Stories by David Gelernter
Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving
From the November 28, 2005, issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
6:00 AM, Nov 24, 2016
Four themes flow together at one of the most remarkable points in American history—the evening when Abraham Lincoln for the last time proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving. It was April 11, 1865: two days after the Civil War ended with Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox; four days before the president was murdered. Our national Thanksgiving Day is a good time to remember the president who had more to do with the institution of Thanksgiving and the actual practice of thanking God than an Read more
The Truth About Trump
It's the personality, not the ideas.
May 30, 2016
Many intellectuals misunderstand Donald Trump. Intellectuals often forget that Americans vote for a man, not a white paper, and that Trump passed the very first test for Republican candidates in 2016 while the rest of the field flunked. He was angry and seemed capable of acting on his anger. Trump voters’ anger has nothing to do with vague white-male resentments. It is anger against Obama and the free pass he gets even from many Republicans who are scared to rip into this smug, arrogant incomp Read more
The Elephant in the Room
Trump is right about political correctness.
Feb 29, 2016
Donald Trump is succeeding, we're told, because he appeals to angry voters — but that's obvious; tell me more. Why are they angry, and how does he appeal to them? In 2016, Americans want to vote for a person and not a white paper. If you care about America's fate under Obama, naturally you are angry; voters should distrust a candidate who is not angry. But there's more to it than mere anger. Chris Christie was angry, and he's gone. Trump has hit on important issues — immigration, the econ Read more
What Explains the Vicious Left?
When politics becomes a religion, nonbelievers must be punished.
Jan 11, 2016
The asymmetry of modern politics is clear to every conservative; painfully clear to several Yale undergraduates who asked me about it recently. Leftists, they pointed out, are hostile, nasty, and seem to have no concept of a civil conversation. Why? Because they are winning? Losing? Are natural-born bullies? And how can this dangerous mood be changed? It s not just a question of civility versus rudeness—which of course is no small thing in itself. The deeper problem is that the left seems to Read more
A Life that Made Sense
David Gelernter on Herbert Gelernter, 1929-2015
Sep 07, 2015
The difference between man and woman is the force that hauls life forward (as the Talmud remarks) and the origin of everything that is most beautiful in our world. I thought I understood that, but I didn’t until my father died. The whole can transcend the sum of parts, and that’s why Judaism deems marriage sacred. I never truly understood that either. The death of a loved one rips us like shrapnel, but the wound heals and we limp gamely on. A father’s death is one of the harder hits life offe Read more
Hidden in Plain Sight
What the Democrats hope you will keep on ignoring about Obama’s foreign policy
Mar 09, 2015
President Obama has ignored the recent history of U.S. foreign policy, faithfully repeating failed strategies and turning his back on successes. The pattern is so strange and striking, we can almost hear it trying to tell us something. The something is this: You cannot be a nationalist and a globalist simultaneously; not if you take either of those ideologies seriously. The president takes them very seriously, and has made it clear that he is not a nationalist but a globalist. Globalists beli Read more
The War on Truth
Feb 24, 2014
News from academia! “President Salovey and I,” writes Yale’s provost, “have invited a distinguished group of academic leaders to a diversity summit at Yale on February 11-12, 2014. Their visit will include a series of discussions with faculty and administrators about the challenges of diversifying our faculty.” Praise the Lord—at last ! How can we explain intelligent, articulate, intellectually vigorous people stuck in time, repeating themselves endlessly like robots? Even if the diversity Read more
Back to School
A reclamation project for higher ed.
Sep 30, 2013
This school-reopening season ought to be a time of deep pondering and self-examination for conservatives and everyone else who cares about the future of this nation and the world. It’s time to notice how little we have done about the most powerful, dangerous, reactionary force in America today: the schools establishment, and the hundred or so purebred, pedigreed universities that trot forward at the head of the ongoing black comedy called American education. There are simple things we can do Read more
Better with Age
The creative impulse improves as well as declines.
Mar 04, 2013
‘Matisse: In Search of True Painting” is a smallish but superb show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It focuses on pairs and series of related paintings, and the sheer loveliness of its best pieces resounds through the huge building and out onto Fifth Avenue. But it is sad that this small-scale, dazzling-masterpieces-only approach wasn’t extended to Henri Matisse’s late cutouts—which also occur in pairs and in series. Unfortunately, this exhibit, for all its beauty, shows off one of the deepes Read more
A Master’s Voice
The Reformation as seen in the art of Lucas Cranach.
Sep 10, 2012
The Serpent and the Lamb is not easy to pin down. Officially, it tells the story of Martin Luther’s relations with the eminent painter Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553); Professor Ozment argues that the two men created the Protestant Reformation between them. Luther was the mastermind and Cranach, who became Luther’s publicist, champion, and protector as well as his friend, was indispensable. And Luther and Cranach’s collaboration is only one strand in this richly complex book. Cranach is Read more
Moebius Strip
7:05 AM, Apr 19, 2012
The future of Iran’s nuclear weapons program depends on one of those strange alignments of justice and personal gain that create eclipses and flood tides when planetary bodies are the actors. It’s important that the world understand these strange circumstances. A likely outcome of the world’s standoff with Iran is an American attack in late summer or early fall, with the grudging support of at least some American allies. First: Those who tell us that an Israeli attack on Iran is apt to f Read more
Back Off, Madam!
11:00 PM, Apr 12, 2012
I, and every conservative I know, have been eagerly polite, warmly encouraging to women who chose to work—from the very beginning, from the 1970s or ‘80s, when working women first changed the national landscape. But that’s not the way liberals play it. Not one Republican of national standing or any importance has ever announced that working mothers prefer dollars to their children’s happiness; that working mothers have chosen to let their children suffer a little, cry a little, and kee Read more
Out of the Closet
New York’s museums are mysteriously averse to the New York School.
Jan 30, 2012
New York’s art museums are shirking two crucial civic duties. One is to show major artworks, not just buy them. The other is to serve the community in which they live. Museums in other American cities often do the same, but New York is different: It is still (for the time being) the center of the art world, and it was the home of one of the most remarkable developments in 20th-century art, the emergence of Abstract Expressionism and the New York School. On the whole, Europe has America at a r Read more
Terrorism Is the Crime Without a Cause
1:42 PM, Aug 19, 2011
Since word came of the terrorist murder and mayhem in the Negev, I haven't been able to get out of my head an old Israeli dance song about setting out for the desert. There has been (Lord knows) plenty of blood shed in the Negev since this long-ago song was first sung, but the first generation LP from 1950s—with the maroon cover showing an Israeli girl dancing, her long hair flung outwards as she twirls—sticks in the mind. I remember the words only partly, but they have to do with the bright go Read more
Be Clear!
Or be defeated.
Jun 20, 2011
Obamacrats think their man is in trouble because (as usual) he’s got “communication problems.” He seems to suffer from these all the time, which is odd given that he was elected mainly because of his flair for communicating; given that the queen of England is still, no doubt, enjoying the audio versions of his greatest speeches which he presented to her a couple of years ago (unless she’s memorized them by now and no longer needs the royal iPod). And now this formidable speaker can’t even make h Read more
Elites Gone Bad
What America needs is a better class of left-winger.
Jun 13, 2011
Although it’s gauche to ask, one can’t help wondering: Do the Obamacrats love America? If so, how come? Would they please be specific? If the answer is no, the scandal is not quite their lack of patriotism; nations have been governed decently, in ordinary times, by the lights of pure reason. If the answer is no, the scandal is mere cynical insincerity. Obama and his followers should level with the nation and themselves. There’s nothing wrong with loving your country just because it’s yo Read more
The Flip Side
Ilana Lewitan, artist of hidden truth and double meaning.
Apr 18, 2011
Ilana Lewitan is a painter of questions too wide or deep for words, whose originality, intelligence, and painterly virtuosity make her one of the most significant surrealists in decades. Her work is now on show at the prestigious Galerie Noah in Augsburg. Possibly you weren’t planning to stop by Augsburg in the next few weeks, but Mrs. Lewitan’s work is bound to appear in America before long. Later this spring she will have a show in Shanghai; she’s had exhibits in Israel and many in her native Read more
Singer of Zion
A fitting tribute to a great Jewish poet.
Sep 27, 2010
Yehuda Halevi by Hillel Halkin Schocken, 368 pp., $26 This is a tour de force. Hillel Halkin’s Yehuda Halevi is a complex, daring, and consistently fascinating biography of a complex and daring man, one of the great heroes of Hebrew literature and Jewish history. Halevi comes second only to King David in his fame and influence as a Hebrew poet. He was also a renowned theologian who, in his last years, abandoned life in the fast lane of medieval Spain to make the perilous journey to Read more
Dead in the Water
The Age of Irony won’t grow up
Aug 09, 2010
Martin Amis’s most recent novel told a story about the summer of 1970 from a modern standpoint. Strange fact: The Pregnant Widow revealed, without exactly meaning to, that cultural attitudes have gone virtually nowhere in the last 40 years. It’s not one of Amis’s best, but Widow (reviewed here by Ted Gioia in April) is a memorable and striking book. It is also a case study despite itself. The story is about sex, money, and religion (mainly sex) in the minds of European young adults four Read more
Acrylic Lyricist
Robert Natkin, 1930-2010
May 24, 2010
The eminent abstract painter Robert Natkin died on April 20 in Danbury, Connecticut, aged 79. The Metropolitan, Guggenheim, Whitney, and Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Hirschhorn in Washington all own Natkin paintings. In one sense, he was a magnificent survival of the New York School of abstract expressionism, an emissary from the fertile plains of the postwar era to the hard-baked artistic desert of today. But Natkin was no mere survival, because his art continued to grow throughout Read more
See No Evil
The great liberal blind spot.
12:45 PM, May 06, 2010
Daniel Pipes is one of several commentators to note that many reporters would love to dismiss each new terrorist incident as the work of lunatics, until the disappointing news arrives that the suspect is yet another Muslim Jihadist. Several observations leap to their feet immediately, and there is a deeper point too. First: Suppose all these terrorists and terrorist hopefuls had in fact been run-of-the-mill madmen. What would that circumstance say about the age-old left-liberal dream of Read more