Paul Kengor Columns category, Page 5

“Oh my gosh, Daddy, they’re killing each other!” So said my son John in a plea of desperation. He was referring not to his siblings, mercifully, but to our turkeys. I was at the office when John telephoned. His voice was so loud that the student in my office could...

“I’m caught in an insane asylum, everybody’s gone crazy, I will work for half.” So said a desperate professor to Peter Boghossian, who this week announced the creation of a new college, the University of Austin, committed to “freedom of inquiry, freedom of conscience and civil discourse.” The announcement was...

Sitting in the lobby of a Washington hotel having drinks with friends, I glanced at the television and was pulled in by images of October baseball — the playoff season. It was the San Francisco Giants vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers. Classic. “It’s hard not to watch this,” I said...

“We need fathers,” said President Obama on Father’s Day 2008. “We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to...

I watched last Friday to see how Rep. Conor Lamb would vote on a bill that the bishops of his church called “the most radical abortion bill of all time.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s bishop described the Women’s Health Protection Act as “nothing short of child sacrifice.” But given how...

On Sept. 8, 2021, Grove City College President Paul McNulty spoke in downtown Pittsburgh regarding his uniquely fascinating yet somber 9/11 experiences. He played an intimate role in the prosecution of the hijackers and their associates as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and deputy attorney general in...

“I wouldn’t have withdrawn,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “I would have kept the counterterrorism forces on the ground … working with indigenous forces. That’s the best insurance policy against another 9/11.” Says Graham: “The chance of another 9/11 just went through the roof.” It has...

Gov. George Earle. Have you heard of him? Born in Devon, Pa., Earle was governor of Pennsylvania from 1935 to 1939, one of only two Democrats to be elected to that spot between the Civil War and World War II, and a respected and popular politician, featured on the cover...

In response to my last column on Major League Baseball’s silence in the face of repression in Cuba, I got an email from a Trib reader with an altogether different angle. He was less outraged by MLB’s silence than BLM’s “vocal support” of the Cuban regime. His point is more...

“MLB remained absent-mindedly and cowardly mute on the Cuban people’s freedom struggles, despite the game’s close ties with Cuban players.” So writes David, a Pittsburgh native and reader of my columns. David continues: “The league has no excuse now for dodging the political issues of the day as they arise....

In a column around this time last year, I wrote about the toll that covid was taking on tollbooth workers on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I had been prompted by an eerie ride to Latrobe from my home in Grove City. Like many Pennsylvanians under lockdown, I hadn’t been on a...

I continue to get emails from Trib readers regarding my columns on Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred engaging in an economic boycott of Atlanta because of his disapproval of Georgia’s election-integrity laws. It was shameless. Everyone is sick and tired of the politicization (and cancellation) of everything, and here...

Watching the mohawked crowd slam-dancing in the mosh pit at the Electric Banana on Bigelow Boulevard in the 1990s, one wouldn’t have pictured punkers standing up to the bullies of the 2020s; that is, to the cancel culture. But then again, punk rockers always have rebelled against the status quo...

“I couldn’t agree more. At least there’s golf and the NHL has mostly been neutral.” So said Bill, a Trib reader reacting to my previous column on Major League Baseball yanking the All-Star Game out of Atlanta for political reasons — effectively a partisan-ideological decision by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred....

“Georgia has 17 days of in-person early voting, including two optional Sundays. Colorado has 15. … They also have a photo ID requirement. So, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.” So puzzled Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp over the decision by Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred...

In my previous column, I wrote about moving the conservative movement beyond Donald Trump. I asked which conservative voices would best serve the conservative movement going forward post-Trump (assuming there is a post-Trump period). I particularly related this question to young people, who are the future of the movement and...

A Never Trump colleague asks why I didn’t support a second impeachment of Donald Trump, given that I say that I want the conservative movement to move beyond Trump. The answer isn’t difficult. For starters, the impeachment trial from the outset was a political spectacle, a rash judgment by Democrats....

We’re full-throttle into mass distribution of covid-19 vaccines. And let there be no doubt, their rapid development is an extraordinary achievement. I want to underscore that by revisiting what I wrote here last spring, when I placed President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed into historical context — looking particularly at the...

My previous column focused on the mass public rip-off scheme known as the state lottery, particularly the audacity of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania every Christmas bearing false gifts of lottery tickets. Every holiday season, Harrisburg officials assume the role of anti-Santa, duping gullible citizens with dubious promises of riches they’ll...

Another Christmas season has ended, and so has, mercifully, another season of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania bearing false gifts of lottery tickets. It’s a perennial promise, with jolly state officials assuming the role of Anti-Santa. It starts every year with those annoying commercials, usually around Black Friday. If you search...

No Christmas in American history compares to that of 75 years ago: Christmas 1945. For the first time in several painfully long years, a nation at war was a nation at peace. Germany had surrendered in May and Japan in August. World War II was finally over. “Home for Christmas!”...

“Where has the truth gone?” asks my Grove City College colleague Jim Thrasher. “Truth and reality, have they gone away? Most journalists in the media seem to ignore the facts and create and advance myths and fables. They have become propaganda machines.” And yet, notes Thrasher: “God-given truth has not...

“Has Trump launched a ‘second wave’ of the Reagan revolution — attracting blue-collar voters with his appeal that he and the Republican Party will do a better job of fighting for them than the Democrats, as well as representing their social values, including a pro-life stance?” A Pittsburgh reporter asked...

CNN and Fox tripped over themselves to be first to claim presidential victory for Joe Biden. Fox put itself in a bind by prematurely declaring Arizona for Biden on election night. As I write, the vote difference in Arizona has shrunk to 12,000, which is closer than Pennsylvania (nearly 54,000)...

Let me begin with an honest admission of my predictive abilities: In 2016, I forecast a Hillary Clinton win in Pennsylvania and nationwide. That’s not a reassuring way of convincing Trib readers to take me seriously in 2020, but here it goes: I think Donald Trump will win Pennsylvania (and...