James Bowman

James Bowman is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. The author of “Honor: A History,” he is a movie critic for The American Spectator and the media critic for The New Criterion.

Who Says We Must?

Commentary “Americans must reject Trump in 2024,” wrote soon-to-be ex-Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois in The Hill newspaper a couple ...

Viewpoints November 21, 2022
Some Wrong Predictions

Commentary “I was wrong.” That’s how my friend Henry Olsen began his Washington Post column that was written ...

Viewpoints November 11, 2022
‘Science Is Real’ Versus Real Science

Commentary Remember “Science”? Of course you do. How could you forget it when your neighbors, like mine, have ...

Viewpoints November 4, 2022
Impure Puritans

Commentary Two books have recently been published with the words “The New Puritans” in their titles. From the ...

Viewpoints October 24, 2022
In Liz They Don’t Truss

Commentary Every now and then, it’s helpful to take a look at what’s going on in the Mother ...

Viewpoints October 14, 2022
On Disagreeing With the Disagreeable

Commentary The good people over at RealClearPolitics ran an interesting article the other day headed, “Let’s Make October ...

Viewpoints October 13, 2022
Never Let a Crisis Go

Commentary Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago, is understandably proud of what's likely to be his chief claim ...

Viewpoints September 26, 2022
Unity in Love and Hate

Commentary There have been celebrations of national unity and purpose on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean during ...

Viewpoints September 16, 2022
Cartoon Politics

Commentary Few can doubt that if a Republican president—any Republican president—had delivered a speech like the one President ...

Viewpoints September 9, 2022
The Media’s Tale of Good and Evil Continues to Darken

Commentary Though I’m sure the humor was unintentional, the funniest headline of the year so far, in my ...

Viewpoints August 29, 2022
Who Gets to Decide What’s a Scandal and What Isn’t?

Commentary “Trump’s Scandals Are Never Done,” David A. Graham wrote for The Atlantic recently. Well, he ought to know. ...

Viewpoints August 20, 2022
Why Doesn’t FBI Seem to Care That It’s Mistrusted by Half the Country?

Commentary Once upon a time, U.S. politics was characterized by perfect comity and civility between the two major ...

Viewpoints August 12, 2022
You’d Better Believe What the Left Is Telling You

Commentary Writing in The Sunday Times of London about the official hand-wringing in Britain about a recent spell of hot ...

Viewpoints July 22, 2022
Will Biden and His Progressive Ideology Fall Together?

Commentary As with any rainstorm, there were at first only a few big, fat drops down the backs ...

Viewpoints July 21, 2022
How Not to Unify the Country

Commentary In Cleveland on July 6, President Joe Biden repeated something he has often said before—or, rather, he ...

Viewpoints July 7, 2022
After a Rare Victory in the Culture Wars, Conservatives Can’t Quit Fighting

Commentary In that much under-appreciated Ang Lee film of 1998, "Ride With the Devil," a melancholy Confederate irregular ...

Viewpoints July 5, 2022
Honorable No More

Commentary In all parliamentary democracies with legislatures that are descended from the British “Mother of Parliaments” in Westminster, ...

Viewpoints June 23, 2022
The Media Legacy of Watergate

Commentary On June 17, it had been 50 years since operatives connected to President Richard Nixon’s Committee to ...

Viewpoints June 18, 2022
Sense and Consensus

Commentary An article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine informs us that the people formerly known as ...

Viewpoints May 22, 2022
A Permanent State of Hostilities

Commentary Have you noticed that there are a lot more wars going on these days than just the ...

Viewpoints May 13, 2022
Are Republicans Up for Election Really Frightened of Donald Trump?

Commentary Writing in The Wall Street Journal on May 3, Gerard Baker lamented the fact that, as he ...

Viewpoints May 3, 2022
Sanity as a Sense of Due Proportion

Commentary You may remember that, way back in January, I remarked on the then-exciting British scandal known as ...

Viewpoints April 22, 2022
Just Biden His Time

Commentary There he goes again! Almost as soon as he took office last year, President Joe Biden heralded ...

Viewpoints April 14, 2022
It’s Worse Than a Gaffe If There’s Method to His Madness

Commentary “At what point does Joe Biden’s verbal incontinence start to become a mortal threat to Americans?” asks ...

Viewpoints April 6, 2022
Media and Democrats: Making a Difference

Commentary Hunter Biden’s laptop seems like a pretty trivial thing to be thinking or writing about in the ...

Viewpoints March 29, 2022
Who’s on the Side of Not Taking Sides?

Commentary “Whose side is Tucker Carlson on?” asks Dean Obeidallah of CNN—thus reaffirming the popular progressive view that ...

Viewpoints March 24, 2022
What Would Joe Do?

Commentary A thought experiment: Suppose Vladimir Putin said tomorrow that any country sending aid in the form of ...

Opinion March 11, 2022