Sometimes historical scholarship tells us more about the present than about the past. In June 2005, an exhibit of Omar ibn Said’s The Life, the only known autobiography written by an American black while in bondage, was on display in the lobby of the U.N. headquarters. What made it even more significant was that The...
Year: 2005
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Attacking the Traditional Family
The traditional family is being attacked with an unconventional weapon: children’s story books. As books promoting a pro-homosexual ideology have slipped into public elementary-school libraries across America, unsuspecting children as young as age four have been exposed to immoral themes and content. Such was the case when the seven-year-old daughter of Michael and Tonya Hartsell...
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The Price of Oil
Oil prices have been soaring, yet the U.S. media has overlooked one of the chief reasons why. The 2005 Department of Defense report on “The Military Power of the People’s Republic of China” cites Beijing’s growing need for foreign sources of metals and fossil fuels as a “driver of strategy,” noting that these account for...
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On Welfare Queens
Doug Bandow does a very good job in his article “The Republican Party’s Welfare Queens” (Views, August) of detailing all the various queens and their courts in the Republican Party, all of which are parasites on the taxpayer. What he does not do, however, is to detail the cultural circumstances that have turned the GOP...
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On Chinese Division
Dr. Srdja Trifkovic’s “Getting China Straight” (The American Interest, August) is, for the most part, an intelligent and thorough analysis of the looming presence of China on the world stage. Unfortunately, Dr. Trifkovic concludes with a suggestion—admittedly only one among many that he brings forward—that is fraught with peril. In his final paragraph, he writes:...
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Revitalizing Rockford
In January, this column will celebrate its fifth anniversary. When Tom Fleming and I originally conceived of the idea back in 1998 (as an occasional “Letter From Rockford” to be written by various local activists), we were capitalizing on the fact that ...
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Reviving the American Dream—November 2005
PERSPECTIVE Agrarianism From Hesiod to Bradford by Thomas Fleming Life in community. VIEWS The Old South, the New South, and the Real South by Tom Landess Taking off the Yankee spectacles. Reattacking Leviathan by Mark Royden Winchell Starving the beast. The Case for American Secession by Kirkpatrick Sale Still a good idea. The Writer as Farmer by James Everett Kibler Under Heaven. NEWS Solving U.S. Problems in ...
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Art and Artist
This collection of essays, generally short, on some two dozen authors, chiefly novelists, underlines “the delight of great books,” to borrow a phrase from John Erskine. It fits the definition that Anatole France (one of the writers treated) gave of literary criticism: “les aventures de son âme au milieu des chefs-d’œuvre” (“the adventures of one’s...
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Two Trails to the Rainbow
It was in the spring of 1925 that a young Easterner named Clyde Kluckhohn, on sabbatical from Princeton to spend a year working on a cattle ranch near Ramah, New Mexico, first learned from a Zuñi Indian of the natural phenomenon called Nonne-zoche Not-se-lid (meaning “Rainbow of Stone”), standing at the very end of the...
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Death in the Afternoon
In the 16th century, Spain was the wonder of Europe, with her vast empire in Latin America and the Philippines and her wealthy possessions in the southern Netherlands and Italy. She came close to defeating and ruling England and Holland and, for a time, annexed Portugal with her colonial empire in Africa, Asia, and Brazil. ...
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An Instinctive Jacobite
After five visits, I still get turned around in Rome, but, in Edinburgh, I consulted a map only on the first day. A quick look around from the summit of any one of the city’s hills is worth more than an hour examining a map. By the end of our Convivium, I’ve climbed all the...
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Gifted Amateurs
Since they first appeared in the late 19th century, professional academic historians in the United States have been pretty much Establishment men (though, in other days, they did observe some canons of evidence and reasoned argument, and an occasional maverick appeared to remind that historical understanding should be an evolving debate and not a party...
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‘War Between the States’
Judge John Roberts can rest assured that his Supreme Court confirmation will go very smoothly, judging from the weak 11th-hour attacks the left is mounting against him in the media. A “shocking” discovery about his record appeared in an August 26 report in the Washington Post that took issue with a phrase Roberts used while...
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Progress in the Sands
“The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation.” —William McKinley What sets Sands of Empire apart from the growing list of books scrutinizing the Bush administration’s foreign policy is its philosophical ambition. Where other authors have contented themselves with estimating the neoconservative influence on America’s strategic posture or describing the nation’s slouch...
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Dubious Dubya Budgets
As the federal Fiscal Year 2005 approaches completion and the 2006 budget takes shape, the lack of fiscal discipline of the George W. Bush presidency continues to enlarge upon the “politics of joy,” which have characterized the Republican Party since the end of World War II. No longer aspiring to be the party of frugality...
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The Dishonest Pursuit of War
President George W. Bush’s recent attempt to generate public support for his Iraq policy comes as even more evidence emerges that the invasion of Iraq was a war of choice. His argument that we must persevere because Iraq has become “a central front in the war on terror” sounds like the man who kills his...
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Pimp Dreams
Hustle and Flow Produced by Crunk Pictures and New Deal Productions Directed and written by Craig Brewer Distributed by MTV Films and Paramount Classics Bulletin: Pimps and rappers have hearts; they have yearnings; they have midlife crises, for heaven’s sake! Sure, they exploit and abuse women, deal dope, and occasionally shoot one another; but, hell,...
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Habemus Papam
In response to the badgering of reporters during the interregnum about whether the new pope would be a liberal or a conservative, Justin Cardinal Rigali of Philadelphia responded that the next pope will be Catholic. With the election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI, the Church has not only a Catholic pope but...
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The Flamingo Kid
It is a truism to note that H.L. Mencken, like his great vitriolic predecessor Jonathan Swift, was a thoroughgoing misanthrope. So perverse was Mencken’s vision of human existence that he preferred to read King Lear as farce rather than as tragedy—since nothing, he was fond of saying, could be more farcical than death. But if...
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Learning From Canada’s Mistakes
Since his appointment as Canadian ambassador to the United States, Frank McKenna has spent many hours trying to assure Americans that none of the September 11 hijackers came from Canada. This is, of course, true, but it would be wrong to assume that Canada’s “War on Terror” has been error-free. In fact, some of the...
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Grasping the Inexplicable
The U.S. government has a new official program called “Orthodox Christian World Outreach.” Tens of millions of dollars will be spent to counter distrustful perceptions of the United States in Orthodox countries such as Serbia, Greece, and Russia—perceptions resulting, in part, from our policies with respect to Bosnia and Kosovo. Under this new program, American...
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The Unborn
Abortion advocates were pleased when reports from the world of medicine suggested that it cannot be shown conclusively that a child in the womb feels the pain of the needle to his heart, the vacuum sucking away his body parts, or the curette that carefully slices him to pieces. However, a careful reflection on such...
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“Courageous” Sharon “Disengages” From Gaza
You’ve probably heard the one about the boy who murdered his parents and then asked the court for mercy because he was an orphan. But what if, after being pardoned by the judge, who had taken into consideration his heartbreaking experience, the young kid also demanded that the state provide him with financial assistance to...
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Episcopalians Go Interfaith
An interfaith education conference in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Episcopal Church warned that evangelicals and evangelism are potential obstacles to positive relations between Christianity and other religions. Among the featured speakers at the Interfaith Education Initiative was Methodist theologian Wesley Ariarajah, a former official of the World Council of Churches who has denied the...
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A Suppressed Embarrassment
A book that has failed to go anywhere internationally, contrary to the author’s expectation, is a recent study by a Chilean Jewish academic who teaches philosophy at the University of Berlin, Victor Farías. His work deals with the youthful thought and career of Salvador Allende, who, between 1970 and 1973, headed the Marxist Government of...
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Setting History Straight
Having sensed in the 1990’s that most European and American reporting about the Balkans was suspect, I find that this investigative study by a young German journalist, associated with the publication Junge Welt, fills in gaping holes in the received account of a controversial phase of recent history. Contributing to my uneasiness over the establishment’s...
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Rivers of Blood
“An idea which is a distortion may have a greater intellectual thrust than the truth; it may serve the needs of the spirit.” —Susan Sontag “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependents,...
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Promoting Militant Islam Abroad: U.S. Policy Blunders
On December 19, 1983, a special envoy from President Ronald Reagan stepped off the plane in Baghdad with a handwritten letter from the President to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The letter informed Saddam that Washington was prepared to support Iraq in her war with Iran. The envoy was Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld spent another day in...
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Welcoming Muhammad
In February 2002, Chronicles’ associate editor Aaron Wolf and I spent a day at the Rockford Iqra School, a Muslim academy in Southeast Rockford. I chronicled the events of that day in “Through a Glass, Darkly,” the April 2002 installment of The Rockford Files. The frank expression of admiration for Osama bin Laden by the...
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Intrigue in the Balkans
Having devoted a major part of my working life over the past four years to researching and writing about terrorism, I am alert to the possibility that there are a few people around me who would like to shut me up—for good, if at all possible. The tragic end of Theo van Gogh, slaughtered in...
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Christians Against Terrorism
Tony Blair is mad—really mad. Nasty people keep blowing up things in his London, and he is going to do something about it. At a press conference in late July, he told the world that he wants to make it illegal for British subjects to leave Britain for advanced terrorist training in Pakistan. The hidden...
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Losing the “War on Terror” at the Border
According to a host of news reports, the porous, virtually unprotected southern border of the United States has attracted the attention of Islamic terrorists, as many of us warned it would at the outset of the “War on Terror.” In March, Time, citing U.S. intelligence officials, reported that Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, a ring leader of...
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The Lone Ranger’s Legacy
After serving for more than three decades on the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice William Rehnquist died on Saturday, September 3, at the age of 80, having lost his battle with thyroid cancer. With Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s recent announcement of her retirement, there are now two vacant seats on the Court. Just over a...
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On Today’s Heroes
In “A Place to Stand” (Views, July), Wayne Allensworth asks, “How will our sons become men in the bureaucratized, risk-averse, feminist post-America our elites envision for us?” Certainly, this is a grave concern for anyone thinking clearly about our nation’s future. One can add a concern about how our daughters will become women, and how...
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On the Way Out of Iraq
Dr. Srdja Trifkovic’s “Iraq: The Way Out” (American Proscenium, August) is the most promising piece I have seen since it became apparent that our initial military victory marked the beginning of our warfare in that country, not the end. For more than a year, I have been advocating to those (precious few) who would listen...
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Importing Jihad—October 2005
PERSPECTIVE Christians Against Terrorismby Thomas Fleming Counterterrorism is hell. VIEWS Promoting Militant Islam Abroadby Ronald L. HatchettU.S. policy blunders. Learning From Canada’s Mistakesby James BissettTerror along the border. Welcoming Muhammadby Scott P. RichertAbandoning that which is our own. NEWS Rivers of Bloodby Richard CummingsImmigration and terror in a time of chaos. The Dishonest Pursuit of...
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Outsourcing Parenthood
Two categories of parents emerged in the 1970’s: those who wanted to rear children and those who merely wanted to have them. I first became aware of the distinction in 1972, about the time the feminist revolution was beginning its blitzkrieg through university campuses. I had been married about four years, and the stark differences...
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The Autodidact at Work and Play
Every writer is an autodidact, for reasons that are fairly obvious when you think about it. First, the business of writing (as distinguished from composition) cannot be taught but must be learned by imitation and by practice. And, second, unless he is a scholar, newspaper journalist, or technical-scientific writer, a writer must discover his proper...
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American Historians and Their History
This article is drawn from the author’s speech on accepting The Rockford Institute’s first John Randolph Award at the historic Menger Hotel in San Antonio, a short distance from the Alamo. For this occasion, I have been asked to reflect on “the historian’s task” and “the American republican tradition.” To do so could be a...
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Shelby Foote, R.I.P.
Shelby Foote, one of the giants of Southern literature, passed away on June 27 at his home in Memphis at the age of 88. An unapologetic Mississippian, Foote never finished college but had much more valuable experiences—he grew up with another world-class Southern writer, Walker Percy, and, as a young man, played tennis on William...
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Confessions of an Autodidact
Is self-education a good idea? The greatest of my teachers, Walter Starkie, in his delightful autobiography Scholars and Gypsies, recalls a comment made in 1914 by his godfather, J.P Mahaffy, the legendary provost of Trinity College, Dublin, about W.B. Yeats: “Poor fellow! He is an autodidaktos—he never worked under a Master.” Yeats did not end...
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I’m Just a Travelin’ Man
“Education begins with life,” said Benjamin Franklin somewhere. That was how it always seemed to me when I was growing up in Southern Ireland in the 1970’s and 80’s. I enjoyed some things about school, especially my secondary school—an experimental comprehensive, one of only two in the country at that time, opened to cater to...
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The Party Pooper
Keith Sutherland is a respected British publisher of such works as History of Political Thought and Polis: The Journal of Greek Political Thought, as well as the executive editor of the Journal of Consciousness Studies. He has also edited such important collections of essays as The Rape of the Constitution? (2000)—of which compendium Margaret Thatcher...
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A Master of His Time
Gordon S. Wood’s Americanization of Benjamin Franklin is a welcome testimony to the renewed interest in America’s Founding Fathers. Although most Americans have a clear idea as to the importance of Washington’s military role and Jefferson’s contribution in writing the Declaration of Independence, few appreciate the pivotal part Franklin played in legitimizing the Revolution among...
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Preternatural Selection
War of the Worlds Produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Directed by Steven Spielberg Screenplay by David Koepp and Josh Friedman Holy oxymoron! Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds is a thoughtful summer blockbuster. While it serves up the obligatory thrills of the school’s-out-let-it-rip subgenre, it also pays surprisingly scrupulous homage to its...
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Judge Roberts
As the U.S. Senate prepares to consider President George W. Bush’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, there seems to be a certain ambiguity about Judge Roberts’ position on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion-on-demand the “law of the land.” On the one hand, he is on record as saying...
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Moscow in Malibu
This new consideration of a well-worn subject is altogether justified for two salient reasons. The first is that Red Star Over Hollywood contains new material and judgment fortified by new research and information; the second, that the topic has been distorted not only by failures of interpretation but by continuing exploitation, even today. The Radoshes...
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The Imperial Trajectory
“We oppose militarism. It means conquest abroad and intimidation and oppression at home. It means the strong arm which has ever been fatal to free institutions. It is what millions of our citizens have fled from Europe.” —Democratic National Platform, 1900 Mention militarism, and names that come to mind probably include men on horseback such...
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Whose Security?
Several years ago, when the summer blockbuster Independence Day came out, I was told that audiences cheered the part where alien spacecraft destroyed such Washington, D.C., landmarks as the U.S. Capitol and the White House. At least some Americans know who the real enemy is and are willing to cheer publicly at cinematic depictions of...
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The Communion of Saints
Every one loved St Bridget. Even the sunbeams liked to be near her. One day an April shower came on, and, as she entered her cell, she flung her wet cloak over a sunbeam shining through the window, thinking it was a wooden beam. The bright ray willingly held up her mantle hour after hour,...