Articles by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
William Casey was my lawyer. One day I came into my office and found a large man sitting on my desk. I greeted him amiably, and he greeted me amiably. Yet, he was still siting on my desk. At some point in our meeting we settled into a more conventional seating arrangement, and Bill began to tell me about the world as he analyzed it at the time, the late 1970s. I then made two decisions. If Bill agreed to be my lawyer I could take on anyone. What is more, he knew prodigious amounts about the world. He had brought charts and maps. He would be my foreign policy adviser.
Published
April 17, 2018
Shares The markets are on edge. Yet, then again, inflation is low, employment is high — in the case of blacks and Latinos historically high — and growth is healthy and looking to become very healthy. Dare we say it, robust? The reason for the edginess in the markets is that President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on Communist China and threatens to impose still more tariffs. There is talk of a trade war. That should worry any champion of free markets.
Published
April 10, 2018
Shares There have been some very auspicious developments in human evolutionary studies that ought to allow us a welcome respite from my usual political ramblings in this space.
Published
April 3, 2018
Shares What passes for the current wisdom today contains a great deal of solemn slop. Yet there are some solemnities in the current wisdom that one assumes are legitimate. For instance, it is said that today partisanship is more intense than it has been since — I suppose — the Civil War, or at least since the days of Sen. Joe McCarthy. Americans on the left, the right, and those treading water in the middle cannot agree on anything. Well, I would have said this was a bit far-fetched until last week. That was when I experienced partisanship for myself.
Published
March 27, 2018
Shares Last week, if you follow the soap opera drama that the mainstream media has orchestrated against the Trump administration, you got your money's worth. As the week progressed Andrew McCabe, the departing deputy FBI director, was almost frantic. He was running from office to office at the Justice Department in a frenzy to save his pension before retiring.
Published
March 20, 2018
Shares There is a growing debate on the left over whose side to take in the simmering controversy between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton or the Clintons (plural), depending on how long Hillary remains loyal to Bill or, come to think of it, how long Bill remains loyal to Hillary. Truth be known, she might be in even hotter water than Bill at this moment.
Published
March 13, 2018
Shares President Donald Trump has had a splendid first year in office. He has the economy moving again and at a healthy pace, 2.6 percent in the most recent quarter. Unemployment is down, the stock market is up and the economic signs are mostly healthy.
Published
March 6, 2018
Shares It has been at least 10 years since I stopped by American conservatism's largest and gaudiest national jamboree, the Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC.
Published
February 27, 2018
Shares Recently a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in league with a professor at the University of San Diego Law School made bold to write an essay for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her name is Amy Wax, and I have no idea what her politics might be. That she has gained tenure at Penn suggests that she is a liberal, but that is about all I know about her. If she were teaching when I was in college back in the 1960s she almost certainly would have been a liberal. There were very few conservatives back then.
Published
February 20, 2018
Shares For years I have been saying that the Clintons lie when they do not have to, and they tell a gigantic whopper when a little white lie would be perfectly adequate. This time-honored observation explains many of their past run-ins with the law.
Published
February 13, 2018
Shares I have never met the pope, but I have followed his activities sedulously, as might be expected of a Roman Catholic. Pope Francis is an agent for change in his 2,000-year-old church, change in what Catholics believe and change in how they worship. Notwithstanding my never having met him, my guess is that he was a bit embarrassed by a decision announced recently by the Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. The Episcopalians got the jump on him in the realm of change.
Published
February 6, 2018
Shares "Scandalous" — that is the name that Fox News has chosen for a multipart documentary that Fox is airing on Sunday evenings. If you missed it this week, watch it in the weeks to come. It promises a lot of har-hars.
Published
January 30, 2018
Shares As the Democrats grow increasingly ravenous to have a shot at the presidency of President Donald Trump they are beginning to train their guns on the front-runners for the nomination.
Published
January 23, 2018
Shares Last week the headlines should have abounded with the year's good news. It was the economy: GDP up some 3 percent and for the last quarter nearly 4 percent, unemployment down to a 17-year low and black unemployment at the lowest level since such statistics were compiled. The stock market was soaring, up some 42 percent since Donald Trump was elected, and inflation was low. It was the best Christmas season in years.
Published
January 16, 2018
Shares Of all the Judeo-Christian virtues, the one that utterly baffles me is humility.
Published
January 9, 2018
Shares My friend and colleague, Donald Rieck, died late last week in an automobile accident. He leaves two charming and very young children. He also leaves many friends throughout the conservative movement, and shocked colleagues at The American Spectator.
Published
January 2, 2018
Shares Naples — Here I am in Naples, Florida ending the year in the sun and actually coterminous with a golf course. I, of course, will not indulge in the sport, for I find it too leisurely. Actually I do not even consider it a sport. I am in agreement with my old friend, the great basketball coach Bob Knight.
Published
December 26, 2017
Shares 'It's the economy stupid," as we used to say back in the good old days. The good old days being the 1990s when the president of the United States could molest women in the White House during business hours with impunity.
Published
December 19, 2017
Shares As I ponder the lengthening list of alleged sexual offenders drawn from Hollywood, the arts, the media and politics, I am moved to wonder why the overwhelming majority of the accused are prominent luminaries of the left. Those accused on the right claim utter innocence, including Bill O'Reilly, who nonetheless paid out a fortune to accusers — go "figah," as they say in Brooklyn. At any rate, the lefties constitute the growing multitude.
Published
December 12, 2017
Shares Last week we discovered that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn lied to the FBI about the import of what he told them regarding his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Yet Mr. Flynn once served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the presidency of Barack Obama. Why would he lie to the FBI about what passed between him and Mr. Kislyak? Had he forgotten that, for a certitude, the conversation of a Russian ambassador was being recorded secretly by American intelligence agencies? Moreover, when he was being interviewed by the FBI, why did he not bring with him a lawyer? When I was being interviewed by the FBI about my perfidious Arkansas Project, I most certainly brought a lawyer with me, and it helped that my lawyer looked like he once worked for Don Corleone. Thinking back on it, I should have brought two lawyers.
Published
December 5, 2017
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