February 18, 2024

Vladimir Putin: Bad Historian

As someone who’s lived in both Russia and Ukraine, who speaks Russian and Ukrainian, and is versed in their histories, I’ve been bombarded with questions about Putin’s recent interview with Tucker Carlson.  It prompted me ...

December 31, 2023

Obama's vision of the end of white civilization

In Leave the World Behind, the scene with crashed white Teslas makes no technical sense, but it makes perfect sense as a metaphor for the end of technologically driven white civilization.  As such, it may be a key to understanding this enti...

December 27, 2023

A Conspiracy of Trolls

Ah, the grand old art of making people hate one another.  It’s as easy as telling Group A that Group B think they’re a bunch of lowbrows who wouldn’t know culture if it came up and bit them on their mass-market jeans....

March 19, 2022

Liberals, Conservatives, and Russia: The Drama Triangle

With friends like liberal media, who needs enemies? Their virtue signaling and political spin over Ukraine is so revolting that if I didn't know better, I'd turn against Ukraine like so many conservative commentators already have. But having ...

March 4, 2022

About Those 'Neo-Nazis' in Ukraine...

Russian propaganda efforts have redoubled since Putin launched its aggression against Ukraine a week ago.  Suddenly, a host of stories has appeared in conservative media that try to rally support for Vladimir Putin because he is allegedly f...

December 28, 2021

What's your answer to 'This is America, speak English'? Here's mine.

I'm signed up with a worldwide questions-and-answers board named Quora, which sends me daily digests of its content in the categories I've chosen: history, culture, and languages.  Most of the time, the posts are informative and a p...

September 23, 2021

Freedom is the right to inequality, or an equal right to be unequal

Today I came across this quote: "Freedom is the right to inequality." —Nikolai Berdyaev, a Russian Christian philosopher (1874–1948) The quote was accompanied by an anonymous comment in Russian, which I'd like t...

March 28, 2016

Some of my best friends are Trump supporters

Trump supporters are, perhaps, the only group of voters in this nation's history who have been so viciously and consistently maligned, and in such a coordinated manner, by both political parties. At the same time, not much is known about them, de...

March 15, 2016

Why socialists need capitalism

Have you heard of the shocking and terrifying diaper gap that is now dividing this nation? It is said to be so dire that the White House is urging immediate government assistance to buy baby diapers. Philosophically, this puts disposable plastic cons...

March 12, 2015

Killing Nemtsov: Predicted by Putin, Carried Out by the Motherland

Editor's note: This article is part two of a series.  Part one is here. In his book America on Six Rubles a Day, Yakov Smirnoff wrote that in Soviet Russia, they didn't report plane crashes.  They would instead build an airfield ...

March 11, 2015

Who Killed Boris Nemtsov: The Chaff vs. the Wheat

He ruffled too many feathers, made too many powerful enemies, and when the media painted him as a fifth columnist and a traitor, he didn't crawl on his knees begging forgiveness but carried on with his head held high. That's not how you win o...

December 30, 2014

Russia Denies Shooting down Santa's Sleigh, Blames Western Propaganda

This isn't satire and I'm not making this up. When an obscure American satirical blog, The Daily Currant, posted a funny spoof titled, "Russia Shoots Down Santa's Sleigh Near North Pole", the story quickly became viral on the Ru...

October 7, 2014

'Ebola in America' and other fake problems our leaders love to fight

Yulia Latynina is one of Russia's most prominent journalists and critics of Putin's government. She is a columnist for Novaya Gazeta and The Moscow Times, as well as a popular talk show host at the Echo of Moscow radio station. In 2008, Latyn...

August 29, 2014

Russia Complains about Mocking Soviet Monuments!

On August 19 The Moscow Times reported about Russia's demand that Bulgaria try harder to prevent vandalism of Soviet-era monuments, after yet another monument to Soviet troops in Sofia was spray-painted. The Russian Embassy in Bulga...

August 29, 2014

Defeat ISIS in the comfort of your own home

President Obama's White House statement on Aug. 28 was clear on two things: "ISIS must be defeated" and "we don't have a strategy yet." With this in mind, let me offer a modest proposal that requires no military escalat...

August 11, 2014

A children's problem to test the aptitude of politicians

There is a reason why the question below, from a Hong Kong elementary school test, is making the rounds on the internet.  Most adults can't solve it – not for want of math skills, but because most of them have lost the child's abil...

February 19, 2014

Conservatives Seize the Sub Par Counter-Culture

According to Breitbart.com, dozens of posters of President Obama with a golf club and a caption "Sub Par" have been spotted outside the PGA's golf tournament near the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, as well as near Pacific Palisades and Santa Mo...

May 9, 2013

Ariel Castro, Cleveland Kidnapper, Is a Registered Democrat

According to voter registration records, Ariel Castro, the Cleveland kidnapper, is a registered Democrat.  He was also the alleged leader among the three Castro brothers, who were arrested this week, and the owner of the house at 2207 Seymour...

March 28, 2013

Candidate Promises Statue of Free Cheese in Norman, OK

If David Kempf wins the mayoral race on April 2, a bronze statue of Free Cheese based on the People's Cube design is going to be built in Oklahoma's third largest city, Norman.  There's no reason why he shouldn't, since he just received our offi...

January 23, 2013

The Collectivist Mind Game, Part 3: Demonizing Human Nature

Part 1: Demonizing the Non-Compliant Part 2: Demonizing the Opposition If Robert Heinlein were to write The Moon today (see Part 1), there's no doubt his notion of the future oppressive global government on Earth would be very different.  With s...

January 22, 2013

The Collectivist Mind Game, Part 2: Demonizing the Opposition

Part 1: Demonizing the Non-Compliant Most modern-day leftists in Western countries have abandoned the idea of a violent revolution, having replaced it with "the long march through the institutions" as part of the culture war to transform the society ...

January 21, 2013

The Collectivist Mind Game, Part 1: Demonizing the Non-Compliant

In the libertarian sci-fi classic, "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress," Robert A. Heinlein describes a successful revolution of the individualistic, free-market-oriented residents of the Moon against the Earth's tyrannical big government.  The ins an...

January 11, 2013

Pravda, Guns, and America

Has Pravda gone anti-Communist, as many of its opinion pieces suggest? First, let's just say that the hard-copy version is not the same as its digital namesake.  The original newspaper had been started by Lenin in 1912 and shut down by Yeltsin ...

January 2, 2013

The Socialist Mind Game: A Brief Manual

We are being played; it's time we learned the game. Conservatives have their Constitution.  Progressives have their Narrative.  The current battle for America is between these two concepts, and each side uses different rules to fight it. On...

October 22, 2012

'Women in Binders' and the Fantasies of the Left

Why has the phrase "binders full of women" captured the progressive imagination more than any other of the hundreds exchanged between Romney and Obama during the second presidential debate? The townhall event wasn't even over, and already the interne...

August 5, 2012

Economic Inequality is a Small Price to Pay for Staying Human

To paraphrase Baudelaire, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world of the moral superiority of collectivism.  According to Ayn Rand, if we don't convince the world otherwise, nothing else will work.  Our greatest al...

July 24, 2012

The Theater Shooter Is Caught, but the Real Joker Keeps Laughing

Why is it that in the previous decades, when life was tougher, weapons were widespread, and the ratio of mental disorders was presumably the same, mass shootings were unheard of?  Some would say that those people had not yet been corrupted by mo...

April 27, 2012

If Only the Romans had the EPA to Crucify the Dissenters

A recently surfaced video of an EPA official's rant confirms what many of us already knew about the Obama Administration: they imagine themselves to be the rulers of conquered territories populated by restless barbarians who must be subjugated at any...

April 22, 2009

A Lenin's Birthday Story

Special Earth Day Issue  April 22, 2009UFOs and AGWThe Next Ice AgeGreen up, Man! It's Freaking Earth Day!Saving Our Planet, One Guilt Trip at a TimeA Lenin's Birthday StoryThis short story was written when I still lived in Ukraine in the early ...

October 18, 2008

Deconstructing the Liberal Media's Funny Bone

A unanimously negative media response to the political slapstick movie American Carol reinforces my theory that humor -- and satire in particular -- is an accurate litmus test of one's political and ideological convictions, even if one insists o...