Barton Swaim
Barton Swaim is opinion editor of the Weekly Standard. In 2005 he received a doctorate in English from the University of Edinburgh; his thesis was published as Scottish Men of Letters and the New Public Sphere (Bucknell). From 2007 to 2010 he worked for South Carolina’s Governor Mark Sanford of as a speechwriter, an experience he wrote about in a memoir titled The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics (Simon & Schuster). Since then he has been a contributing columnist for the Washington Post and currently writes on political books for the Wall Street Journal. Barton has also written frequently for the Times Literary Supplement, the New Criterion, and the Los Angeles Times.
Stories by Barton Swaim
An Evangelical Saint
Billy Graham, 1918-2018.
4:30 AM, Feb 23, 2018
At the height of his influence in the 1960s and ’70s, Billy Graham was a man about whom nearly every adult in America had an opinion. He was everywhere—his weeklong evangelistic “crusades” packed stadiums around the globe; innumerable books and articles carried his byline; his face appeared on the covers of the newsweeklies. The Graham media empire included a magazine, a radio show, and a television program. America’s most famous preacher died on February 21 at the age of 99. Younger Americans Read more
An Evangelical Saint
Billy Graham, 1918-2018
5:35 PM, Feb 22, 2018
At the height of his influence in the 1960s and ’70s, Billy Graham was a man about whom nearly every adult in America had an opinion. He was everywhere—his weeklong evangelistic “crusades” packed stadiums around the globe; innumerable books and articles carried his byline; his face appeared on the covers of the newsweeklies. The Graham media empire included a magazine, a radio show, and a television program. America’s most famous preacher died on February 21 at the age of 99. Younger Americans Read more
The Venezuela Airlift?
The case for "coercive humanitarianism."
11:45 AM, Jan 30, 2018
In this week’s magazine’s editorial , “Night Falls on Venezuela,” we took 1,200 words or so to describe the desperate state into which the country has fallen. To sum up: The people of Venezuela are starving to death. Bands of hungry looters roam the streets of its cities, the currency is worthless, and no one can create wealth thanks to incompetent and corrupt regulators backed by the regime. The governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro have ruined the nation’s economy in the time-honore Read more
Artisanal Sex?
Barton Swaim warms up to hipsterism.
4:00 AM, Jan 12, 2018
Recently I visited a small university town. A friend recommended I visit a certain downtown coffee shop known for its exquisite espressos and Americanos. “It’s pretty hipster,” my friend warned, and it was. Everyone present was between the ages of, I guessed, 17 and 35. The men wore clothes that could generously be called fitted. The women’s outfits seemed, to my admittedly traditional sensibilities, calculated to offend: not because they were revealing or immodest but because their patterns and Read more
Stupid Phrase Alert: 'Upending Decades of U.S. Policy'
Please, stop using it.
5:05 AM, Dec 27, 2017
After the Trump administration announced it would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, almost every news report I read contained some version of the phrase “upending decades of U.S. policy.” The night before the announcement, on December 5, the AFP News Agency tweeted: “#BREAKING President Donald Trump is to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, upending decades of careful US policy and ignoring dire warnings from allies across the Middle East and the world.” The word “careful” see Read more
Murray Kempton at 100
Barton Swaim remembers Murray Kempton.
4:00 AM, Dec 15, 2017
The occasion of Murray Kempton’s centenary—he was born December 16, 1917—has attracted little attention. As a columnist for the New York Post and later Newsday he wrote more about New York than Washington or national politics, but one had a right to expect a biography or maybe a few essays or a short PBS documentary or at least an NPR spot. Nothing so far, except for an appreciation in his hometown Baltimore Sun and the little piece you’re reading. It’s not that Kempton is forgotten Read more
The Conflicting Dogmas of the Liberal Clerisy
On the cultural contradictions of modern liberalism.
4:00 AM, Nov 24, 2017
In The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976) Daniel Bell argued that modern capitalism abetted two conflicting tendencies: It encouraged hedonistic self-gratification in the cultural sphere while needing sober hard-working adults in the economic sphere. A defect in the thesis is that there is arguably no such thing as capitalism; it’s not a system devised by anyone and so doesn’t deserve the “ism.” To the extent it refers to markets and profits, “capitalism” is the default way people or Read more
The Reformation at 500
The continuing reverberation of Luther's 95 theses.
1:00 AM, Oct 27, 2017
On October 31, exactly 500 years will have passed since a German monk named Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. That’s at least the tradition, but certainly Luther circulated his collection of brief contentions. Mainly he intended to provoke a debate over the sale of indulgences, a feature of penance for sins that granted their full or partial remission. Luther was angered by the crass advertising campaign launched by the papacy to raise money for Read more
Good Writer's Disease?
On Antonin Scalia as a speechwriter.
3:30 AM, Sep 29, 2017
I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed reading a collection of speeches. This may be due to the fact that most or maybe all I’ve read are political, and political speeches, even those authored by literate and capable politicians, lose their significance almost immediately. But perhaps the more important reason speeches don’t work as published products is that their authors typically aren’t writers. Writers don’t give many speeches, for one thing, and for another their writings are the things people care Read more
Did You Ever See a Dreamer Walking?
For illegals with educational ambitions, life is complicated.
3:30 AM, Sep 08, 2017
In June 2012, when President Obama issued the executive order known as DACA—“deferred action on childhood arrivals”—he had a good moral case but a bad legal one. The order allowed illegal immigrants who had entered the country as minors—people who hadn’t come to America of their own will—to apply for a work permit and a renewable two-year exemption from deportation. Public opinion is broadly sympathetic to the plight of these youngsters, and rightly so: Many of them have little or no memory of t Read more
It Can't Happen Here
Trump and fascism.
3:00 AM, Sep 01, 2017
For several days in mid-August, Donald Trump found himself ensnared in a bizarre controversy over the “very fine people” marching alongside neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va. It was a stupid thing to say—he said it several times, of course—and he was roundly criticized for his failure to condemn Nazi-sympathizing troublemakers. It brought to mind, once again, all those panicky predictions of an impending fascist insurgency in the wake of Trump’s victory. Before and especially after last Novembe Read more
How Trump's Turning Liberals into Burkeans
The president and his followers are upsetting the prevailing liberal worldview. Cue the pearl-clutching.
12:15 PM, Aug 25, 2017
Most conservatives find the Trump presidency highly distressing for a variety of totally valid reasons—the ideological mishmash, the dysfunction, the lack of any political principle guiding the nation’s chief executive. But there is one part of the present era I can’t help enjoying, and that’s the way liberals so often sound like conservatives—confused and rather dim conservatives who’ve only just realized what’s been done to their culture. It happened about the time Donald Trump clinched the Read more
Through Glasses, Darkly
Barton Swaim, eclipsed.
4:00 AM, Aug 25, 2017
Columbia, South Carolina, is known for its excessive heat, and that’s about it. The place has its benefits, and the weather is splendid for nine months out of the year, but like some other state capitals—Harrisburg, say—it’s not a destination. When I’m in Washington and tell someone I live in Columbia, the reply is usually something like this: “Oh, right. I’ve been to Charleston.” And that’s the way I prefer it. A lot of new people can only mean more traffic and higher taxes and more stupid ar Read more
Bill de Blasio, Culture-meister
The mayor's problematic plan for the arts.
3:00 AM, Aug 04, 2017
Last month, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled the city’s first-ever “cultural plan.” Although the details are murky, he hopes to tie funding for arts organizations to the “diversity” of their staffs and boards of directors. The city’s commissioner of cultural affairs, Tom Finkelpearl, explained the plan this way: “Today’s announcement requiring diversity reporting from city-funded groups is the next step, building on everything we’ve learned to date to work toward a cultural sector tha Read more
The Meaning of Stupid
Barton Swaim on stupidity
3:00 AM, Jul 28, 2017
I once worked in a small state agency that, among other things, analyzed legislation. At one point the agency’s head hired three new analysts. One of them was a woman in her early thirties—call her Leena. Her job was to brief other staffers on budget-related bills. When she first took the job, she seemed knowledgeable and reliable. She knew the names and general attitudes of lawmakers (a great advantage in that position), and she seemed to know a lot about the state budget. She was a tad abras Read more
The Expertocracy
What if they don't know as much as they think they do?
2:00 AM, May 12, 2017
It's constantly surprising to me how promiscuously Americans use the term "expert." An expert is someone who has comprehensive knowledge of a subject or total mastery of a skill. We all recognize such people—the guy who repaired my roof last year is an expert, I think, because you can't perform the job better than he did. But the sheer variety of people termed "experts" today is enough to make you ponder the term's meaning. A quick Google News search suggests there are experts on pets, human rig Read more
Beyond the Cross
Myriad meanings in the death of Jesus.
1:15 AM, Dec 16, 2016
It’s a commonplace observation, and yet somehow still a shocking one: In all of human civilization, no subject has been written and talked about more than the death of Jesus Christ. A typical subject you might study in graduate school—presidential politics, say, or the poetry of William Wordsworth—will occupy four or five shelves of a well-stocked university library. The death of Jesus generates that much material every decade and has done so for centuries. Many scholars and theologians, of co Read more
The Masculine Case
From the October 31, 2016, issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
6:00 AM, Oct 26, 2016
Occasionally a younger person will ask me for counsel on getting an essay published. Usually, I have two suggestions. First, offer to write book reviews instead of freestanding essays; second, once you've finished your piece, obsess over it for hours and hours. Make it as typographically flawless, structurally coherent, and altogether mellifluous as you can make it. What you want to do more than anything else, I say, is to make the editor happy, and the way to do that is to make the job of rea Read more
The Masculine Case
A writer's choice of pronouns tells us a lot about him.
2:00 AM, Oct 21, 2016
Occasionally a younger person will ask me for counsel on getting an essay published. Usually, I have two suggestions. First, offer to write book reviews instead of freestanding essays; second, once you’ve finished your piece, obsess over it for hours and hours. Make it as typographically flawless, structurally coherent, and altogether mellifluous as you can make it. What you want to do more than anything else, I say, is to make the editor happy, and the way to do that is to make the job of rea Read more
Prufrock: Elegant British Losses, Shakespeare's Politics, Orwell on Wells and Hitler, and More
9:30 AM, Jun 18, 2016
Reviews and News: The British have an especially beautiful way of losing : "It was a long time before they were overcome – before we finished them. When we did get to them, they all died in one place, together. They threw down their guns when their ammunition was done, and then commenced with their pistols, which they used as long as their ammunition lasted; and then they formed a line, shoulder to shoulder and back to back, and fought with their knives." * * In the today's Wall Street Read more
Prufrock: Augustine's Conversion, America's Clubs, and a Sketchy Papyrus
9:30 AM, Jun 17, 2016
Reviews and News: In 2012, New Testament scholar Karen King presented a papyrus seeming to indicate that Jesus was married. "Jesus said to them, My wife," it says. The papyrus's authenticity was challenged almost immediately, however, and not merely by traditionalists. In The Atlantic , Ariel Sabar examines its chain of ownership, and what he finds does not inspire confidence in the document's authenticity. * * Robin Lane Fox's St. Augustine "doesn't convert to Christianity; he conve Read more
Philosopher and King
Richard Nixon and his Pat -- Moynihan, that is.
1:00 AM, Jun 17, 2016
Newly elected presidents, their staffs flush with optimism and bursting with fresh ideas, sometimes invite a member of the opposing party, or at least an adherent of an opposing ideology, to join the administration. Maybe it’s a political gesture; maybe it's an expression of magnanimity or of confidence that what matters isn't ideology or party labels. In any case, it usually ends badly. I think of David Gergen going to work for Bill Clinton in 1993 or John J. DiIulio joining the Bush administ Read more
Prufrock: Primo Levi's works, the Higher Education Ponzi Scheme, Skywriting as Art, and Trouble at the Brontë Society
9:30 AM, Jun 16, 2016
Reviews and News: Penguin Classics has produced a three-volume collection of Primo Levi's works : "In the mid-1950s, Primo Levi often travelled to Germany on business as an industrial chemist. It would have been bad for business if he could not, at some level, accommodate the country that had degraded him as a Jew at Auschwitz. In his memoir of his survival in the camp, If This Is a Man (1947), the Germans are addressed aggressively in the vocative: 'You Germans, you have succeeded.' Any G Read more
Prufrock: Death and Social Media, Lionel Shriver's America, and Wallace Stevens' Reputation
9:30 AM, Jun 15, 2016
Reviews and News: Next time someone you know dies, please, don't put it on social media : "The morning after my sister Lauren died was cold and quiet, a mid-March prairie dawn, lit by gray half-light. For several hours I tried to figure out how to get out of bed. The most routine tasks are extraordinarily difficult in the early days of grief – Lauren's death had torn a hole in my universe, and I knew the moment I moved I would fall right through it. Meanwhile, across the city, a former clas Read more
Prufrock: Intelligence Enhancers, Mean Girls, and Britain's Least Glamorous Sport
9:30 AM, Jun 14, 2016
Reviews and News: Jeffrey M. Zacks explains the follies of quick-fix "intelligence-enhancers" and the value of doing the hard work of using your mind : "Is it just me, or is everybody out there looking for a quick fix? There is something highly compelling about the idea that there is a secret switch we can flip to become suddenly smarter, to reveal cognitive abilities hidden inside each of us. It is a notion that certainly has commercial appeal. Over just seven years, the games-maker Lumosi Read more
Prufrock: Limousine Liberals, the Impossibility of Political Satire, and the Hatred of Poetry
9:30 AM, Jun 13, 2016
Reviews and News: Fred Siegel on a new book about New York City politics in 1969 : "Roughly 15 years ago, I took part in a symposium on the political legacy of former New York City mayor John Lindsay. Little of note was said from the podium, but I couldn't help noticing that the former Lindsayites who spoke all had limousines waiting for them at the curb. It was a striking reminder of the epithets hurled at Lindsay during the 1969 mayoral election when his opponent, Mario Procaccino, mocked Read more
Prufrock: Modiano's obscurantism, the west's soft totalitarianism, and Nézet-Séguin's turtle tattoo
9:30 AM, Jun 11, 2016
Reviews and News: Dominic Green on 2014 Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano's deliberate obscurantism : "The typical Modiano novel begins with a mystery of origins and identity, and proceeds by passivity and vagueness. Sometimes, the story terminates in a tragedy of life foreshortened. Sometimes the track runs full circle, as though life is a series of improvisations, each designed to keep you where you are. Either way, the 'force of circumstances' determines the outcome." ** Michael Mande Read more
Prufrock: Cultural Intelligence, Americans' Drinking Habits, and 'Chuffah'
9:30 AM, Jun 10, 2016
Reviews and News: Arnold Kling on cultural intelligence : "Thanks to work in a number of related fields, collected in some exceptionally important books published in just the past few years, it is becoming increasingly apparent that progress tends to arise from the evolution of decentralized trial-and-error processes more than from grand schemes launched by planners and revolutionaries." * * What a great time for a book on Americans' drinking habits. * * A. Scott Berg's 1978 b Read more
Prufrock: Time Travel as Social Commentary, Fiction About Guilt, and Lord Byron's Secrets
9:30 AM, Jun 09, 2016
Reviews and News: Time travel as social commentary : "Allusions to the present are in ample supply in this Russian doll of a novel. The story unfolds in a familiar near future of big data and artificial intelligence. Its characters have drifted through an extended adolescence: moving back in with parents and working in dead-end jobs, with friendships organised and experienced through smartphones. Now they drift through adulthood in self-driving cars, blithely accepting prying governments an Read more
Losses and Wins
Bridging the generation gap with Ole Miss football.
12:15 AM, Dec 31, 2015
Stuart Stevens was Mitt Romney’s top political strategist during the 2012 campaign. He knows what it feels like to lose, and he can hardly talk about that loss with anyone who hasn't experienced a campaign from the inside: It was such an intense, pressured, chaotic process that demanded so much it was inevitable that one began and ended a different person. A year after the election, he writes, "there were still long periods when I'd lie in bed reading and trying, never very successfully, n Read more