R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.

TYRRELL: Fidel is forever

This week marks the 52nd anniversary of Fidel Castro's arrival to his Cuban throne. I cannot wait to see how it will be solemnized. Will little children appear before Fidel throwing flowers? They better not throw them too hard. He is pretty frail. Will there be a military parade? If there is, where will they come up with the gasoline? There is hardly enough in the country for the Communist Party leaders' limousines. What will they be celebrating? By now, everyone knows that the revolution was a stupendous bust starting about 51 years ago.

January 3, 2011

TYRRELL: An aye for bigotry

The big news this week is that in the Senate, the Democrats have joined with the Republicans to pass tax relief contained in an extension of the hated George W. Bush tax cuts. Certainly, by early next week, the House of Representatives will have done the same. Thus, the burden overhanging the economy of a huge tax increase is eliminated for two years. After that, it sounds as if our president, if he still is our president, threatens to raise taxes. Somehow, he came around to accepting the argument that one does not raise taxes in a recession. A few months back, it appeared that in the unlikely event that senators and House members extended the hated Bush tax cuts, our president would veto the bill. Now he has accepted it. Has he learned anything?

December 15, 2010

TYRRELL: New label for liberals

The Great Denial continues. The liberals continue to labor under the assumption that nothing very bad happened in early November. They are still supreme. The columnists go on as though nothing is amiss. This week, E.J. Dionne consulted with three defeated congressmen whose advice he passed on to President Obama on how to succeed during the next two years. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi continues as though she is speaker for life, though she probably is the last Democrat to hold the post for a generation. Mental illness can be amusing.

December 8, 2010

TYRRELL: I was wrong

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" So said John Maynard Keynes when a dearly held belief of his was confronted by new facts. He changed his mind and was not ashamed. I am an extreme empiricist. Show me the facts, and I shall make up my mind. Show me the new facts, and I shall change my mind.

November 24, 2010

TYRRELL: Pat me, please

I blame Drudge! Yes, I blame the Drudge Report for this insane controversy about the use of high-tech body scanners and "pat-downs" at airport security zones.

November 18, 2010

TYRRELL: Hand-wringing journalism

The other day I sat down to breakfast. It was a normal day. Five daily newspapers were laid out before me. As I went over the front pages, I downed orange juice and a bowl of oatmeal powdered with brown sugar and flaxseed. Then I went off to my library with the newspapers and a cup of coffee. By then, incidentally, I was revolted.

November 11, 2010

TYRRELL: Psychology of defeated Democrats

Liberals are having a difficult time explaining what happened to them on Election Day. Actually, it appears that many of them do not know what happened to them. They are in denial.

November 4, 2010

TYRRELL: The coming struggle

There is an axiom that is adhered to by conservative journalists that explains at least some of what for liberals is this inexplicable election. It is the Taranto Principle. Coined by the inimitable James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal, the Taranto Principle encourages the worst in liberals by reporting politics with a slavish bias. The conservatives can do nothing right. The liberals can do nothing wrong, and besides, they are always more winsome, more intelligent and moreover, they have an aesthetic and philosophical side.

October 27, 2010

TYRRELL: The god that failed

The Democrats are about to be beaten by something they do not in their heart of hearts think exists - a huge national majority. At this late hour, with the storm clouds gathering and the livestock getting restless, they see only sunshine. Yes, there is "foreign money" out there. Yes, the media have bungled broadcasting the purity of the Democratic message. And naturally, angry voices can be heard. Yet surely there is no majority gathering to unseat the party of decency and good deeds. Well, there is, and it is nothing like the Democrats describe it.

October 20, 2010

TYRRELL: Foreign money?

OK, OK. It is only a satire. I am not really running for mayor of Chicago, but I do have something in common with someone who is running for mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel. Neither I nor Rahm qualifies for residency in Chicago, though my family traces its roots in the city back to the 19th century, and I was at least born in Chicago. If Rahm bullies his way to residency, Chicago's big shoulders are not what they once were. He gave no thought to running until a few weeks back, when Mayor Richard M. Daley announced his retirement, and now Rahm has no place to live.

October 13, 2010

TYRRELL: With Rahm in the Windy City

On Sunday, Rahm Emanuel declared his candidacy for mayor of Chicago. Instantaneously, he had problems with his campaign, not the least of

October 7, 2010

TYRRELL: Fair and foul in the First State

The race for the United States Senate in Delaware is a splendid example of what is called kultursmog, and the smog spreads untreated. One candidate, the conservative, has been slandered repeatedly, and no one objects, not even most conservatives. The liberal opposing her has been given the proverbial free ride, even by most conservatives. Yet he is a fruitcake. She "dabbled" in witchcraft in high school, she tells us. He may have studied it in grad school along with other pseudo-studies. Yet he is stonewalling, while the press pillories her. No one objects save talk radio.

September 29, 2010

The other Senate candidate

Christine O'Donnell, the Tea Party-supported Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware, has no secrets. The press even has gone back to her high school years and found that she "dabbled" in witchcraft. But now Jeffrey Lord of the American Spectator has been scrutinizing her opponent, Democratic candidate Chris Coons. Mr. Lord did not have to go back to Mr. Coons' high school days. He found quite a lot in Mr. Coons' infatuation with Marxism, starting in college. Mr. Coons found Marx about the time that large numbers of Marxist polls behind the Iron Curtain gave him up. By the 1990s, even jailers and torturers were forsaking old Karl, but not Mr. Coons.

September 23, 2010

TYRRELL: Boehner blew it

Did my ears deceive me? Did I hear House Minority Leader John Boehner say on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday: "If the only option I have is to vote for those at 250 or below, of course I'm going to do that." He was referring to voting for extending the Bush tax cuts to those making less than $250,000 a year. And he was referring to the issue when there is a building momentum to keep the tax cuts for everyone in an era of fragile economic growth and 9.6 percent unemployment. Even some Democrats are willing to keep the tax cuts, but Mr. Boehner just made it difficult for them.

September 16, 2010

TYRRELL: I like Tony Blair

I like Tony Blair. The left is always lecturing us conservatives on moderation. It would do us good, they say. If only we were moderate, we might win the fall elections. Yet, we are likely to go for people like Joe Miller in Alaska and the dreaded Sharron Angle in Nevada, and we are going to get clobbered, or at least not win as thumpingly as expected.

September 7, 2010

TYRRELL: Field of study or field of play?

What is your vision of a university? Is it the classic vision with profs walking the ivy-lined pathways, their books under their arms? Perhaps they wear tweed coats and smoke pipes - not the lady profs, but the men. The ladies dress accordingly, and maybe they smoke pipes. All pore over their books for hours and impart their knowledge to a select body of students.

September 1, 2010

TYRRELL: Holes for radicals

They are beginning to die out, or at least retire. So long, suckers. Surely the Clintons, Sen. Jean-Francois Kerry, Al Gore and dozens of others who presented themselves as reasonable alternatives to the radicals of the 1960s thought they were suckers. I thought about all of them this week as problems mounted for Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks thief.

August 25, 2010

TYRRELL: Our incompetent president

It is becoming apparent for all to see that a man who made his name as a community organizer does not have the skills to be president of these United States. Maybe he could develop the requisite skills as a governor. Possibly he could develop such skills were he to sit in the Senate for a couple of terms. Yet there are delicate sensitivities, the ability to listen, to stick by your guns, occasionally to remain reticent. These are the fundamentals of a leader, and President Obama has demonstrated that he lacks all of them, most notably reticence. I think it is clear even to official Washington that Mr. Obama is the worst president of modern times. President Jimmy Carter is redeemed.

August 18, 2010

TYRRELL: Paul Krugman, comic genius

The other day, New York Times columnist (and Nobel laureate, though he has yet to be found guilty of plagiarism or fabrication) Paul Krugman indulged in one of my favorite pastimes. He engaged in vituperation. He affected a superior pose and lamented that so many of the other superior types had been taken in by mere hucksters. Alas.

August 11, 2010

TYRRELL: No mosque

There is an awful lot of blowzy thought swirling around the proposed mosque to be raised two blocks from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. Frankly, I doubt that at any other time in our history, such a debate would be taking place. People would know that when thugs intoning "Allahu Akbar" have slaughtered hundreds of innocent Americans on American soil, it is inappropriate to raise a mosque nearby.

August 4, 2010