B. Duncan Moench, Ph.D.

Conspiracism is a palliative for America’s inability to acknowledge, let alone face, the real threat from Islam

Since 1945, several pillars of Western life have been taken as given. First, that Western armies can more or less have their way with lesser powers and that guerrilla resistance is all they can expect to face. Second, that immigration means greater cultural diversity and therefore represents a net positive for the nations on the receiving end. Third, that nearly any country can become a liberal democracy, for it is a universal good that everyone aspires to and is capable of achieving.

Bill Rasmussen, the founder of ESPN, died yesterday at the age of 93. The origin story of how he thought up the idea for the sports network is typical Americana. One day while stuck in traffic on Interstate 84 with his son, Rasmussen thought: “Hey, why not create a network that’s devoted to sports 24/7?” [...]Read More...

During yesterday’s World Cup half-time show, as a 67-year-old Madonna appeared on the MetLife Stadium jumbotrons in a mini-skirt, riding atop a neon-purple vehicle driven by Brazilian footballing legends Ronaldinho and Ronaldo “El Fenómeno”, it was hard not to think: “This is fun. Why not?” However, that would be the take of the clod who [...]Read More...

“Ball don’t lie.” This phrase, originally attributed to NBA star Rasheed Wallace, comes from American basketball culture and implies that, no matter what the referees or back-office bureaucrats do to intervene in the game, the ball will end up where it should. If it goes through the net, the sporting gods wanted it to happen. The best team wins. Always. In the 57th minute of America’s game against Belgium, when US keeper Matt Freese came out of his box to deal with a long ball, only to have it s

The ink spilled on the much-ballyhooed “Founding Fathers” could fill Boston Harbour. There’s Thomas Jefferson, the sphinx-like figure of American politics, a man who can be read as the origin point for nearly all of American political culture. Or else there’s Alexander Hamilton, who weirdly operates much the same way, albeit in eerie opposition to his Monticello rival, the industrializing ying to Jefferson’s agrarian yang. Together, anyway, the Founders serve as inscrutable screens onto which Am

With the Iran war spluttering to a close, mavens of American decline will be sharpening their pens. We can already guess what they’ll say. Everyone now understands that the United States runs on cheap oil, and that the Washington establishment will risk sandy quagmires to preserve it. But what’s explored less often is why America perennially treats fluctuations in the crude price as a matter of geopolitical life and death.

As the United States prepares to host the World Cup for the second time, it’s worth grappling with an uncomfortable fact. The Yanks are highly unlikely ever to become a footballing power — at least not playing any version of “football” that doesn’t involve gladiator pads and concussion-inducing helmets. And the reason has almost nothing to do with tactics or a shortage of home-grown talent. Rather, its footballing struggles come basically down to money, and how the beautiful game has been ravage

Once upon a time, Jordan Peterson was seen as something like the Galileo of anti-wokeness. No longer. Following a highly publicized struggle with benzodiazepine addiction, requiring extended treatment overseas, the erstwhile academic seems a shadow of his former self. Just last month, his daughter Mikhaila delivered the news that “dad” is again suffering from sustained neurological complications — casting a shadow over his once-relentless public presence.

Armageddon has been diverted, at least for another fortnight. Yet if Iran’s civilian infrastructure remains intact, the American postwar order will never recover. The damage is not primarily military, but reputational — a collapse of the legitimacy that once underwrote American leadership. In the same way that, once you say certain things to your spouse, there’s no going back, once your country goes from world policeman to the equivalent of the crazy person at the bar threatening to shoot anyone

As terrible as Donald Trump’s war is, you wouldn’t know it from America. Outside the political obsessives on Twitter or BlueSky, people here simply aren’t preoccupied about the blackouts and bombings — certainly not compared to previous foreign adventures. Forget the Gulf War or even Vietnam. When George Bush launched his so-called “shock and awe” campaign against Iraq less than a quarter of a century ago, it was gripping, must-watch TV. That’s just not the case now, with many Americans seemingl

Whatever the other consequences of Renee Good’s death in Minneapolis, one thing should be crystal clear: America is accelerating towards some sort of reckoning. In this, probably the most common historical analogy is to Germany’s Weimar Republic, with street fights between Left and Right finally leading to Hitler and the Nazis. More than that, many on the MAGA wing of US politics see in Weimar a stand-in for the cultural rot of contemporary liberalism, whether in its music, its gender experiment

As much as any other, the United States is a nation based upon a carefully crafted mythology. But unlike most European societies, America lacks what the Spanish essayist Miguel do Unamuno called the “tragic sense of life” — the feeling that existence is messy and muddled, and that all things must come to an end. By the third decade of the 21st century, of course, we all know that America’s political structure is flawed and will someday, perhaps soon, crumble beneath its heaving contradictions. Y

It’s generally considered bad form to begin any obituary of the recently deceased with a list of strikes and demerits. But with Richard Bruce Cheney, it’s a rule we must discard. Prior to Trump’s rise, “Dick” Cheney was the most reviled figure of the early 21st century — treated throughout the 2000s and early 2010s as one of America’s great home‑grown villains. He was the behind‑the‑scenes architect not only of the disastrous Iraq War, but the so‑called “War on Terror” and its attendant torture

As we approach the anniversary of Donald Trump’s second presidential victory, now is a good time to reflect on the world’s richest and most powerful man. No, not the President of the United States — but Elon Musk. After buying Twitter three years ago, the billionaire effectively reshaped elite discourse overnight, before then going on to bankroll Trump’s third presidential campaign to the tune of $280 million. And if that represents the largest series of individual political donations in global

At the core of the American political psyche lies a violent paranoia that’s difficult for outsiders to comprehend, much less fully reconcile. Realistically, what does a nation protected by two oceans — and flanked by economically dependent, near-surrogate states to its north and south — have to fear from the world? Why does a country with both the greatest wealth and most expansive military in history so often resort to violence, not just abroad, but against its own? These are the questions one

At the heart of the American political tradition is a contradiction that runs deeper than the claim to promote “equal opportunity” in an age of hedge funds and trillion-dollar tech firms. As a system of thought, Anglo-American liberalism presents itself as defending equality before the law and “fighting for the rights of every man” — both at home and abroad. But liberalism, in the end, is little different than fascism, feudalism, or any other system of rule. When tested, it is willing to comprom

On the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the most striking thing is not the scale of the devastation, but just how badly we misunderstood what it revealed about American society. Amid the dead, and the displaced, and a great American city almost entirely under water, Katrina became a symbolic culture-war battlefield. The shocking images of stranded black New Orleanians waving handmade SOS signs, became proof of “systemic racism”, validating long-standing academic narratives about race, ineq

The era of liberal democracy has passed without much fanfare. With feudalism’s fall, historians could point to Luther beginning the process and the Fall of the Bastille, more or less, ending it. More recently, with the end of Soviet communism, we witnessed the heartfelt joy as the Berlin Wall crumbled. But today, as we live through the end of another historical era, fate has not graced us with any memorable milestones, much less brave markers of resistance for our new dark age.

This week is the 100th anniversary of the infamous Scopes trial — where a plucky high-school teacher fought to teach Darwinian evolution against the wishes of a reactionary and unenlightened establishment. That, at least, is the impression you would get of Tennessee v. Scopes from Inherit the Wind, the greatly celebrated 1955 theatrical play on the trial, adapted for film five years later. The film stars Spencer Tracy as a fictionalized version of crusading defense attorney Clarence Darrow, who