Roger Kimball, Poetic Justice for the Biden ‘Ministry of Truth’

By Roger Kimball At some point in this column, I have probably had occasion to quote these famous lines from Walter Scott’s poem “Marmion”: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive.”  In another, better world, I like to think, the Bidens and their protectors and puppet masters would ruefully be contemplating Scott’s admonitory observation. In this world, however, I suspect that—until quite recently, anyway—they had smugly sided with J.R. Pope’s sly amendment to Scott’s moralizing couplet: “But when we’ve practiced for a while  How vastly we…

Roger Kimball, Biden Puts The ‘Total’ In Totalitarianism

Roger Kimball  America has come perilously close to the edge of the point of no return… Joe Biden certainly set the punditocracy abuzz with his neo-totalitarian performance piece at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Thursday. The significance of that speech can be broken down into three parts, two of which have already received abundant commentary. The first has to do with the theater of the piece, its optics or stagecraft. As many commentators (myself included) noted, the feel of the event was distinctly, and distinctively, bombastic. The melodramatic red lighting, the presence…