Richard Kirk

Richard Kirk


  • ‘Thank You, Dr. Fauci’

    January 7, 2025

    ‘Thank You, Dr. Fauci’

    “A high-stakes docu-thriller” is a P.R. caption for the ironically named Jenner Furst documentary, Thank You, Dr. Fauci.  No Thanks, Dr. Fauci or Goodbye, Doc would be a more straightforward title.  After all, if a lar...

  • Fascism and the Left-Right Political Absurdity

    November 29, 2024

    Fascism and the Left-Right Political Absurdity

    Trump is a “fascist”!  That’s what Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and a chorus of Democrats told us ad nauseam.  When that moniker insufficiently expressed their hatred and fear of losing, the absurd “Hitler...

  • Does 'Jesus Gets Us' get Jesus?

    May 12, 2024

    Does 'Jesus Gets Us' get Jesus?

    They look in the mirror of their souls and see Jesus. That’s the best explanation of the “Jesus Gets Us” campaign. This biographical process isn’t a new phenomenon as even a cursory study of “life of Jesus” literat...

  • The rape of history and literature

    February 7, 2024

    The rape of history and literature

    Rape involves total disregard for the autonomy and worth of the person assaulted, reducing the victim to the status of a malleable object.  Something of the same attitude obtains when it comes to the deconstruction of history and literature...

  • November 26, 2023

    The West’s Baby Bust

    I’m a big fan of Alex Berenson’s work vis-à-vis Covid, marijuana, and tech-government suppression of free speech (see Berenson v. Biden), but when it comes to his search for answers to America’s “baby bust,” he, l...

  • July 7, 2023

    FOX News post-Tucker

    So FOX News has decided to replace Tucker Carlson with Bill O'Reilly's one-time man-on-the-street interviewer, Jesse Watters — someone whose gravitas rating hovers in the same abysmal neighborhood as the network's late-night darling...

  • April 15, 2023

    Why did Americans stop supporting tolerance?

    Recently, a Wall Street Journal poll confirmed what most sentient Americans already knew — that patriotism, religion, and even having a family are now much less valued than even in the recent past.  Patriotism was "very important...

  • February 4, 2023

    'Pushing the Envelope' Toward What?

    How has America been transformed from a society that largely embraced the virtues of temperance, individual responsibility, respect for parents, and the obligation to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” into a nation whos...

  • September 15, 2022

    Voter Fraud: The Bottom Line

    As Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts notes in his introduction, the primary question addressed by Lucas’s book, The Myth of Voter Suppression. The Left's Assualt on Clean Elections is this: “[W]hy does the Democratic Pa...

  • July 24, 2021

    The closest you can get to mind control is speech control

    Why has the United States been transmogrified in little more than half a century from a Christian nation that joyously displayed Christmas trees and crèches in public spaces into a secular nation that bans prayers at public school graduation c...

  • June 26, 2021

    Are You Living by Lies?

    "Live not by lies" was the challenge issued by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, upon his departure from the Soviet Union, to individuals still condemned to live behind the Iron Curtain — especially to those who were well aware of the suffocati...

  • October 13, 2020

    This Book Lays Out, in Sobering Terms, the Stakes in November

    Only a few decades ago California twice elected Ronald Reagan governor and twice voted for the Gipper as President.  It later chose a series of Republican governors, ending with its former Senator Pete Wilson (1991-1998).  Twenty years late...

  • September 4, 2020

    The Worst Impeachment in History

    An epigram likely composed by the lawyer-poet John Godfrey Saxe says laws, like sausages, “cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.”  That observation certainly applies to the motives and methods that led ...

  • June 14, 2020

    Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win

    Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win David Horowitz Humanix Books 272 pages Were I asked to write a book of around 200 pages of text that details President Trump's major domestic and foreign policy accomplishments, provides compelling i...

  • February 8, 2020

    Medicare for None

    "Medicare for All," were it subjected to truth in labeling criteria, would more accurately be named "Medicare for None."  This is a point made early in Sally Pipes's succinct but detailed analysis of the socialized m...

  • January 12, 2020

    How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics

    Contrary to previous belief, wolves aren’t solitary creatures that naturally roam in random packs but are rather, like most animals, familial beasts whose behaviors assume pathological characteristics when those domestic bonds are broken. ...

  • December 22, 2019

    How Social Work Became the Pit of Despair It Is Today

    Who Killed Civil Society?: The Rise of Big Government and Decline of Bourgeois Norms   by Howard Husock The Manhattan Institute's Howard Husock begins this overview of social services in America by considering the "biggest mystery...

  • November 3, 2019

    Reclaiming Common Sense

    How has it come to pass that in America, a man can identify as a woman, and his linguistic affirmation by itself, at least in New York City, obligates others to refer to him as "her"?  And why is it increasingly considered mandato...

  • September 21, 2019

    Mass Murder: Coming to a School Near You

    Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies That Created The Parkland Shooter and Endanger America's Students by Andrew Pollack, Max Eden, and Hunter Pollack doesn’t focus primarily on the murderer of seventeen people at Broward County’s...

  • September 7, 2019

    Howard Zinn's American Holocaust

    If anyone wonders why youngsters today are less patriotic and more inclined toward socialism, they need look no further than the most popular “history” textbook in the United States, Howard Zinn’s  A People’s History of t...

  • July 23, 2019

    Justice on Trial: A Lawless Auto-da-Fé for Brett Kavanaugh

    The old saw comparing legislation to the nauseating process of making sausage, referenced late in this detailed work, is far too mild a metaphor to describe the vicious efforts to destroy Brett Kavanaugh and prevent his ascent to the Supreme Court....

  • May 3, 2019

    Reefer Madness in Reverse: Happy Talk about Pot

    Marijuana is safer than alcohol.  No one has ever died from using marijuana.  Legalization of marijuana will allow law enforcement to focus on more serious crimes and will eliminate the black market.  Marijuana has clear medical b...

  • April 3, 2019

    Unplanned: A movie Planned Parenthood doesn't want you to see

    In New York City, the One World Trade Center was lit up pink to celebrate the state's new abortion-till-birth legislation — a moral travesty that wouldn't be tolerated, much less fêted, if the movie Unplanned w...

  • March 24, 2019

    Ben Shapiro Puts America on 'The Right Side of History'

    The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great, by Ben Shapiro, Harper Collins, March 19, 2019 (277 pages, $27.99, Hardcover) Why are things in America so good, and why are we throwing it all away?  Thos...

  • March 10, 2019

    David Horowitz Exposes the Left's Dark Agenda

    Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America, by David Horowitz, Humanix Books, March 5, 2019 (224 pages, $17.70, Hardcover) David Horowitz has always been a writer whose work I've appreciated since his compelling political biography, Rad...

  • February 28, 2019

    The Oregon kids' vote

    After exiting the tax-happy Gilded State, a fair number of its loopy citizens who could no longer afford skyrocketing housing prices or tolerate crowded freeways migrated to nearby Oregon, a state that competes with California for the honor of champi...

  • December 29, 2018

    Johann Hari's Lost Connections: The Good, the Mixed Bag, and the Truly Pathetic

    After viewing Tucker Carlson's recent interview with Johann Hari, I was ready to read his book, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions.  Everything in the interview touched on wha...

  • December 9, 2018

    Does the Commerce Clause Protect Female Genital Mutilation?

    Three weeks ago U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman declared that the twenty-two-year-old federal law banning female genital mutilation was unconstitutional.  This ruling took Dr. Jumana Nagarwala and seven others off the legal hook for alleged...

  • November 23, 2018

    Who's Killing JFK Today?

    James Joyce once remarked that Rome reminded him of a man who made his living “by exhibiting to travelers his grandmother’s corpse.”  This observation also applies to the commercial exploitation of President Kennedy’s ass...

  • November 10, 2018

    Bending Over Backward: A Biased Look at Left-wing Censorship

    The Coddling of the American Mind:  How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt purports to be an evenhanded analysis of current attacks on free speech in academic settings. T...

  • November 1, 2018

    Fake news: Is 'Trump's America' really a special danger to Jews?

    Recently, presidential press secretary Sarah Sanders was challenged by CNN's Jake Acosta to provide an example of fake news.  A poignant instance would have been NBC's withholding a story in which Julie Swetnick's supporting wit...

  • October 14, 2018

    Take in the trial of America's most prolific serial killer

    Fake news!  The words bring to mind epic distortions and outsized emphasis on trivial events like Melania's wardrobe and presidential statements about crowd size.  The most devastating aspect of "fake news," however,...

  • August 27, 2018

    Coulter's Latest Book Hits the Trump-Hating Left

    Resistance Is Futile! How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind, by Ann Coulter, Sentinel, New York, August 21, 2018 (288 pages, $25.00, Hardcover)  You want evidence of Justice Department and media corruption?  Coulte...

  • August 11, 2018

    D'Souza's Death of a Nation Stands Up to Criticism

    Rule of thumb: If Rotten Tomatoes and most movie critics hate a political flick, it must be good!  One of those critics who hangs out at the website RogerEbert.com deemed Dinesh D'Souza's latest film, Death of a Nation, so "sha...

  • August 4, 2018

    Calling BS on the Victimhood Narrative

    We Have Overcome: An Immigrant's Letter to the American People by Jason Hill, Bombardier Books, New York, July 10, 2018 (192 pages, $19.07, hardcover) One can scarcely imagine the ideological venom generated among leftists by a well-spoken bla...

  • July 24, 2018

    Golf's Latest Sacrificial Victim

    Brittany Lincicome is the latest sacrificial lamb to be offered on the altar of gender equality.  This talented and successful professional golfer on the LPGA tour was thrown last week into the lion's den of men's professional golf....

  • June 23, 2018

    David Horowitz's Curtain Call?

    The Black Book of the American Left, Volume IX: Ruling Ideas, by David Horowitz, Second Thoughts Books, Los Angeles, April 10, 2018 (338 pages, $27.99, hardcover) Unlike Columbia president Nicholas Butler, who, when asked around 1913 if he ha...

  • April 28, 2018

    Thomas Sowell's Last Word?

    Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell, Basic Books, New York, March 20, 2018 (143 pages, $28.00, hardcover)    "Just the facts, ma'am."  That was Joe Friday's interrogation refrain on Dragn...

  • January 3, 2018

    The Black Redneck Version of Respect

    "You can't give respect unless you get it first."  That was the ethical maxim presented to me over a decade ago by a young black high-schooler.  The assertion possesses a superficial plausibility that attends so many pop-cultu...

  • November 12, 2017

    Harvey Weinstein, Socialism, and Mass Murder

    “The frivolity of evil” -- that’s the phrase coined by British author and physician to the poor, Theodore Dalrymple.  The words appear in his 2005 book, Our Culture: What’s Left of It.  Dalrymple’s analysis of ...

  • August 19, 2017

    Are Nazism and fascism really right-wing? Dinesh D'Souza's The Big Lie shows it's not so

    Nazism and fascism are "right-wing" movements – supposedly the polar political opposites of socialism.  Fascists and Nazis employ appeals to traditional morality to gain support, the conventional wisdom has it.   Progress...

  • August 3, 2017

    You just might be a Progressive Democrat if...

    Jeff Foxworthy made it big with his "you just might be a redneck" routine.  Foxworthy's success inspired me to flatter him, sincerely, with a "you just might be a Progressive Democrat" imitation.  The take-off goes a...

  • February 5, 2017

    Abortion and the Banality of Evil

    Not since Hannah Arendt’s portrait of Adolf Eichmann has there been a more provocative analysis of evil as that provided in Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer’s detailing the crimes, trial, and personality of Dr. Kermit Gosnell -- Gos...

  • September 24, 2016

    Tainted by Suspicion: A Book Review

    Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections, by Fred Lucas, Mount Vernon, WA: Stairway Press, 2016 (314 pages, $19.95, Paperback) Who should read Fred Lucas’s book, Tainted by Suspicion? Folk...

  • August 20, 2016

    That Videotape and Benghazi: a Review of Kenneth Timmerman's Deception

    Deception by Kenneth Timmerman contains several blockbuster claims that match Wag the Dog deception in their audacity -- claims backed with evidence ranging from extremely solid to highly plausible. In the former category is the assertion that neithe...

  • July 23, 2016

    The Rise of the Moral Narcissists

    I Know Best:  How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn't Already, by Roger L. Simon, New York: Encounter Books, June 14, 2016 (296 pages, $25.99, Hardback)  Why do few people change their political views "even...

  • April 2, 2016

    Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson

    What kind of criticism would prompt a major publisher to withdraw from circulation a New York Times bestseller by a recognized scholar?  One would think the objections would have to be weighty and the critics unquestioned experts in the particul...

  • January 23, 2016

    13 Hours: Not a 'non-political' movie

    Since the film 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi premiered last week, I must have heard the term "non-political" used a dozen or more times to describe the movie.  If by "non-political" one means that the film doesn...

  • January 13, 2016

    Stealing America: What My Experience with Criminal Gangs Taught Me About Obama, Hillary, and the Democratic Party

    Stealing America: What My Experience with Criminal Gangs Taught Me About Obama, Hillary, and the Democratic Party, by Dinesh D’Souza, Broadside Books, HarperCollins Publishers, November, 2015 (336 pages, $29.99, Hardback) A liberal who...

  • September 19, 2015

    Steyn puts Warmists in the Dock

    A DISGRACE TO THE PROFESSION: The World’s Scientists – in their own words – on Michael E Mann, his Hockey Stick and their Damage to Science, compiled and edited by Mark Steyn, Volume I, Stockade Books, September, 2015 (320 pages, $1...

  • June 20, 2015

    Ann Coulter Waves Goodbye

    Goodbye to the prosperous country founded by overwhelmingly Protestant colonists in the 18th century. Hello to the third-world multicultural mélange with a distinctly Mexican accent, appalling cultural norms, and a clearly leftist politic...