‘Jack Kerwick’ Archives
Thinking About the Definition of Patriotism on Memorial Day
BY JACK KERWICK This weekend is Memorial Day weekend. This morning, on Bill Bennett’s nationally syndicated radio program, his substitute host exchanged reflections upon the significance of patriotism with a fellow from the Claremont Review of Books. I didn’t catch the latter’s name. In any event, though, it’s not relevant, for his [...]
George Samuel Schuyler on Martin Luther King, Jr.
BY JACK KERWICK George S. Schuyler was among the most distinguished American writers and pundits of the twentieth century. He was also a conservative. And he was black. Today, it is on the rare occasion indeed that his name is mentioned. Most of the members of our generation, black and white, have never heard of him. There is a [...]
George Schuyler
BY JACK KERWICK You simply—and sadly—don’t hear much about George Schuyler these days. Schuyler was born in Rhode Island in 1895. From the 1920’s to the 1960’s, he was widely regarded as perhaps the most prominent black columnist in the country. Yet it is probably safer to say that he was among the ablest of writers, black or [...]
Gay ‘Marriage’—What the ‘Creed of Individualism’ Hath Wrought
BY JACK KERWICK One can only hope that all of this talk over the controversial issue of “the liberty” of homosexuals to “marry” will get us to thinking a little harder about marriage and liberty. Marriage is a more vulnerable institution today than it has ever been in the past, it is true. Yet I don’t think that this has much if [...]
Gay Marriage: Squandering Our Inheritance
BY JACK KERWICK Joe Biden and Barack Obama have finally expressed what many of us, friend and foe alike, have long known is their real position on the contentious issue of “same sex marriage”: President and Vice President alike favor it. All that matters, Biden says, is that two people love one another. Notice, from the perspective of [...]
The Christian and Fame
BY JACK KERWICK Among non-Christian and nominal Christians alike, there exists a misconception regarding Christians that is as pervasive as it is erroneous. In fact, it is downright invidious. Christians, according to this falsehood, are morally unassailable—if, that is, their faith is genuine. To the extent, then, that self-avowed [...]
Racism Industrial Complex (R.I.C.)
BY JACK KERWICK Race-relations have intrigued me from at least the time I was a young teenager. Since I started writing four years ago, I have written my share of essays on this topic—including essays in which I sail unchartered waters by subjecting the notion of “racism” to interrogation. Recently, to my surprise, an editor for one [...]
Racisms
BY JACK KERWICK If a representative of our generation was made to stand before an alien tribunal and identify the worst of evils, there can be no doubt that it would be “racism” to which he would allude. It would be better for a person to be convicted in the court of public opinion of child molestation (to say nothing of murder or rape) [...]
GOP Contradictions and Ron Paul
BY JACK KERWICK There is something afoot within the Republican Party specifically and American politics generally. Something is happening, something that will make it increasingly difficult for the GOP of today to return to its previous way of doing things. This “something” is a keenly felt incoherence within the GOP, a tension that is [...]
Conversation
BY JACK KERWICK We are a talkative people. In this era of mass communication, human beings have never talked more: “social media,” cell phones, texting, email—it is increasingly difficult, almost impossible, to spend much time without communicating to someone or other. However, in the midst of this avalanche of loquacity, a paradox is [...]
Problems with the Morality of Human Rights
BY JACK KERWICK It is commonplace for most contemporary commentators to think of the Declaration of Independence as embodying our “national creed.” This in turn explains the equally commonplace description of America as a “creedal” or “propositional nation.” The idea is this: the Declaration, with its affirmation of [...]
The Ideology of Blackism and Obama’s Distortion of Black Culture
BY JACK KERWICK Recently, I wrote an article in which I contended that Barack Obama is a “Blackist,” an adherent of “Blackism.” The latter, I explained, is an ideology. As such, it differs in kind from both biology and what has been called “black culture.” Skin pigmentation is an accident of birth. Culture, consisting as it [...]
Obama and the Ideology of Blackism
BY JACK KERWICK Barack Obama’s election to the presidency was supposed to usher in a “post-racial” era in American life. This, at any rate, is what the former Senator and his supporters in the media tried to sell us. It was nothing short of a lie. The President never had the slightest intention of using the visibility of his office [...]
Mitt and Mormonism
BY JACK KERWICK On Wednesday April 4, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell remarked that while Judaism and Christianity are thousands of years in the making, Mormonism, in stark contrast, is a mere 182 years old. Mormonism was “created” in 1830 “by a guy in upstate New York” who got “caught having sex” with his “maid” and then [...]
Easter is Upon Us
BY JACK KERWICK From the time I was a child until the present day, I have always been amazed by how differently Americans generally and Christians particularly respond to Easter and Christmas. Christmas is impossible to avoid. Regardless of who you are, if you are a resident of the Western world, you have no choice but to reckon with [...]
Morality and Language
BY JACK KERWICK As Americans, we have a tendency to speak of morality as if it were one and the same thing for all people at all places and at all times. The popular notion that “everyone knows right from wrong” is a function of this propensity. It also manifests itself by way of other popular expressions: “There is right and there is [...]
The Racial Industrial Complex and Zimmerman
BY JACK KERWICK That everyone in America now knows the names of Trayvon Davis and George Zimmerman is a tragic commentary on the times. It is tragic because it is a bold-faced confirmation that the Racism Industrial Complex (RIC) is the hegemonic power of our generation. The agents and officers of RIC include the majority of journalists and [...]
Obama and the Trayvon Martin Case
BY JACK KERWICK On the night of February 26, an irrational, gun-totting, white racist named George Zimmerman went out in search of trouble. Not before long, he found it. Neither Zimmerman nor his neighbors much appreciated the presence of racial minorities in their gated community in Sanford, Florida. So, when Zimmerman laid eyes on [...]
Obama and Race
BY JACK KERWICK Imagine that you discovered the following facts about a stranger. First, for roughly two decades, he not only attended a church, but donated thousands and thousands of dollars to it. Second, this stranger’s church is presided over by a pastor who the stranger regards as his “spiritual mentor,” the person who he [...]
Catholicism, Social Justice, and Obamacare
BY JACK KERWICK The question concerning the relationship between faith and politics is one that has arrested the attention of many an American. But it is during election seasons, particularly presidential election seasons, that it assumes a larger than usual importance in the American consciousness. It is during this time that candidates [...]
Remembering Alex Haley’s “Roots”—Fact and Fiction
BY JACK KERWICK This is the 35th anniversary of the ground breaking television miniseries, Roots. Based on Alex Haley’s wildly successful novel, Roots: The Saga of an American Family, the epic miniseries starred an ensemble cast—several members of which recently visited with Oprah Winfrey on her new network (OWN) to commemorate this [...]
Ilana Mercer’s, Into the Cannibal’s Pot
BY JACK KERWICK Ilana Mercer’s, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, is an unusual book. Yet it is unusual in the best sense of the word. At once autobiographical and political; philosophical, historical, and practical; controversial and commonsensical, Cannibal succeeds in weaving into a [...]
Slick Rick … is NOT a Conservative
BY JACK KERWICK Thankfully, the twentieth GOP presidential debate has come and gone. If the American voter doesn’t know these candidates by now, he never will. Of the four remaining candidates, three are virtually indistinguishable from one another. This much has been established time and time again throughout this election season. [...]
Conservative Media Bias and Ron Paul
BY JACK KERWICK There are four Republican candidates left standing in the GOP’s presidential primary contest: Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul. But to listen to most of talk radio and Fox News—i.e. the so-called “conservative” media—you would think that Ron Paul had withdrawn from the race, if he was ever in [...]
Conservatism Versus Neoconservatism
BY JACK KERWICK Given that Republicans will select their presidential nominee before we know it, and given that three of the four candidates in the GOP field are neoconservatives, it would behoove us to revisit neoconservatism. By looking at specific thinkers widely recognized as representatives of neoconservatism, we will soon see that far [...]
Our Confused Political Vocabulary
BY JACK KERWICK As expected, many of the terms of which our political universe consists are on display more frequently than usual during this election season. Now, then, is as good a time as any to revisit these time-worn concepts. Capitalism For some reason, the self-avowed nemeses of the planned economy—whether we call this [...]
Florida Debate: Ron Paul On a Mission
BY JACK KERWICK In Monday night’s Republican presidential primary debate in Florida, moderator Brian Williams asked Congressman Ron Paul whether he would endorse Newt Gingrich in the event that the former Speaker of the House won his party’s nomination. Indicating that, at the very least, he wouldn’t rule out the possibility altogether, [...]
Ron Paul, Foreign Policy, and the Golden Rule
CAMPAIGN TRAIL, JACK KERWICK On January 16, the Republican presidential candidates met for but another debate in South Carolina. As usual, Texas Congressman Ron Paul was the proverbial ant at the picnic. Twitter feedback showed that more people found favor with Paul’s performance than they found with that of any other candidate. Even [...]
Mythmology: King and the Right
BY JACK KERWICK Every January, America honors the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. Perhaps because it has now been decades since this occasion has been declared a federal holiday, most Americans today—especially the young—have no recollection of just how much resistance its proponents faced. More specifically, the lion’s share of [...]
Republicrat Quiz
ELECTION 2012, JACK KERWICK There are some in the CCM—Corporate “Conservative” Media—who become downright wrathful when anyone dares to suggest that, as Larry Elder once put it, there is scarcely a “dime’s worth of difference” between our two national parties. Nothing could be further from the truth, they insist. And at no time do [...]
