PATRICK LAWRENCE: Gaza & Confronting Power
The American state, broadly defined, is well on its way toward a form of apple-pie absolutism, forcing distorted meanings not merely on three university administrators but on all of us. The events of the past seven days are sobering no…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Media’s Fatal Compromises
It is no longer enough to tether correspondents to the perspective of the military from whose side they report. We appear to be on the way to having wars fought — huge, bloody, consequential wars — without any witnesses. The…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Decency Becomes Indecent
At this point, Washington’s defense of Israel becomes as baldly obscene as the apartheid state’s long record of lawless aggression toward the Palestinian population. There have been many, very many singular moments among America’s purported leaders and assorted officials and…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Question About Biden
In the wake of Zelensky’s wildly provocative statements, it is time to question whether the U.S. president has a personal interest in prolonging the war in Ukraine. A friend and colleague wrote in an unusually sage commentary a couple of years ago that Ukraine would prove…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Bad Faith & Blank Checks
All mainstream journalism is “embedded journalism” now, for the battlefield is everywhere, writes Patrick Lawrence in this excerpt from his new book, Journalists and Their Shadows. Some years ago, as the decline of American media became evident even among those not…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Biden’s Pointless Asian Summit
Let us consider the grist of the talks the U.S. president hosted at the presidential retreat in Maryland last week. This will not take long. My goodness. President Joe Biden and the press serving his regime pumped so much hot air into…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Dialectic of the Draft
Americans will understand themselves less fantastically if they consider the extent to which the end of the Selective Service System a half century ago gave them permission to put their public selves to sleep. It is 50 years ago now…
Patrick Lawrence: The Bidens’ Burisma Bribery
Let us cast our minds back just briefly to the very fine afternoon of July 22, 2016. It was an especially bright Friday, as you may recall, because WikiLeaks released a lot of Democratic Party emails that day, so shining a light…
The US Press, Spooks & the Church Committee
Nineteen fifty-three was a peculiar year for The Washington Post to question the C.I.A.’s drift into activist intrigues, writes Patrick Lawrence in this excerpt from his forthcoming book, Journalists and Their Shadows. On Jan. 9, 1953, The Washington Post published an editorial we can read all…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Lost & Fearful in The Middle East
The Biden regime wanders in a funhouse of its own making. Of all the amateurish moments to arise as the Biden regime conducts its foreign policy, the White House’s official statement as B1–B bombers let loose over Iraq and Syria last Friday…