public figure. Her ethical transgressions make her less so. Which means Republicans are likely to face a person with thoroughly average political skills running with a considerable amount of ethical baggage but also a mountain of cash (estimates are that her campaign will raise up to $2.5 billion). Beating her in 2016 won’t be easy, but it’s certainly doable.
Join us—you'll be in good company. Everyone worth reading is reading (and writing for) COMMENTARY:
“ There’s an enormous amount of shouting in the wild west of conservative media. That has its place, and is often a sign of the energy on the right. But amidst the cacophony there’s a special need for serious, considered, and compelling argument, presented in the hope of persuading, not just punishing. This is where COMMENTARY has always shined, perhaps more now than ever before. It aims to tackle the best arguments of its intellectual opponents, not just the easiest targets. It’s a journal I’ve read for nearly 30 years and I can’t think of a time when I’ve valued it more. „
Jonah Goldberg
“ There is more commentary in the world than ever before—whether in print, on the air, or on the Internet. But there is still a dearth of serious, informed commentary that reports, analyzes, and argues without ever stooping to name-calling or vitriol. If you further narrow down the segment of the commentariat that looks at the world from a conservative and Jewish perspective—well, you’re left with only one choice. The magazine you are now reading. COMMENTARY has changed over the years—for instance, it now publishes this blog—but one thing that has not changed is its steadfast commitment to providing the best analysis from the most informed writers of the most important ideas in the world, all written in clear prose that appeals to a general audience. There is nothing else like it. Never has been, never will be. „
Max Boot
“ Every month in print, and every day online, COMMENTARY somehow manages to pull off a dazzling balancing act: intellectual but unpretentious, serious but never boring, timely but not fleeting. On the leading questions of the day, it offers fresh and unfamiliar insights. And on the emerging questions that will dominate the years to come, it often sees things first and clearest. It is simply indispensable. „
Yuval Levin
“ In 1975 the Economist said of COMMENTARY: “The world's best magazine?” Take away the question mark and that statement still stands, thirty-eight years later. It's still the magazine America's liberals dread most, and the one America's enemies can't afford to ignore. It's the point of the conservative spear in the never-ending fight against the insanity of the left, whether it's in foreign policy or economic policy, social and cultural issues, or the arts—and no one does a better job standing up for Western culture and America's interests and those of its allies, including Israel. In fact, surviving the next three years—the Obama administration home stretch—and building the foundations for an American resurgence afterward will be impossible without reading COMMENTARY in print and online. „
Arthur Herman
“ For decades, COMMENTARY has opened its pages to the most serious uncompromising defense of the American creed—exemplar of ordered liberty at home, pillar of the free world abroad—in an era when it has been most under attack. From the exceptionally influential manifestoes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick to today's counterattack against the empowered advocates of the entitlement state and of American decline, COMMENTARY remains what it has been for more than a generation: fearless, informative, indispensable. „
Charles Krauthammer
“ COMMENTARY isn’t just an important magazine. It’s an indispensable one. It’s been indispensable for half a century, and it is today. It’s indispensable for understanding the moment we live in, and it’s indispensable for laying out a path forward. The challenges we confront are great, but COMMENTARY is used to facing grave challenges without fearful cowering or wishful thinking. So we need COMMENTARY today as much as we ever have, and we need it to be as strong as it’s ever been. „
William Kristol
“ COMMENTARY’s writing is predictably engaging and edgy, but its content is anything but homogeneous. Center-right perspectives characterize contributions, but not predictably so. Jewish affairs are thematic, but not always. Controversies of the day are the usual subjects, yet offered only with reflection well apart from the frenzied 24/7 news cycle. Intellectual honesty and analytical rigor characterize COMMENTARY and that is why even its political critics concede that they are still enlightened by the very arguments they often oppose. „
Victor Davis Hanson
“ COMMENTARY is an indispensable read on the Arab Spring, the Afghan war, the future of American conservatism, and all the other crazy stuff out there. But you already knew that. What I really love about it is that it’s a full-service operation, and its back-of-the-book guys—the fellows who write about music, literature, and all the things that make life worth living as the world goes to hell—are the best in the business. There is an observation in a Terry Teachout piece on the wonderful singer Nancy LaMott about “Moon River” that has stayed with me for almost two decades. I fished it out from the back of my mind to impress a gal at a Goldwater Institute reception only the other day, and it worked a treat. So thank you, COMMENTARY! Likewise, my differences with the arts’n’culture crew unsettle me far more than the geopolitical ones: reasonable people can disagree on how large a nuclear arsenal those wacky mullahs should be permitted to own, but I’m still agog at the great Andrew Ferguson’s mystifying praise for the New York Times obituaries page a couple of issues back. That’s COMMENTARY for you—provocative to the end, on matters large and small. In these turbulent and dismaying times, we can all use a huckleberry friend waiting round the bend, in the mailbox each month and on the computer screen every morning. For any journal of opinion, as “Moon River” teaches us, there’s such a lot of world to see. COMMENTARY sees most of it with piercing clarity: it can’t know all the answers, but it asks all the right questions, and with great farsightedness. It deserves your wholehearted support. „
Mark Steyn
“ COMMENTARY has played an invaluable role in American political discourse for decades, offering thoughtful analysis on issues rather than sound bites or bumper stickers. Especially when it comes to U.S. foreign and defense policy, COMMENTARY has time and time again been ahead of the crowd, anticipating trends and developments that others react to only after the fact. I can't imagine not being a COMMENTARY subscriber. „
John Bolton
“ In the midst of today’s political rancor, COMMENTARY Magazine provides a rare venue for thoughtful discussion. COMMENTARY’s talented writers provide insightful analysis of foreign affairs, domestic policy, and the politics of the day. COMMENTARY is a treasure not only for conservatives, but for anyone looking for in-depth exploration of the issues that influence America’s public dialogue and shape the nation’s future. „
Karl Rove
“ It's notorious, and true, that government officials hardly read anything. Memos, sure; nowadays, emails and tweets as well. But magazines? People barely have time to eat lunch or see their kids, so how can an intellectual monthly affect public affairs? The question is a good one. How did COMMENTARY do it? The answer is that officials, like all citizens following American foreign policy, need a way to understand the world around them. When prevailing theories fail, when conventional wisdom is clearly at variance with what they see before their eyes, the outcome for senators and congressmen and White House officials is what the shrinks call cognitive dissonance. They may say one thing but believe another, or simply be unable to square previous beliefs and policies with the clear effects of U.S. conduct. They've lost the ability to explain the world. And then came COMMENTARY, offering month after month of piercing, bracing analysis—and value judgments of right and wrong, and clear writing about American gains and losses. Here was an insistence on looking reality in the face. Here was plain argument, seeking no quarter intellectually and giving none. And it mattered. It shamed some people, and emboldened others; COMMENTARY demanded that we conform policy to the opportunities and dangers that really faced America. In years of confusion and obfuscation, that striking clarity changed policies, and changed American conduct, because it changed the way we understood the world. „
Elliott Abrams
“ For more than 60 years, COMMENTARY has been a go-to source on matters of the greatest importance to our nation and our civilization. Today, its full-throated defense of the United States and freedom is as eloquent as it was a half-century ago, and no less urgent. Issues of the day will change, news cycles come and go, but COMMENTARY remains an indispensable authority in the battle of ideas that help to shape our world. Its continued success is both an indication, and source, of the country’s intellectual health. „
Donald Rumsfeld
“ COMMENTARY is America's most important monthly journal of ideas, period. For nearly seven decades it has published the best and most exciting writing from the most important thinkers: Saul Bellow and Lionel Trilling; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick; Paul Johnson and Ruth Wisse; Cynthia Ozick and—of course—Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Is there anything remotely like it? No. It is the lamp by which America, and Israel, and the Jewish people, may find their way to safety. I'm proud to be published in its pages. „
Bret Stephens
“ Irving Kristol once called COMMENTARY the most influential magazine in Jewish history. Certainly, no publication had a greater influence on me as I evolved from adolescent reader (arguing over its articles with my father and older brother) into a “frequent contributor” who made it my intellectual home. The magazine did not exploit American freedom to escape from civilizing duty but rather activated the intertwined responsibilities of citizens and members of a group. American Jewry can boast of many contributions to the welfare of this country and the Jewish people, but few as fortifying as COMMENTARY. „
Ruth R. Wisse
“ Edward Shils noted that there are four means of education in the modern world: the classroom, bookstores (especially used-bookstores), the conversation of intelligent friends, and intellectual magazines. For me intellectual magazines were more important than any of the other three, and no magazine among them more so than COMMENTARY. I first happened on COMMENTARY as a student browsing in the University of Chicago Bookstore in 1957. I have not missed an issue since. The magazine spoke to my intellectual interests and passions, and still does. As a reader and as a writer, I should be lost without it. „
Joseph Epstein
“ Why does COMMENTARY matter? Since 1945, no other monthly magazine has so consistently published serious, provocative argument and analysis. No other monthly magazine has viewed America and the world through such a wide angle, encompassing economics, politics, society, culture, religion, and diplomacy. No other monthly magazine has published such a celebrated and wide-ranging list of editors and contributors. Cerebral, critical, and committed, the point of view found in its pages is as unique as it is formidable. And in a world of Iranian nukes, rising anti-Semitism, radical Islam, American disarmament, bipartisan neo-isolationism, and disintegrating institutions, reading COMMENTARY is more than a pleasure. It is a necessity. „
Matthew Continetti
“ COMMENTARY has long been an unmissable landmark on the American intellectual landscape. These days it shapes debate, propels argument, and explains society with renewed vigor and force. It is one of the small group of essential reads for anybody engaged in politics, Judaism, foreign policy, national manners, and morals. „
David Brooks
“ Anyone looking for a definitive exposition of a significant historical moment—whether UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, say, or the battles over "general education" at Harvard—has at his fingertips an inestimable gift: COMMENTARY's archives, which contain countless gems of reporting and analysis. Today's generation of COMMENTARY writers is building an equally invaluable store of knowledge for future researchers and scholars. „
Heather Mac Donald
“ I first subscribed to COMMENTARY in 1973, as a recovering liberal who had invested four years of my young life in writing speeches for a constellation of McGovernite candidates and office-holders. Living in Berkeley at the time, I relished COMMENTARY as a guilty pleasure, feeling grateful that the magazine arrived each month discreetly disguised in a plain, brown wrapper that concealed its suspiciously neo-conservative content. In the militantly leftist community in which I functioned forty years ago, receiving regular monthly installments of the most degrading porn would have produced far less embarrassment than my growing devotion to the persuasive prose of Norman Podhoretz and Co. Yes, my personal journey from left to right-center involved the usual biographical factors, including the three P’s: paychecks, parenthood, and prayer. Paychecks, because they arrived with shocking subtractions in the form of onerous and incomprehensible taxes; parenthood, because responsibility for a new generation forced a longer-term perspective; and prayer, because my own growing Jewish observance led to the conclusion that my “idealistic” ’60s generation, with all its narcissism and preening self-regard, might not provide life’s ultimate answers after all. Fortunately for me, reading COMMENTARY with near-religious regularity helped to organize my onrushing insights and experience into a more coherent world view. In a dark time in our nation’s history, while surviving (temporarily) in the most unhinged corner of the continent, this incomparable publication persuaded me that I wasn’t alone. „
Michael Medved
“ Just as one begins to despair of hearing the strong voice of sanity and courage, leavened with charm and good humor, in our modern polity, COMMENTARY arrives, and once a month one can be reminded that there are indeed some clear-sighted and articulate people who seem actively to enjoy the battle for truth. „
Andrew Roberts
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Hillary Clinton’s Tangle of Corruption
Must-Reads from Magazine
Shut Up About Impeachment
Jonathan S. Tobin 2016-11-04
After a week in which the fortunes of their presidential candidate markedly improved, you’d think some on the right would be thinking more positive thoughts. But when it comes to the Clintons, many Republicans just can’t get the word “impeachment” out of their mind.
While FBI director James Comey’s letter to Congress and various leaks from the agency about investigations of Hillary Clinton’s emails and the Clinton Foundation have changed the narrative of the election, talk about impeachment is a sign that many in Trump’s camp don’t really think he can win. It’s also providing the Democrats with exactly the kind of ammunition they need to frighten unenthusiastic Democrats into coming out to vote. That’s why the GOP ought to knock it off, whether or not any of them think she’ll be in the White House next year.
Any discussion of a potential impeachment of Hillary Clinton is, like the “lock her up” chants at Trump rallies, a way for the right to rally grassroots supporters for whom the former secretary of state is a symbol of everything they don’t like about the Democrats. Moreover, those Republicans looking ahead to what is still the most likely outcome next week understand that the political dynamic on the right will be similar to the one that existed for most of President Obama’s term. Republicans spent the last eight years convinced that the only principled course of action was to do all in their power to thwart Obama. So the instinct to do the same with Clinton is both natural and, to a certain extent, justified by what is likely to be a clear ideological conflict with a Democratic administration that the left will dominate.
But the Trump-fueled slanders about Obama’s eligibility for the presidency was largely confined to the fever swamps of the right. Not even firebrands like Ted Cruz, who preached a scorched earth opposition to everything Obama did and excoriated those establishment Republicans who wouldn’t follow him off the government shutdown cliff, have said a word about impeachment. The revival of the Clinton email scandal by Comey may ensure that impeachment talk against Clinton will not only be the moral equivalent of the Obama birther argument but that its advocates may be also far closer to the political mainstream that the current president’s most extreme critics.
However angry they are about the emails and the Foundation, Republicans need to understand that talking about impeaching a newly elected president is political malpractice. There will be no indictments of a sitting president no matter what FBI leakers say. Incumbent presidents have functional immunity against such charges, and there’s no way her own Justice Department will ever allow an indictment of their boss. Conservatives may then see impeachment as the outlet for their frustration. But the GOP must be conscious that once they step over the line from investigating wrongdoing to an attempt to reverse the verdict of an election they cease being watchdogs and become something very different.
Republicans overplayed their hand against Bill Clinton with impeachment and paid a price for it in the 1998 midterms and actually help make him more rather than less popular. If Hillary Clinton wins, the GOP would be endangering its chances in the 2018 midterms if it allowed the most extreme members of its congressional conference to define the party by an act most Americans would rightly see as an attempt to rob the election of legitimacy.
The GOP leadership in both the House and Senate understand this and will refuse to take up impeachment no matter how loud some on the right scream about it. Unfortunately, many rank and file Republicans have come to believe that the only way to oppose liberals is to follow Trump into the gutter. What’s important about the loose talk about impeachment isn’t that there is no chance that it will happen but that the desire to “lock her up” will become the baseline for conservative opposition to a Clinton presidency. And that will make it harder rather than easier for the GOP to thwart her policies and to defeat Democrats in 2018 and 2020.
Join us—you'll be in good company. Everyone worth reading is reading (and writing for) COMMENTARY:
“ There’s an enormous amount of shouting in the wild west of conservative media. That has its place, and is often a sign of the energy on the right. But amidst the cacophony there’s a special need for serious, considered, and compelling argument, presented in the hope of persuading, not just punishing. This is where COMMENTARY has always shined, perhaps more now than ever before. It aims to tackle the best arguments of its intellectual opponents, not just the easiest targets. It’s a journal I’ve read for nearly 30 years and I can’t think of a time when I’ve valued it more. „
Jonah Goldberg
“ There is more commentary in the world than ever before—whether in print, on the air, or on the Internet. But there is still a dearth of serious, informed commentary that reports, analyzes, and argues without ever stooping to name-calling or vitriol. If you further narrow down the segment of the commentariat that looks at the world from a conservative and Jewish perspective—well, you’re left with only one choice. The magazine you are now reading. COMMENTARY has changed over the years—for instance, it now publishes this blog—but one thing that has not changed is its steadfast commitment to providing the best analysis from the most informed writers of the most important ideas in the world, all written in clear prose that appeals to a general audience. There is nothing else like it. Never has been, never will be. „
Max Boot
“ Every month in print, and every day online, COMMENTARY somehow manages to pull off a dazzling balancing act: intellectual but unpretentious, serious but never boring, timely but not fleeting. On the leading questions of the day, it offers fresh and unfamiliar insights. And on the emerging questions that will dominate the years to come, it often sees things first and clearest. It is simply indispensable. „
Yuval Levin
“ In 1975 the Economist said of COMMENTARY: “The world's best magazine?” Take away the question mark and that statement still stands, thirty-eight years later. It's still the magazine America's liberals dread most, and the one America's enemies can't afford to ignore. It's the point of the conservative spear in the never-ending fight against the insanity of the left, whether it's in foreign policy or economic policy, social and cultural issues, or the arts—and no one does a better job standing up for Western culture and America's interests and those of its allies, including Israel. In fact, surviving the next three years—the Obama administration home stretch—and building the foundations for an American resurgence afterward will be impossible without reading COMMENTARY in print and online. „
Arthur Herman
“ For decades, COMMENTARY has opened its pages to the most serious uncompromising defense of the American creed—exemplar of ordered liberty at home, pillar of the free world abroad—in an era when it has been most under attack. From the exceptionally influential manifestoes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick to today's counterattack against the empowered advocates of the entitlement state and of American decline, COMMENTARY remains what it has been for more than a generation: fearless, informative, indispensable. „
Charles Krauthammer
“ COMMENTARY isn’t just an important magazine. It’s an indispensable one. It’s been indispensable for half a century, and it is today. It’s indispensable for understanding the moment we live in, and it’s indispensable for laying out a path forward. The challenges we confront are great, but COMMENTARY is used to facing grave challenges without fearful cowering or wishful thinking. So we need COMMENTARY today as much as we ever have, and we need it to be as strong as it’s ever been. „
William Kristol
“ COMMENTARY’s writing is predictably engaging and edgy, but its content is anything but homogeneous. Center-right perspectives characterize contributions, but not predictably so. Jewish affairs are thematic, but not always. Controversies of the day are the usual subjects, yet offered only with reflection well apart from the frenzied 24/7 news cycle. Intellectual honesty and analytical rigor characterize COMMENTARY and that is why even its political critics concede that they are still enlightened by the very arguments they often oppose. „
Victor Davis Hanson
“ COMMENTARY is an indispensable read on the Arab Spring, the Afghan war, the future of American conservatism, and all the other crazy stuff out there. But you already knew that. What I really love about it is that it’s a full-service operation, and its back-of-the-book guys—the fellows who write about music, literature, and all the things that make life worth living as the world goes to hell—are the best in the business. There is an observation in a Terry Teachout piece on the wonderful singer Nancy LaMott about “Moon River” that has stayed with me for almost two decades. I fished it out from the back of my mind to impress a gal at a Goldwater Institute reception only the other day, and it worked a treat. So thank you, COMMENTARY! Likewise, my differences with the arts’n’culture crew unsettle me far more than the geopolitical ones: reasonable people can disagree on how large a nuclear arsenal those wacky mullahs should be permitted to own, but I’m still agog at the great Andrew Ferguson’s mystifying praise for the New York Times obituaries page a couple of issues back. That’s COMMENTARY for you—provocative to the end, on matters large and small. In these turbulent and dismaying times, we can all use a huckleberry friend waiting round the bend, in the mailbox each month and on the computer screen every morning. For any journal of opinion, as “Moon River” teaches us, there’s such a lot of world to see. COMMENTARY sees most of it with piercing clarity: it can’t know all the answers, but it asks all the right questions, and with great farsightedness. It deserves your wholehearted support. „
Mark Steyn
“ COMMENTARY has played an invaluable role in American political discourse for decades, offering thoughtful analysis on issues rather than sound bites or bumper stickers. Especially when it comes to U.S. foreign and defense policy, COMMENTARY has time and time again been ahead of the crowd, anticipating trends and developments that others react to only after the fact. I can't imagine not being a COMMENTARY subscriber. „
John Bolton
“ In the midst of today’s political rancor, COMMENTARY Magazine provides a rare venue for thoughtful discussion. COMMENTARY’s talented writers provide insightful analysis of foreign affairs, domestic policy, and the politics of the day. COMMENTARY is a treasure not only for conservatives, but for anyone looking for in-depth exploration of the issues that influence America’s public dialogue and shape the nation’s future. „
Karl Rove
“ It's notorious, and true, that government officials hardly read anything. Memos, sure; nowadays, emails and tweets as well. But magazines? People barely have time to eat lunch or see their kids, so how can an intellectual monthly affect public affairs? The question is a good one. How did COMMENTARY do it? The answer is that officials, like all citizens following American foreign policy, need a way to understand the world around them. When prevailing theories fail, when conventional wisdom is clearly at variance with what they see before their eyes, the outcome for senators and congressmen and White House officials is what the shrinks call cognitive dissonance. They may say one thing but believe another, or simply be unable to square previous beliefs and policies with the clear effects of U.S. conduct. They've lost the ability to explain the world. And then came COMMENTARY, offering month after month of piercing, bracing analysis—and value judgments of right and wrong, and clear writing about American gains and losses. Here was an insistence on looking reality in the face. Here was plain argument, seeking no quarter intellectually and giving none. And it mattered. It shamed some people, and emboldened others; COMMENTARY demanded that we conform policy to the opportunities and dangers that really faced America. In years of confusion and obfuscation, that striking clarity changed policies, and changed American conduct, because it changed the way we understood the world. „
Elliott Abrams
“ For more than 60 years, COMMENTARY has been a go-to source on matters of the greatest importance to our nation and our civilization. Today, its full-throated defense of the United States and freedom is as eloquent as it was a half-century ago, and no less urgent. Issues of the day will change, news cycles come and go, but COMMENTARY remains an indispensable authority in the battle of ideas that help to shape our world. Its continued success is both an indication, and source, of the country’s intellectual health. „
Donald Rumsfeld
“ COMMENTARY is America's most important monthly journal of ideas, period. For nearly seven decades it has published the best and most exciting writing from the most important thinkers: Saul Bellow and Lionel Trilling; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick; Paul Johnson and Ruth Wisse; Cynthia Ozick and—of course—Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Is there anything remotely like it? No. It is the lamp by which America, and Israel, and the Jewish people, may find their way to safety. I'm proud to be published in its pages. „
Bret Stephens
“ Irving Kristol once called COMMENTARY the most influential magazine in Jewish history. Certainly, no publication had a greater influence on me as I evolved from adolescent reader (arguing over its articles with my father and older brother) into a “frequent contributor” who made it my intellectual home. The magazine did not exploit American freedom to escape from civilizing duty but rather activated the intertwined responsibilities of citizens and members of a group. American Jewry can boast of many contributions to the welfare of this country and the Jewish people, but few as fortifying as COMMENTARY. „
Ruth R. Wisse
“ Edward Shils noted that there are four means of education in the modern world: the classroom, bookstores (especially used-bookstores), the conversation of intelligent friends, and intellectual magazines. For me intellectual magazines were more important than any of the other three, and no magazine among them more so than COMMENTARY. I first happened on COMMENTARY as a student browsing in the University of Chicago Bookstore in 1957. I have not missed an issue since. The magazine spoke to my intellectual interests and passions, and still does. As a reader and as a writer, I should be lost without it. „
Joseph Epstein
“ Why does COMMENTARY matter? Since 1945, no other monthly magazine has so consistently published serious, provocative argument and analysis. No other monthly magazine has viewed America and the world through such a wide angle, encompassing economics, politics, society, culture, religion, and diplomacy. No other monthly magazine has published such a celebrated and wide-ranging list of editors and contributors. Cerebral, critical, and committed, the point of view found in its pages is as unique as it is formidable. And in a world of Iranian nukes, rising anti-Semitism, radical Islam, American disarmament, bipartisan neo-isolationism, and disintegrating institutions, reading COMMENTARY is more than a pleasure. It is a necessity. „
Matthew Continetti
“ COMMENTARY has long been an unmissable landmark on the American intellectual landscape. These days it shapes debate, propels argument, and explains society with renewed vigor and force. It is one of the small group of essential reads for anybody engaged in politics, Judaism, foreign policy, national manners, and morals. „
David Brooks
“ Anyone looking for a definitive exposition of a significant historical moment—whether UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, say, or the battles over "general education" at Harvard—has at his fingertips an inestimable gift: COMMENTARY's archives, which contain countless gems of reporting and analysis. Today's generation of COMMENTARY writers is building an equally invaluable store of knowledge for future researchers and scholars. „
Heather Mac Donald
“ I first subscribed to COMMENTARY in 1973, as a recovering liberal who had invested four years of my young life in writing speeches for a constellation of McGovernite candidates and office-holders. Living in Berkeley at the time, I relished COMMENTARY as a guilty pleasure, feeling grateful that the magazine arrived each month discreetly disguised in a plain, brown wrapper that concealed its suspiciously neo-conservative content. In the militantly leftist community in which I functioned forty years ago, receiving regular monthly installments of the most degrading porn would have produced far less embarrassment than my growing devotion to the persuasive prose of Norman Podhoretz and Co. Yes, my personal journey from left to right-center involved the usual biographical factors, including the three P’s: paychecks, parenthood, and prayer. Paychecks, because they arrived with shocking subtractions in the form of onerous and incomprehensible taxes; parenthood, because responsibility for a new generation forced a longer-term perspective; and prayer, because my own growing Jewish observance led to the conclusion that my “idealistic” ’60s generation, with all its narcissism and preening self-regard, might not provide life’s ultimate answers after all. Fortunately for me, reading COMMENTARY with near-religious regularity helped to organize my onrushing insights and experience into a more coherent world view. In a dark time in our nation’s history, while surviving (temporarily) in the most unhinged corner of the continent, this incomparable publication persuaded me that I wasn’t alone. „
Michael Medved
“ Just as one begins to despair of hearing the strong voice of sanity and courage, leavened with charm and good humor, in our modern polity, COMMENTARY arrives, and once a month one can be reminded that there are indeed some clear-sighted and articulate people who seem actively to enjoy the battle for truth. „
Andrew Roberts
“ In a time of passion, COMMENTARY champions reason. Against lies, COMMENTARY speaks for truth. Confronting those who would doom to death the Jewish people, COMMENTARY is a magnificent continuing achievement of American Jewish life. „
David Frum
“ COMMENTARY has become my new go-to website for news analysis because it is measured, substantive, thoughtful, and written for news consumers of all shapes and sizes. When juggling all the issues of the day and thinking them through, I find myself going back to COMMENTARY again and again to see if there’s anything more that can help me add the ingredients needed to finalize an argument. I like the mix of foreign policy and national political news, as well as the discussions about America’s place in the world and what it should be. I’m a print subscriber and a frequent website visitor, and I follow all of the writers on Twitter. Thank you, COMMENTARY, for providing such consistently helpful content. „
Dana Perino
Subscribing to COMMENTARY gives you full access to every article, every issue, every podcast—the latest stories as well as over 70 years of archives, the best that has been thought and written since 1945.
Join the intellectual club, today.
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Five Days, Eight Thoughts
John Podhoretz 2016-11-04
Some thoughts:
- Hillary Clinton is leading. Every scrap of data we have says if the election were held today, Hillary Clinton would win. Of all the poll aggregators, RealClearPolitics is the most favorable to Trump, and its “no toss-ups” electoral map has the race at 298-240 for Clinton (and that includes 15 votes for Trump in North Carolina, where the early voting data suggest Clinton is in good shape). The spread between her and Donald Trump has narrowed in the last 11 days, but he hasn’t overtaken her in state or national polling. Remember that in 2012, the optimism in the Romney camp was that Romney led nationally by a bit. Trump is neither leading nationally in the poll averages nor in state polling sufficient to suggest he will prevail on Tuesday.
- Donald Trump is only doing a little better than he was. Trump’s numbers, in battleground states and nationally, is fixed in the lower 40s. This is better than the days a few weeks ago when he was below 40, to be sure, a number that suggested a defeat in the McGovern range. But even John McCain ended up with 46 percent of the vote. Right now Trump would have to outperform his polling significantly to get to McCain’s national vote total of 60 million—and the country’s population has grown overall by 11 million since 2008.
- Clinton is doing somewhat worse than she was. The Clinton campaign thought it had Colorado and Michigan in the bag and that it was closing the door on New Hampshire. Now NH is a dead heat, Colorado could go either way, and Michigan is surprisingly close.
- Trump is closing gaps but not overtaking Clinton. If Trump genuinely had “momentum,” which is one of those things everybody “knows” exists but no one can prove exists, we’d see the electoral-college map shifting in his favor. That’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is that some states have moved from being firmly in Democratic hands to being more questionable. Hillary’s potential for a huge electoral landslide is fading, it seems, as the states she once seemed poised to seize from Trump (Arizona and Georgia) may no longer be competitive.
- Early voting has been modestly positive for Clinton. In Florida, which Trump must win if he is to have any chance of 270 electoral votes, the early voting appears tied. That might seem bad for Clinton because Barack Obama led in early voting there in 2012 and black turnout is down. But dataheads report that many GOP voters are the type who have voted before on election day but are voting early this year, while Democratic voters are more likely to be first-timers. Word is she’s built enough of a margin in the early Nevada vote to ensure any Trump surge on Election Day won’t be enough.
- There are a huge number of undecideds for this late in the game. A poll in Michigan has the race at 42 Clinton-38 Trump, with 12 percent going to the third and fourth party candidates. As it’s unlikely 12 percent will actually cast their votes for Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, either the electorate in Michigan (and elsewhere) is going to be tiny—because those people will stay home—or something else is happening that is hard to decipher.
- Assuming no real late news, this is the race. By “real,” I mean something genuinely additive or subtractive that causes people to stay home on either side, not more details about existing scandals—unless Clinton is in fact indicted or Trump actually beats up a reporter.
- Tuesday will be a test. It’s a test of whether mechanics (Hillary’s superior ground game) can outdistance emotions (Trump’s slight margin when it comes to enthusiasm). It’s a test of whether you can win when people think you’re dishonest (Hillary) or if they think you’re unfit (Trump). It’s a test of whether large numbers of voters are going to act as though any outcome they do not like is illegitimate. That is no longer just a Trump issue, as the way Democrats and liberals are talking about the FBI sounds very similar to the rigging argument made by Trump. It’s a test of whether we can calm down enough to see through the wreckage of our civil culture and figure out how to take the next steps.
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Cyberbully Wife, Heal Thyself
Jonathan S. Tobin 2016-11-04
After a week in which seemingly everything had been going his way, Donald Trump’s campaign had a misstep on Thursday. Fortunately for the Republicans, it did not involve the candidate blowing himself up with one of his trademark-improvised insults that have distracted the public from Hillary Clinton’s flaws. Instead, it was a rare appearance by his wife Melania that blew up the Internet yesterday with the sort of sarcasm and contempt that is usually reserved for the Donald.
Mrs. Trump’s appearance in Pennsylvania was supposed to be part of an effort to make the billionaire seem more human or at least less loathsome to the educated suburban female voters who usually vote for Republicans but have abandoned Trump. The script for her first public speech since the disaster at the Republican Convention when she plagiarized Michelle Obama was intended to portray her as a mother with the same concerns about society and children shared by other women. But while we are told that the topic—the need for a kinder society and a concern about cyberbullying—was her idea, one has to wonder why a savvy political veteran like Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway would let her expose the GOP nominee to such ridicule.
Mrs. Trump’s command of English is impressive. Considering her lack of political experience, she’s handled herself well when interviewed. She’s also right that this topic is an important one. But for the wife of Donald Trump, of all people, to lecture the country about the dangers of cyberbullying and the need for civility is chutzpah on an Olympic level.
Pointing this out isn’t “hating” Melania Trump or slighting her personal accomplishments. But you don’t know have to be a supporter of Hillary Clinton to understand that no individual has done more to coarsen our political discourse or to set a worse example for children than Melania’s husband. There’s no use for his supporters to try to downplay this aspect of his personality, as Conway tried to do last night on CNN when she was pressed to justify the colossal hypocrisy of Mrs. Trump’s speech. Trump’s vulgarity and his willingness to insult and bully anyone who isn’t one of his sycophants—a long list that includes war heroes, gold star families, Mexican-Americans, Muslims, and women — is part of his appeal. If Melania Trump thinks American politics is “too mean and too rough,” she ought to first address her concerns to the man she married before speaking about it to anyone else.
So instead of an easy win for the Trump campaign, Melania’s second campaign speech turned out to be as disastrous as her first.
What does that tell us about Donald Trump’s chances of winning next week? Nothing. While I doubt may of those female voters Trump needs identify with a billionaire’s supermodel trophy wife, neither did her unwitting satire do much to distract the country from a new election narrative. Since FBI director James Comey turned the race upside down last week with his letter to Congress, the nation’s focus remains on Hillary Clinton’s ethical problems.
Yesterday’s Melania mishap does tell us something about the level of competence inside the Trump camp. Letting her give a speech about bullying when she could have done well talking about a score of other topics that might appeal to women was as much a case of staff malpractice as allowing her to plagiarize Mrs. Obama. The Trump campaign has always been more of a concert tour than a professional political operation, and that may come back to bite the GOP if their lack of a sophisticated ground game costs them the election. But assuming there is a chance he does win next week, if Trump wants to govern the country effectively, this kind of amateur hour idiocy won’t fly in the West Wing.
Join us—you'll be in good company. Everyone worth reading is reading (and writing for) COMMENTARY:
“ There’s an enormous amount of shouting in the wild west of conservative media. That has its place, and is often a sign of the energy on the right. But amidst the cacophony there’s a special need for serious, considered, and compelling argument, presented in the hope of persuading, not just punishing. This is where COMMENTARY has always shined, perhaps more now than ever before. It aims to tackle the best arguments of its intellectual opponents, not just the easiest targets. It’s a journal I’ve read for nearly 30 years and I can’t think of a time when I’ve valued it more. „
Jonah Goldberg
“ There is more commentary in the world than ever before—whether in print, on the air, or on the Internet. But there is still a dearth of serious, informed commentary that reports, analyzes, and argues without ever stooping to name-calling or vitriol. If you further narrow down the segment of the commentariat that looks at the world from a conservative and Jewish perspective—well, you’re left with only one choice. The magazine you are now reading. COMMENTARY has changed over the years—for instance, it now publishes this blog—but one thing that has not changed is its steadfast commitment to providing the best analysis from the most informed writers of the most important ideas in the world, all written in clear prose that appeals to a general audience. There is nothing else like it. Never has been, never will be. „
Max Boot
“ Every month in print, and every day online, COMMENTARY somehow manages to pull off a dazzling balancing act: intellectual but unpretentious, serious but never boring, timely but not fleeting. On the leading questions of the day, it offers fresh and unfamiliar insights. And on the emerging questions that will dominate the years to come, it often sees things first and clearest. It is simply indispensable. „
Yuval Levin
“ In 1975 the Economist said of COMMENTARY: “The world's best magazine?” Take away the question mark and that statement still stands, thirty-eight years later. It's still the magazine America's liberals dread most, and the one America's enemies can't afford to ignore. It's the point of the conservative spear in the never-ending fight against the insanity of the left, whether it's in foreign policy or economic policy, social and cultural issues, or the arts—and no one does a better job standing up for Western culture and America's interests and those of its allies, including Israel. In fact, surviving the next three years—the Obama administration home stretch—and building the foundations for an American resurgence afterward will be impossible without reading COMMENTARY in print and online. „
Arthur Herman
“ For decades, COMMENTARY has opened its pages to the most serious uncompromising defense of the American creed—exemplar of ordered liberty at home, pillar of the free world abroad—in an era when it has been most under attack. From the exceptionally influential manifestoes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick to today's counterattack against the empowered advocates of the entitlement state and of American decline, COMMENTARY remains what it has been for more than a generation: fearless, informative, indispensable. „
Charles Krauthammer
“ COMMENTARY isn’t just an important magazine. It’s an indispensable one. It’s been indispensable for half a century, and it is today. It’s indispensable for understanding the moment we live in, and it’s indispensable for laying out a path forward. The challenges we confront are great, but COMMENTARY is used to facing grave challenges without fearful cowering or wishful thinking. So we need COMMENTARY today as much as we ever have, and we need it to be as strong as it’s ever been. „
William Kristol
“ COMMENTARY’s writing is predictably engaging and edgy, but its content is anything but homogeneous. Center-right perspectives characterize contributions, but not predictably so. Jewish affairs are thematic, but not always. Controversies of the day are the usual subjects, yet offered only with reflection well apart from the frenzied 24/7 news cycle. Intellectual honesty and analytical rigor characterize COMMENTARY and that is why even its political critics concede that they are still enlightened by the very arguments they often oppose. „
Victor Davis Hanson
“ COMMENTARY is an indispensable read on the Arab Spring, the Afghan war, the future of American conservatism, and all the other crazy stuff out there. But you already knew that. What I really love about it is that it’s a full-service operation, and its back-of-the-book guys—the fellows who write about music, literature, and all the things that make life worth living as the world goes to hell—are the best in the business. There is an observation in a Terry Teachout piece on the wonderful singer Nancy LaMott about “Moon River” that has stayed with me for almost two decades. I fished it out from the back of my mind to impress a gal at a Goldwater Institute reception only the other day, and it worked a treat. So thank you, COMMENTARY! Likewise, my differences with the arts’n’culture crew unsettle me far more than the geopolitical ones: reasonable people can disagree on how large a nuclear arsenal those wacky mullahs should be permitted to own, but I’m still agog at the great Andrew Ferguson’s mystifying praise for the New York Times obituaries page a couple of issues back. That’s COMMENTARY for you—provocative to the end, on matters large and small. In these turbulent and dismaying times, we can all use a huckleberry friend waiting round the bend, in the mailbox each month and on the computer screen every morning. For any journal of opinion, as “Moon River” teaches us, there’s such a lot of world to see. COMMENTARY sees most of it with piercing clarity: it can’t know all the answers, but it asks all the right questions, and with great farsightedness. It deserves your wholehearted support. „
Mark Steyn
“ COMMENTARY has played an invaluable role in American political discourse for decades, offering thoughtful analysis on issues rather than sound bites or bumper stickers. Especially when it comes to U.S. foreign and defense policy, COMMENTARY has time and time again been ahead of the crowd, anticipating trends and developments that others react to only after the fact. I can't imagine not being a COMMENTARY subscriber. „
John Bolton
“ In the midst of today’s political rancor, COMMENTARY Magazine provides a rare venue for thoughtful discussion. COMMENTARY’s talented writers provide insightful analysis of foreign affairs, domestic policy, and the politics of the day. COMMENTARY is a treasure not only for conservatives, but for anyone looking for in-depth exploration of the issues that influence America’s public dialogue and shape the nation’s future. „
Karl Rove
“ It's notorious, and true, that government officials hardly read anything. Memos, sure; nowadays, emails and tweets as well. But magazines? People barely have time to eat lunch or see their kids, so how can an intellectual monthly affect public affairs? The question is a good one. How did COMMENTARY do it? The answer is that officials, like all citizens following American foreign policy, need a way to understand the world around them. When prevailing theories fail, when conventional wisdom is clearly at variance with what they see before their eyes, the outcome for senators and congressmen and White House officials is what the shrinks call cognitive dissonance. They may say one thing but believe another, or simply be unable to square previous beliefs and policies with the clear effects of U.S. conduct. They've lost the ability to explain the world. And then came COMMENTARY, offering month after month of piercing, bracing analysis—and value judgments of right and wrong, and clear writing about American gains and losses. Here was an insistence on looking reality in the face. Here was plain argument, seeking no quarter intellectually and giving none. And it mattered. It shamed some people, and emboldened others; COMMENTARY demanded that we conform policy to the opportunities and dangers that really faced America. In years of confusion and obfuscation, that striking clarity changed policies, and changed American conduct, because it changed the way we understood the world. „
Elliott Abrams
“ For more than 60 years, COMMENTARY has been a go-to source on matters of the greatest importance to our nation and our civilization. Today, its full-throated defense of the United States and freedom is as eloquent as it was a half-century ago, and no less urgent. Issues of the day will change, news cycles come and go, but COMMENTARY remains an indispensable authority in the battle of ideas that help to shape our world. Its continued success is both an indication, and source, of the country’s intellectual health. „
Donald Rumsfeld
“ COMMENTARY is America's most important monthly journal of ideas, period. For nearly seven decades it has published the best and most exciting writing from the most important thinkers: Saul Bellow and Lionel Trilling; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick; Paul Johnson and Ruth Wisse; Cynthia Ozick and—of course—Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Is there anything remotely like it? No. It is the lamp by which America, and Israel, and the Jewish people, may find their way to safety. I'm proud to be published in its pages. „
Bret Stephens
“ Irving Kristol once called COMMENTARY the most influential magazine in Jewish history. Certainly, no publication had a greater influence on me as I evolved from adolescent reader (arguing over its articles with my father and older brother) into a “frequent contributor” who made it my intellectual home. The magazine did not exploit American freedom to escape from civilizing duty but rather activated the intertwined responsibilities of citizens and members of a group. American Jewry can boast of many contributions to the welfare of this country and the Jewish people, but few as fortifying as COMMENTARY. „
Ruth R. Wisse
“ Edward Shils noted that there are four means of education in the modern world: the classroom, bookstores (especially used-bookstores), the conversation of intelligent friends, and intellectual magazines. For me intellectual magazines were more important than any of the other three, and no magazine among them more so than COMMENTARY. I first happened on COMMENTARY as a student browsing in the University of Chicago Bookstore in 1957. I have not missed an issue since. The magazine spoke to my intellectual interests and passions, and still does. As a reader and as a writer, I should be lost without it. „
Joseph Epstein
“ Why does COMMENTARY matter? Since 1945, no other monthly magazine has so consistently published serious, provocative argument and analysis. No other monthly magazine has viewed America and the world through such a wide angle, encompassing economics, politics, society, culture, religion, and diplomacy. No other monthly magazine has published such a celebrated and wide-ranging list of editors and contributors. Cerebral, critical, and committed, the point of view found in its pages is as unique as it is formidable. And in a world of Iranian nukes, rising anti-Semitism, radical Islam, American disarmament, bipartisan neo-isolationism, and disintegrating institutions, reading COMMENTARY is more than a pleasure. It is a necessity. „
Matthew Continetti
“ COMMENTARY has long been an unmissable landmark on the American intellectual landscape. These days it shapes debate, propels argument, and explains society with renewed vigor and force. It is one of the small group of essential reads for anybody engaged in politics, Judaism, foreign policy, national manners, and morals. „
David Brooks
“ Anyone looking for a definitive exposition of a significant historical moment—whether UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, say, or the battles over "general education" at Harvard—has at his fingertips an inestimable gift: COMMENTARY's archives, which contain countless gems of reporting and analysis. Today's generation of COMMENTARY writers is building an equally invaluable store of knowledge for future researchers and scholars. „
Heather Mac Donald
“ I first subscribed to COMMENTARY in 1973, as a recovering liberal who had invested four years of my young life in writing speeches for a constellation of McGovernite candidates and office-holders. Living in Berkeley at the time, I relished COMMENTARY as a guilty pleasure, feeling grateful that the magazine arrived each month discreetly disguised in a plain, brown wrapper that concealed its suspiciously neo-conservative content. In the militantly leftist community in which I functioned forty years ago, receiving regular monthly installments of the most degrading porn would have produced far less embarrassment than my growing devotion to the persuasive prose of Norman Podhoretz and Co. Yes, my personal journey from left to right-center involved the usual biographical factors, including the three P’s: paychecks, parenthood, and prayer. Paychecks, because they arrived with shocking subtractions in the form of onerous and incomprehensible taxes; parenthood, because responsibility for a new generation forced a longer-term perspective; and prayer, because my own growing Jewish observance led to the conclusion that my “idealistic” ’60s generation, with all its narcissism and preening self-regard, might not provide life’s ultimate answers after all. Fortunately for me, reading COMMENTARY with near-religious regularity helped to organize my onrushing insights and experience into a more coherent world view. In a dark time in our nation’s history, while surviving (temporarily) in the most unhinged corner of the continent, this incomparable publication persuaded me that I wasn’t alone. „
Michael Medved
“ Just as one begins to despair of hearing the strong voice of sanity and courage, leavened with charm and good humor, in our modern polity, COMMENTARY arrives, and once a month one can be reminded that there are indeed some clear-sighted and articulate people who seem actively to enjoy the battle for truth. „
Andrew Roberts
“ In a time of passion, COMMENTARY champions reason. Against lies, COMMENTARY speaks for truth. Confronting those who would doom to death the Jewish people, COMMENTARY is a magnificent continuing achievement of American Jewish life. „
David Frum
“ COMMENTARY has become my new go-to website for news analysis because it is measured, substantive, thoughtful, and written for news consumers of all shapes and sizes. When juggling all the issues of the day and thinking them through, I find myself going back to COMMENTARY again and again to see if there’s anything more that can help me add the ingredients needed to finalize an argument. I like the mix of foreign policy and national political news, as well as the discussions about America’s place in the world and what it should be. I’m a print subscriber and a frequent website visitor, and I follow all of the writers on Twitter. Thank you, COMMENTARY, for providing such consistently helpful content. „
Dana Perino
Subscribing to COMMENTARY gives you full access to every article, every issue, every podcast—the latest stories as well as over 70 years of archives, the best that has been thought and written since 1945.
Join the intellectual club, today.
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The Year Knowledge Died
Noah Rothman 2016-11-04
Weaponized misinformation is hardly a new phenomenon. Its effect on the 2016 presidential race has, however, been exceptionally ominous. A campaign of deliberate deceptions involving but not limited to foreign entities seeking to disrupt the American political process to their own ends should be ringing alarm bells for patriotic American voters. But there’s no one left to ring them; the stewards of objective discourse have been discredited in the minds of those this campaign has targeted. The age in which there was universally understood and incontrovertible truth is over. The information age has given way to something more closely resembling its antonym.
Republicans know in the core of their being that the Russian government does not have America’s best interests in mind. They know, too, that the clandestine information laundering outfit WikiLeaks, to which the Russian government is inexorably tied, is an anti-American institution. They have outed American assets abroad, jeopardized their lives, and made it less likely that potential operatives will work with U.S. soldiers, contractors, or intelligence agents to advance U.S. objectives. They know all this, but they put it all aside this year because these enemies of the United States found common cause in a Republican political objective: defeating Hillary Clinton.
To that end, the Russian government has infiltrated the Democratic Party’s committees and, using WikiLeaks as a proxy, released reams of information from the private email accounts of Democratic officials and Clinton operatives. It appears that not all of that material is, however, genuine. The FBI and several American intelligence agencies are investigating the likelihood that some of those documents were altered to reflect poorly on Clinton, her associates, and Democratic elected officials.
As the election has grown closer and the effort to install a chaos agent like Donald Trump in the White House grows more desperate, so, too, has this misinformation campaign. “The Podestas’ “Spirit Cooking” dinner? It’s not what you think,” teased the WikiLeaks Twitter account, citing more emails stolen from the personal email account of the Clinton campaign’s chairman. “It’s blood, sperm, and breastmilk. But mostly blood.”
There is no evidence that the vast majority of the emails stolen from Democrats by foreign intelligence agencies are at all falsified, but the banality of most of those communications has led the conservative movement to go chasing waterfalls. The most amateurish falsified documents confirming the worst of the right’s biases against Clinton (like a childish “invoice” remunerating the Black Panthers and the “Sharia Law Center” for services rendered) are embraced by the right’s prominent voices and find their way on the airwaves.
This is the greatest tragedy of it all. Propagandistic information warfare campaigns are only as successful as the credulity of their targets. And this year, led by a man who has an unequivocally antagonistic relationship with the truth, the American right has been so willfully gullible that they gave rise to a new industry.
An investigation conducted by BuzzFeed News recently discovered that at least 140 pro-Trump “conservative news” websites being operated out of Veles, Macedonia by a group of teenagers and 20-somethings generates up to $5,000 per month from misinformation. By repackaging falsities purporting to reveal Bill Clinton’s sexual improprieties, Barack Obama’s foreign birth, and the anti-white racism of Clinton supporters, et cetera, these provocateurs have skillfully exploited the naiveté of the American political media consumer.
The profit model is ingenious. These stories become revenue generators by virtue of their organic sharing potential on social media outlets like Facebook, which has become the chief source of news for millions. The alacrity with which a lie that confirms the biases of Facebook-obsessed Trump supporting information consumers can spread is terrifying.
This phenomenon is not exclusive to the right. Nor is it unique to 2016. It is, however, a function of how distasteful objective truth has become to the Republican presidential nominee that some on the right have this year become hostile to objectivity. The polls are rigged; the election is fixed; the nation’s institutions are infested with traitors—this toxic paranoia has consequences. The irony of the right’s reliance on juicy and conspiratorial misinformation is that they have failed to build a credible case against Hillary Clinton. In chasing illusory silver bullets, the right only made one of the most disliked and scandal-plagued candidates to run for the White House stronger.
Information itself is suspect. Voters retreat into information fiefdoms, cloistered in small cliques on social media, comforted by the preferable delusions with which they are buffeted daily by sources both foreign and domestic. This is embittering, self-defeating, and alienating. And so they retreat deeper into Facebook and the lies they so covet. There are no more gatekeepers; no trusted sources of objective truth. This is a trend with dire consequences for representative democracy. The earliest of those consequences are already upon us.
Join us—you'll be in good company. Everyone worth reading is reading (and writing for) COMMENTARY:
“ There’s an enormous amount of shouting in the wild west of conservative media. That has its place, and is often a sign of the energy on the right. But amidst the cacophony there’s a special need for serious, considered, and compelling argument, presented in the hope of persuading, not just punishing. This is where COMMENTARY has always shined, perhaps more now than ever before. It aims to tackle the best arguments of its intellectual opponents, not just the easiest targets. It’s a journal I’ve read for nearly 30 years and I can’t think of a time when I’ve valued it more. „
Jonah Goldberg
“ There is more commentary in the world than ever before—whether in print, on the air, or on the Internet. But there is still a dearth of serious, informed commentary that reports, analyzes, and argues without ever stooping to name-calling or vitriol. If you further narrow down the segment of the commentariat that looks at the world from a conservative and Jewish perspective—well, you’re left with only one choice. The magazine you are now reading. COMMENTARY has changed over the years—for instance, it now publishes this blog—but one thing that has not changed is its steadfast commitment to providing the best analysis from the most informed writers of the most important ideas in the world, all written in clear prose that appeals to a general audience. There is nothing else like it. Never has been, never will be. „
Max Boot
“ Every month in print, and every day online, COMMENTARY somehow manages to pull off a dazzling balancing act: intellectual but unpretentious, serious but never boring, timely but not fleeting. On the leading questions of the day, it offers fresh and unfamiliar insights. And on the emerging questions that will dominate the years to come, it often sees things first and clearest. It is simply indispensable. „
Yuval Levin
“ In 1975 the Economist said of COMMENTARY: “The world's best magazine?” Take away the question mark and that statement still stands, thirty-eight years later. It's still the magazine America's liberals dread most, and the one America's enemies can't afford to ignore. It's the point of the conservative spear in the never-ending fight against the insanity of the left, whether it's in foreign policy or economic policy, social and cultural issues, or the arts—and no one does a better job standing up for Western culture and America's interests and those of its allies, including Israel. In fact, surviving the next three years—the Obama administration home stretch—and building the foundations for an American resurgence afterward will be impossible without reading COMMENTARY in print and online. „
Arthur Herman
“ For decades, COMMENTARY has opened its pages to the most serious uncompromising defense of the American creed—exemplar of ordered liberty at home, pillar of the free world abroad—in an era when it has been most under attack. From the exceptionally influential manifestoes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick to today's counterattack against the empowered advocates of the entitlement state and of American decline, COMMENTARY remains what it has been for more than a generation: fearless, informative, indispensable. „
Charles Krauthammer
“ COMMENTARY isn’t just an important magazine. It’s an indispensable one. It’s been indispensable for half a century, and it is today. It’s indispensable for understanding the moment we live in, and it’s indispensable for laying out a path forward. The challenges we confront are great, but COMMENTARY is used to facing grave challenges without fearful cowering or wishful thinking. So we need COMMENTARY today as much as we ever have, and we need it to be as strong as it’s ever been. „
William Kristol
“ COMMENTARY’s writing is predictably engaging and edgy, but its content is anything but homogeneous. Center-right perspectives characterize contributions, but not predictably so. Jewish affairs are thematic, but not always. Controversies of the day are the usual subjects, yet offered only with reflection well apart from the frenzied 24/7 news cycle. Intellectual honesty and analytical rigor characterize COMMENTARY and that is why even its political critics concede that they are still enlightened by the very arguments they often oppose. „
Victor Davis Hanson
“ COMMENTARY is an indispensable read on the Arab Spring, the Afghan war, the future of American conservatism, and all the other crazy stuff out there. But you already knew that. What I really love about it is that it’s a full-service operation, and its back-of-the-book guys—the fellows who write about music, literature, and all the things that make life worth living as the world goes to hell—are the best in the business. There is an observation in a Terry Teachout piece on the wonderful singer Nancy LaMott about “Moon River” that has stayed with me for almost two decades. I fished it out from the back of my mind to impress a gal at a Goldwater Institute reception only the other day, and it worked a treat. So thank you, COMMENTARY! Likewise, my differences with the arts’n’culture crew unsettle me far more than the geopolitical ones: reasonable people can disagree on how large a nuclear arsenal those wacky mullahs should be permitted to own, but I’m still agog at the great Andrew Ferguson’s mystifying praise for the New York Times obituaries page a couple of issues back. That’s COMMENTARY for you—provocative to the end, on matters large and small. In these turbulent and dismaying times, we can all use a huckleberry friend waiting round the bend, in the mailbox each month and on the computer screen every morning. For any journal of opinion, as “Moon River” teaches us, there’s such a lot of world to see. COMMENTARY sees most of it with piercing clarity: it can’t know all the answers, but it asks all the right questions, and with great farsightedness. It deserves your wholehearted support. „
Mark Steyn
“ COMMENTARY has played an invaluable role in American political discourse for decades, offering thoughtful analysis on issues rather than sound bites or bumper stickers. Especially when it comes to U.S. foreign and defense policy, COMMENTARY has time and time again been ahead of the crowd, anticipating trends and developments that others react to only after the fact. I can't imagine not being a COMMENTARY subscriber. „
John Bolton
“ In the midst of today’s political rancor, COMMENTARY Magazine provides a rare venue for thoughtful discussion. COMMENTARY’s talented writers provide insightful analysis of foreign affairs, domestic policy, and the politics of the day. COMMENTARY is a treasure not only for conservatives, but for anyone looking for in-depth exploration of the issues that influence America’s public dialogue and shape the nation’s future. „
Karl Rove
“ It's notorious, and true, that government officials hardly read anything. Memos, sure; nowadays, emails and tweets as well. But magazines? People barely have time to eat lunch or see their kids, so how can an intellectual monthly affect public affairs? The question is a good one. How did COMMENTARY do it? The answer is that officials, like all citizens following American foreign policy, need a way to understand the world around them. When prevailing theories fail, when conventional wisdom is clearly at variance with what they see before their eyes, the outcome for senators and congressmen and White House officials is what the shrinks call cognitive dissonance. They may say one thing but believe another, or simply be unable to square previous beliefs and policies with the clear effects of U.S. conduct. They've lost the ability to explain the world. And then came COMMENTARY, offering month after month of piercing, bracing analysis—and value judgments of right and wrong, and clear writing about American gains and losses. Here was an insistence on looking reality in the face. Here was plain argument, seeking no quarter intellectually and giving none. And it mattered. It shamed some people, and emboldened others; COMMENTARY demanded that we conform policy to the opportunities and dangers that really faced America. In years of confusion and obfuscation, that striking clarity changed policies, and changed American conduct, because it changed the way we understood the world. „
Elliott Abrams
“ For more than 60 years, COMMENTARY has been a go-to source on matters of the greatest importance to our nation and our civilization. Today, its full-throated defense of the United States and freedom is as eloquent as it was a half-century ago, and no less urgent. Issues of the day will change, news cycles come and go, but COMMENTARY remains an indispensable authority in the battle of ideas that help to shape our world. Its continued success is both an indication, and source, of the country’s intellectual health. „
Donald Rumsfeld
“ COMMENTARY is America's most important monthly journal of ideas, period. For nearly seven decades it has published the best and most exciting writing from the most important thinkers: Saul Bellow and Lionel Trilling; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick; Paul Johnson and Ruth Wisse; Cynthia Ozick and—of course—Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Is there anything remotely like it? No. It is the lamp by which America, and Israel, and the Jewish people, may find their way to safety. I'm proud to be published in its pages. „
Bret Stephens
“ Irving Kristol once called COMMENTARY the most influential magazine in Jewish history. Certainly, no publication had a greater influence on me as I evolved from adolescent reader (arguing over its articles with my father and older brother) into a “frequent contributor” who made it my intellectual home. The magazine did not exploit American freedom to escape from civilizing duty but rather activated the intertwined responsibilities of citizens and members of a group. American Jewry can boast of many contributions to the welfare of this country and the Jewish people, but few as fortifying as COMMENTARY. „
Ruth R. Wisse
“ Edward Shils noted that there are four means of education in the modern world: the classroom, bookstores (especially used-bookstores), the conversation of intelligent friends, and intellectual magazines. For me intellectual magazines were more important than any of the other three, and no magazine among them more so than COMMENTARY. I first happened on COMMENTARY as a student browsing in the University of Chicago Bookstore in 1957. I have not missed an issue since. The magazine spoke to my intellectual interests and passions, and still does. As a reader and as a writer, I should be lost without it. „
Joseph Epstein
“ Why does COMMENTARY matter? Since 1945, no other monthly magazine has so consistently published serious, provocative argument and analysis. No other monthly magazine has viewed America and the world through such a wide angle, encompassing economics, politics, society, culture, religion, and diplomacy. No other monthly magazine has published such a celebrated and wide-ranging list of editors and contributors. Cerebral, critical, and committed, the point of view found in its pages is as unique as it is formidable. And in a world of Iranian nukes, rising anti-Semitism, radical Islam, American disarmament, bipartisan neo-isolationism, and disintegrating institutions, reading COMMENTARY is more than a pleasure. It is a necessity. „
Matthew Continetti
“ COMMENTARY has long been an unmissable landmark on the American intellectual landscape. These days it shapes debate, propels argument, and explains society with renewed vigor and force. It is one of the small group of essential reads for anybody engaged in politics, Judaism, foreign policy, national manners, and morals. „
David Brooks
“ Anyone looking for a definitive exposition of a significant historical moment—whether UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, say, or the battles over "general education" at Harvard—has at his fingertips an inestimable gift: COMMENTARY's archives, which contain countless gems of reporting and analysis. Today's generation of COMMENTARY writers is building an equally invaluable store of knowledge for future researchers and scholars. „
Heather Mac Donald
“ I first subscribed to COMMENTARY in 1973, as a recovering liberal who had invested four years of my young life in writing speeches for a constellation of McGovernite candidates and office-holders. Living in Berkeley at the time, I relished COMMENTARY as a guilty pleasure, feeling grateful that the magazine arrived each month discreetly disguised in a plain, brown wrapper that concealed its suspiciously neo-conservative content. In the militantly leftist community in which I functioned forty years ago, receiving regular monthly installments of the most degrading porn would have produced far less embarrassment than my growing devotion to the persuasive prose of Norman Podhoretz and Co. Yes, my personal journey from left to right-center involved the usual biographical factors, including the three P’s: paychecks, parenthood, and prayer. Paychecks, because they arrived with shocking subtractions in the form of onerous and incomprehensible taxes; parenthood, because responsibility for a new generation forced a longer-term perspective; and prayer, because my own growing Jewish observance led to the conclusion that my “idealistic” ’60s generation, with all its narcissism and preening self-regard, might not provide life’s ultimate answers after all. Fortunately for me, reading COMMENTARY with near-religious regularity helped to organize my onrushing insights and experience into a more coherent world view. In a dark time in our nation’s history, while surviving (temporarily) in the most unhinged corner of the continent, this incomparable publication persuaded me that I wasn’t alone. „
Michael Medved
“ Just as one begins to despair of hearing the strong voice of sanity and courage, leavened with charm and good humor, in our modern polity, COMMENTARY arrives, and once a month one can be reminded that there are indeed some clear-sighted and articulate people who seem actively to enjoy the battle for truth. „
Andrew Roberts
“ In a time of passion, COMMENTARY champions reason. Against lies, COMMENTARY speaks for truth. Confronting those who would doom to death the Jewish people, COMMENTARY is a magnificent continuing achievement of American Jewish life. „
David Frum
“ COMMENTARY has become my new go-to website for news analysis because it is measured, substantive, thoughtful, and written for news consumers of all shapes and sizes. When juggling all the issues of the day and thinking them through, I find myself going back to COMMENTARY again and again to see if there’s anything more that can help me add the ingredients needed to finalize an argument. I like the mix of foreign policy and national political news, as well as the discussions about America’s place in the world and what it should be. I’m a print subscriber and a frequent website visitor, and I follow all of the writers on Twitter. Thank you, COMMENTARY, for providing such consistently helpful content. „
Dana Perino
Subscribing to COMMENTARY gives you full access to every article, every issue, every podcast—the latest stories as well as over 70 years of archives, the best that has been thought and written since 1945.
Join the intellectual club, today.
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Palestinians v. Mass Transit?
Jonathan S. Tobin 2016-11-04
The Palestinians already had a long list of grievances against the state of Israel. Some are understandable, albeit a function of the conflict they have refused to end. Some are not reasonable. Their objection to the expansion of Jerusalem’s light rail system falls into the latter category. The thinly-veiled threats of terror from Palestinian Authority officials, who claim that the extension of mass transit to the Old City and the Western Wall will “explode” Jerusalem, are not just irrational. They are yet another sign that the PA considers any excuse for exacerbating the conflict a higher priority than what is good for the city’s residents. It’s also a clear sign of their intentions for the city’s future, which ought to send a chill down the spines of those who imagine a two-state solution would bring peace.
The light rail project, which was begun in the 1990s, has been a remarkable success for Israel’s capital. It has made getting around the congested city more manageable and has, as The Tower noted in August, done much to improve the lives of both its Jewish and Arab population. Though Israel has been rightly criticized for not providing the same level of municipal services to Arab neighborhoods as to Jewish ones—an unfortunate truth that is, in part, the result of Arab nonparticipation in local government—the light rail is an example of a project that works for both communities. Even the left-wing Haaretz newspaper reported that it had contributed greatly to social cohesion and integration of Jews and Arabs in the city, as well as to the entire city’s economic well-being.
But that is perhaps exactly why Palestinian leaders have consistently opposed it. The light rail became the target of sabotage and arson from Palestinian terror groups specifically because it united the entire city. Even though affordable and convenient mass transit brought economic benefits to Arabs as well as Jews, the PA and Hamas regard it as a symbol of the “occupation” and a threat to efforts to re-partition the capital.
While their past efforts to undermine improvements to the city’s insufficient infrastructure contradicted their other complaints about the unequal resources devoted to Arab neighborhoods, the threats about the Western Wall expansion represent the kind of incitement that could lead to mass bloodshed.
The PA has sought to politicize improvements to the Old City before with results that were catastrophic. The opening of excavated ancient tunnels that led to the Wall in 1996 were used as a pretext for terrorism, which cost the lives of Jews as well as Arabs. The purposes of those protests, just as threats about a light rail extension to the Old City (which would be constructed in such a manner as to do nothing to the Old City Walls and any other historic buildings or homes) was not to highlight discrimination or even high-handed behavior by the Israelis toward Arabs. Rather, the point is to resist anything that makes permanent both the Jewish presence there or the city’s unity. The attempt to depict mass transit as yet another mythical threat to the mosques on the Temple Mount is a canard aimed at promoting religious hatred and violence.
Should the Palestinians ever relent from the refusal to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, it is possible a deal might allow them to gain control of Jerusalem’s Arab-majority neighborhoods. But even under those circumstances—which would be difficult, if not impossible, to manage even with the best of wills on both sides—the light rail system would, in theory, remain to serve all of the city’s people and to ensure that peace could work to enable the city to continue to thrive.
But that is not part of the Palestinian vision for the future. At a minimum, they clearly hope for a return to the situation that existed between 1949 and 1967 when the city was divided between the Western portion controlled by Israel and an Eastern sector illegally occupied by Jordan. During those years, the city was not only blighted by a wall between the two sides and a dangerous no man’s land on either side of the armistice line. Jews were also prohibited from entering the Old City and from praying at the Wall. The light rail ensures that horrible vision would never recur. But the real Palestinian goal, as is evident by their continual refusal to make peace, is to deny Jewish sovereignty in any portion of Jerusalem.
No one who loves Jerusalem–be they Jew, Christian or Muslim–would think of blowing it up under any circumstances, let alone as a protest against an effort to make it a better place to live. Opposition to the light rail system is yet one more indication that Palestinians are unreconciled to coexistence, let alone a two-state solution.
Join us—you'll be in good company. Everyone worth reading is reading (and writing for) COMMENTARY:
“ There’s an enormous amount of shouting in the wild west of conservative media. That has its place, and is often a sign of the energy on the right. But amidst the cacophony there’s a special need for serious, considered, and compelling argument, presented in the hope of persuading, not just punishing. This is where COMMENTARY has always shined, perhaps more now than ever before. It aims to tackle the best arguments of its intellectual opponents, not just the easiest targets. It’s a journal I’ve read for nearly 30 years and I can’t think of a time when I’ve valued it more. „
Jonah Goldberg
“ There is more commentary in the world than ever before—whether in print, on the air, or on the Internet. But there is still a dearth of serious, informed commentary that reports, analyzes, and argues without ever stooping to name-calling or vitriol. If you further narrow down the segment of the commentariat that looks at the world from a conservative and Jewish perspective—well, you’re left with only one choice. The magazine you are now reading. COMMENTARY has changed over the years—for instance, it now publishes this blog—but one thing that has not changed is its steadfast commitment to providing the best analysis from the most informed writers of the most important ideas in the world, all written in clear prose that appeals to a general audience. There is nothing else like it. Never has been, never will be. „
Max Boot
“ Every month in print, and every day online, COMMENTARY somehow manages to pull off a dazzling balancing act: intellectual but unpretentious, serious but never boring, timely but not fleeting. On the leading questions of the day, it offers fresh and unfamiliar insights. And on the emerging questions that will dominate the years to come, it often sees things first and clearest. It is simply indispensable. „
Yuval Levin
“ In 1975 the Economist said of COMMENTARY: “The world's best magazine?” Take away the question mark and that statement still stands, thirty-eight years later. It's still the magazine America's liberals dread most, and the one America's enemies can't afford to ignore. It's the point of the conservative spear in the never-ending fight against the insanity of the left, whether it's in foreign policy or economic policy, social and cultural issues, or the arts—and no one does a better job standing up for Western culture and America's interests and those of its allies, including Israel. In fact, surviving the next three years—the Obama administration home stretch—and building the foundations for an American resurgence afterward will be impossible without reading COMMENTARY in print and online. „
Arthur Herman
“ For decades, COMMENTARY has opened its pages to the most serious uncompromising defense of the American creed—exemplar of ordered liberty at home, pillar of the free world abroad—in an era when it has been most under attack. From the exceptionally influential manifestoes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick to today's counterattack against the empowered advocates of the entitlement state and of American decline, COMMENTARY remains what it has been for more than a generation: fearless, informative, indispensable. „
Charles Krauthammer
“ COMMENTARY isn’t just an important magazine. It’s an indispensable one. It’s been indispensable for half a century, and it is today. It’s indispensable for understanding the moment we live in, and it’s indispensable for laying out a path forward. The challenges we confront are great, but COMMENTARY is used to facing grave challenges without fearful cowering or wishful thinking. So we need COMMENTARY today as much as we ever have, and we need it to be as strong as it’s ever been. „
William Kristol
“ COMMENTARY’s writing is predictably engaging and edgy, but its content is anything but homogeneous. Center-right perspectives characterize contributions, but not predictably so. Jewish affairs are thematic, but not always. Controversies of the day are the usual subjects, yet offered only with reflection well apart from the frenzied 24/7 news cycle. Intellectual honesty and analytical rigor characterize COMMENTARY and that is why even its political critics concede that they are still enlightened by the very arguments they often oppose. „
Victor Davis Hanson
“ COMMENTARY is an indispensable read on the Arab Spring, the Afghan war, the future of American conservatism, and all the other crazy stuff out there. But you already knew that. What I really love about it is that it’s a full-service operation, and its back-of-the-book guys—the fellows who write about music, literature, and all the things that make life worth living as the world goes to hell—are the best in the business. There is an observation in a Terry Teachout piece on the wonderful singer Nancy LaMott about “Moon River” that has stayed with me for almost two decades. I fished it out from the back of my mind to impress a gal at a Goldwater Institute reception only the other day, and it worked a treat. So thank you, COMMENTARY! Likewise, my differences with the arts’n’culture crew unsettle me far more than the geopolitical ones: reasonable people can disagree on how large a nuclear arsenal those wacky mullahs should be permitted to own, but I’m still agog at the great Andrew Ferguson’s mystifying praise for the New York Times obituaries page a couple of issues back. That’s COMMENTARY for you—provocative to the end, on matters large and small. In these turbulent and dismaying times, we can all use a huckleberry friend waiting round the bend, in the mailbox each month and on the computer screen every morning. For any journal of opinion, as “Moon River” teaches us, there’s such a lot of world to see. COMMENTARY sees most of it with piercing clarity: it can’t know all the answers, but it asks all the right questions, and with great farsightedness. It deserves your wholehearted support. „
Mark Steyn
“ COMMENTARY has played an invaluable role in American political discourse for decades, offering thoughtful analysis on issues rather than sound bites or bumper stickers. Especially when it comes to U.S. foreign and defense policy, COMMENTARY has time and time again been ahead of the crowd, anticipating trends and developments that others react to only after the fact. I can't imagine not being a COMMENTARY subscriber. „
John Bolton
“ In the midst of today’s political rancor, COMMENTARY Magazine provides a rare venue for thoughtful discussion. COMMENTARY’s talented writers provide insightful analysis of foreign affairs, domestic policy, and the politics of the day. COMMENTARY is a treasure not only for conservatives, but for anyone looking for in-depth exploration of the issues that influence America’s public dialogue and shape the nation’s future. „
Karl Rove
“ It's notorious, and true, that government officials hardly read anything. Memos, sure; nowadays, emails and tweets as well. But magazines? People barely have time to eat lunch or see their kids, so how can an intellectual monthly affect public affairs? The question is a good one. How did COMMENTARY do it? The answer is that officials, like all citizens following American foreign policy, need a way to understand the world around them. When prevailing theories fail, when conventional wisdom is clearly at variance with what they see before their eyes, the outcome for senators and congressmen and White House officials is what the shrinks call cognitive dissonance. They may say one thing but believe another, or simply be unable to square previous beliefs and policies with the clear effects of U.S. conduct. They've lost the ability to explain the world. And then came COMMENTARY, offering month after month of piercing, bracing analysis—and value judgments of right and wrong, and clear writing about American gains and losses. Here was an insistence on looking reality in the face. Here was plain argument, seeking no quarter intellectually and giving none. And it mattered. It shamed some people, and emboldened others; COMMENTARY demanded that we conform policy to the opportunities and dangers that really faced America. In years of confusion and obfuscation, that striking clarity changed policies, and changed American conduct, because it changed the way we understood the world. „
Elliott Abrams
“ For more than 60 years, COMMENTARY has been a go-to source on matters of the greatest importance to our nation and our civilization. Today, its full-throated defense of the United States and freedom is as eloquent as it was a half-century ago, and no less urgent. Issues of the day will change, news cycles come and go, but COMMENTARY remains an indispensable authority in the battle of ideas that help to shape our world. Its continued success is both an indication, and source, of the country’s intellectual health. „
Donald Rumsfeld
“ COMMENTARY is America's most important monthly journal of ideas, period. For nearly seven decades it has published the best and most exciting writing from the most important thinkers: Saul Bellow and Lionel Trilling; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick; Paul Johnson and Ruth Wisse; Cynthia Ozick and—of course—Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Is there anything remotely like it? No. It is the lamp by which America, and Israel, and the Jewish people, may find their way to safety. I'm proud to be published in its pages. „
Bret Stephens
“ Irving Kristol once called COMMENTARY the most influential magazine in Jewish history. Certainly, no publication had a greater influence on me as I evolved from adolescent reader (arguing over its articles with my father and older brother) into a “frequent contributor” who made it my intellectual home. The magazine did not exploit American freedom to escape from civilizing duty but rather activated the intertwined responsibilities of citizens and members of a group. American Jewry can boast of many contributions to the welfare of this country and the Jewish people, but few as fortifying as COMMENTARY. „
Ruth R. Wisse
“ Edward Shils noted that there are four means of education in the modern world: the classroom, bookstores (especially used-bookstores), the conversation of intelligent friends, and intellectual magazines. For me intellectual magazines were more important than any of the other three, and no magazine among them more so than COMMENTARY. I first happened on COMMENTARY as a student browsing in the University of Chicago Bookstore in 1957. I have not missed an issue since. The magazine spoke to my intellectual interests and passions, and still does. As a reader and as a writer, I should be lost without it. „
Joseph Epstein
“ Why does COMMENTARY matter? Since 1945, no other monthly magazine has so consistently published serious, provocative argument and analysis. No other monthly magazine has viewed America and the world through such a wide angle, encompassing economics, politics, society, culture, religion, and diplomacy. No other monthly magazine has published such a celebrated and wide-ranging list of editors and contributors. Cerebral, critical, and committed, the point of view found in its pages is as unique as it is formidable. And in a world of Iranian nukes, rising anti-Semitism, radical Islam, American disarmament, bipartisan neo-isolationism, and disintegrating institutions, reading COMMENTARY is more than a pleasure. It is a necessity. „
Matthew Continetti
“ COMMENTARY has long been an unmissable landmark on the American intellectual landscape. These days it shapes debate, propels argument, and explains society with renewed vigor and force. It is one of the small group of essential reads for anybody engaged in politics, Judaism, foreign policy, national manners, and morals. „
David Brooks
“ Anyone looking for a definitive exposition of a significant historical moment—whether UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, say, or the battles over "general education" at Harvard—has at his fingertips an inestimable gift: COMMENTARY's archives, which contain countless gems of reporting and analysis. Today's generation of COMMENTARY writers is building an equally invaluable store of knowledge for future researchers and scholars. „
Heather Mac Donald
“ I first subscribed to COMMENTARY in 1973, as a recovering liberal who had invested four years of my young life in writing speeches for a constellation of McGovernite candidates and office-holders. Living in Berkeley at the time, I relished COMMENTARY as a guilty pleasure, feeling grateful that the magazine arrived each month discreetly disguised in a plain, brown wrapper that concealed its suspiciously neo-conservative content. In the militantly leftist community in which I functioned forty years ago, receiving regular monthly installments of the most degrading porn would have produced far less embarrassment than my growing devotion to the persuasive prose of Norman Podhoretz and Co. Yes, my personal journey from left to right-center involved the usual biographical factors, including the three P’s: paychecks, parenthood, and prayer. Paychecks, because they arrived with shocking subtractions in the form of onerous and incomprehensible taxes; parenthood, because responsibility for a new generation forced a longer-term perspective; and prayer, because my own growing Jewish observance led to the conclusion that my “idealistic” ’60s generation, with all its narcissism and preening self-regard, might not provide life’s ultimate answers after all. Fortunately for me, reading COMMENTARY with near-religious regularity helped to organize my onrushing insights and experience into a more coherent world view. In a dark time in our nation’s history, while surviving (temporarily) in the most unhinged corner of the continent, this incomparable publication persuaded me that I wasn’t alone. „
Michael Medved
“ Just as one begins to despair of hearing the strong voice of sanity and courage, leavened with charm and good humor, in our modern polity, COMMENTARY arrives, and once a month one can be reminded that there are indeed some clear-sighted and articulate people who seem actively to enjoy the battle for truth. „
Andrew Roberts
“ In a time of passion, COMMENTARY champions reason. Against lies, COMMENTARY speaks for truth. Confronting those who would doom to death the Jewish people, COMMENTARY is a magnificent continuing achievement of American Jewish life. „
David Frum
“ COMMENTARY has become my new go-to website for news analysis because it is measured, substantive, thoughtful, and written for news consumers of all shapes and sizes. When juggling all the issues of the day and thinking them through, I find myself going back to COMMENTARY again and again to see if there’s anything more that can help me add the ingredients needed to finalize an argument. I like the mix of foreign policy and national political news, as well as the discussions about America’s place in the world and what it should be. I’m a print subscriber and a frequent website visitor, and I follow all of the writers on Twitter. Thank you, COMMENTARY, for providing such consistently helpful content. „
Dana Perino
Subscribing to COMMENTARY gives you full access to every article, every issue, every podcast—the latest stories as well as over 70 years of archives, the best that has been thought and written since 1945.
Join the intellectual club, today.