My meeting with the college dean was a disillusioning experience. I had figured that it would take about ten minutes to fill out the required paperwork to transfer from this private college to a state university, but, when I emerged a half-hour later, I realized how naive I had been about higher education. I had...
Year: 2005
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Bland Rube Triumphant
Let us now praise famous Queenslanders, in particular the most famous Queenslander of the lot: Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, who died, aged 94, on April 26. One of Australia’s most sure-footed and most intuitively brilliant political leaders, Sir Joh, as everyone called him (though he received his knighthood only in 1983, it is now impossible to...
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Japan’s Wars of Aggression
“Japan didn’t fight wars of aggression. Only China now says so,” declared Yuko Tojo, the granddaughter of Japan’s wartime prime minister, Gen. Hideki Tojo, in an interview with the Japan Times in late June. Yuko was half right. Although Japan fought several wars of aggression, only China seems to raise the issue today. America dropped...
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Master of Your Domain
With the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in Kelo v. New London, the truth of this column’s conceit—that Rockford, Illinois, is a microcosm of America—has never been more clear. One of the running themes of this column since shortly after it began in 2001 as a “Letter From Rockford” has been the abuse of the...
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Master of Your Domain
With the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in Kelo v. New London, the truth of this column’s conceit—that Rockford, Illinois, is a microcosm of America—has never been more clear. One of the running themes of this column since shortly after it began in 2001 as a “Letter From Rockford” has been the abuse of the...
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European Disunion
In early 1980, the Soviet Union appeared to be more powerful than ever before. Its hold over Eastern Europe had been sealed in Helsinki five years previously. Its presence or influence in the Third World was rising, while that of the United States was diminishing. The notion of its eventual demise was dear to a...
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Crying “Halt!”
A federal judge whom I know lamented that the Supreme Court term that ended last June was the worst in recent memory. That judge loves the Constitution but could find few signs that this term’s key decisions were based on that document. A Court that can rule that medical marijuana grown for home use substantially...
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A Lawyer’s Lawyer
Judge John Roberts of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, whom President George W. Bush has nominated to take the place of retiring Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, is what we used to call a “lawyer’s lawyer.” He comes from Harvard College, Harvard Law School, the Harvard Law Review, a...
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It Takes an Autodidact
Once upon a time, I decided to learn Japanese. I had none of the usual practical reasons: no business interests that would take me to Japan nor even an academic project comparing Noh plays with Attic tragedy. I knew next to nothing of Japan, though as a child, my imagination had been stirred by the...
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James B. Stockdale, R.I.P.
The death of Adm. James Stockdale on July 5 robs America of one of the best men of our time. A soldier and a patriot, Admiral Stockdale also possessed the kind of inquiring mind and thirst for virtue that is the mark of a true philosopher. Born and raised in Illinois, Stockdale attended Monmouth College...
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Karl Rove and the Plame Affair
Karl Rove’s favorite president is Richard Nixon. What a twist of fate it would be if Rove were driven from power as Nixon was over what both men would consider trivial matters—the leaking of a CIA employee’s name to reporters by Rove in 2004 and the Watergate break-in of the Democratic headquarters at the instigation...
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Panic on the Left
President Bush’s nomination of Judge John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court has caused something just a little short of panic on the left. The day after the announcement, the New York Times told its readers that Roberts and his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, are “devout Catholics.” The following day, a front-page headline proclaimed that...
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On Men of the East
I am perplexed by Aaron D. Wolf’s omission of any reference at all to the Eastern Orthodox Church in “Effeminate Gospel, Effeminate Christians” (Views, July), particularly since he is identified as a Church (capital C) historian. Coincidentally, the same issue contains Scott P. Richert’s article about the consecration of an Orthodox monastery in Montenegro, which...
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On a Supreme Court Appointment
Chronicles carries informed and very interesting articles. You have literate and intelligent authors, and I look forward anxiously to the arrival of each issue. I want to compliment you particularly on the article on the judiciary by William F. Harvey (“An Appointment to the Supreme Court,” Vital Signs, June). It is a tragedy that Judge...
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Homeschooling for Life—September 2005
PERSPECTIVE It Takes an Autodidact by Thomas Fleming Adventures in life-long learning. VIEWS The Communion of Saints by Michael McMahon Journeying together. The Autodidact at Work and Play by Chilton Williamson, Jr. Reflections on the writerly life. I'm Just a Travelin' Man by Derek Turner Education through wanderlust. Confessions of an Autodidact by David Gordon A place to start. American Historians and Their History by Clyde Wilson Scratching the ...
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The Legacy of Sandra Dee
A first-wave Baby Boomer, I grew up the 1950’s and early 60’s. We teenage girls yearned to look like Sandra Dee (a.k.a. Alexandra Zuck), who passed away on February 20, 2005. If we couldn’t remake ourselves into the image of “Gidget,” then Mouseketeer-turned-beach-babe Annette Funicello, Carol Lynley (Blue Denim), Tuesday Weld (Rally Round the Flag, Boys!),...
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Raisonné Dérèglement
Whether all authorities agree with what is averred here—that Ernest Hemingway was one of America’s greatest writers—is uncertain. Surely, however, his work constituted a watershed; if his chastened style and objective manner no longer seem striking, it is because subsequent American writing owes so much to him that his originality is disguised. Prima facie evidence...
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Dia de los Muertos
Fall had always been Héctor Villa’s least-favorite season. This year, as the days shortened and his cousin’s stayover in his home lengthened inexorably, he felt his substance as a householder drain away in exact proportion to the diminishing quantity of the pale indirect light. Four days after the shortest day of the year comes Christmas;...
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Women in Combat
Two women marines and a female Navy petty officer were killed, and eleven were wounded, when their convoy was ambushed on the night of June 23 in Fallujah. The Pentagon took several days to confirm the casualties, and media coverage was thin. If Americans took note of the tragedy at all, it was not to...
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The Conservative Cosmos
There is no question that the media landscape has shifted seismically in the last two decades. In the Reagan years, I eagerly subscribed to National Review and the American Spectator; I even sent in an ad from National Review for a magazine called Chronicles of Culture. Those publications, joined by Human Events and numerous syndicated...
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Please Tread on Me
“Sic Semper Tyrannis.” —from the Great Seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia “I want everybody to hear loud and clear that I’m going to be the president of everybody.” —George W. Bush “I hope we get to the bottom of the answer. It’s what I’m interested to know.” —George W. Bush A bit of folklore, often...
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A Hydra With Two Heads
On Tuesday, May 31, just two days after a decisive 55-percent majority of French voters had rejected the treaty proposal for a constitution for Europe, simultaneously destroying the president’s waning prestige and the fragile unity of France’s Socialist Party, Jacques Chirac staggered his supporters and detractors by pulling an extraordinary two-eared hybrid from his conjuror’s...
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Republicanism, Monarchy, and the Human Scale of Politics
The Founding Fathers had to face hard and unprecedented questions about the size and scale of a political order. They occupied a vast region, and conventional wisdom said that such could only be governed by monarchy. They were determined to be republicans, however, and the conventional wisdom was that republics had to be small. The...
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Faith-Based Immigration
Attempting to make dinner conversation at a May 2004 refugee contractors’ conference, I speculated about the chances of Serbs, now hounded and persecuted in Kosovo, coming to America on the U.S. refugee program. In the last ten years, the percentage of Serbs in the Serbian province of Kosovo has declined from over ten percent to...
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The Republican Party’s Welfare Queens
Republicans routinely portray themselves as fiscal guardians. In truth, they, like the Democrats, are irresponsible wastrels. Outlays are up by one third under President George W. Bush, making him the biggest spender since Lyndon B. Johnson. As the Cato Institute’s Stephen Slivinski observes, “Even after excluding spending on defense and homeland security, Bush is still...
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Killing Off Limited Government
The federal government cannot ban criminals from bringing guns to schools, but it can arrest a person for growing marijuana at home to ease nausea from chemotherapy. Such is the state of Supreme Court jurisprudence. The intellectual case for the “War on Drugs” faded long ago. Criminalization of what is primarily a moral and health...
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Low Blows, Dark Vengeance
Cinderella Man Produced and distributed by Universal Pictures and Miramax Films Directed by Ron Howard Screenplay by Cliff Hollingsworth and Akiva Goldsman Batman Begins Produced and distributed by Warner Brothers Directed by Christopher Nolan Screenplay by David S. Goyer Boxing has always been a favorite subject for screenwriters. No other sport accommodates their mythomaniacal instincts...
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Powers, Principalities, Spiritual Forces
In Ephesians 6, the Apostle Paul writes, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (6:12). Political scientist and lay theologian Jacques Ellul went beyond the usual interpretation of these “spiritual forces” as demons to see...
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Twentieth Century Fox
If, indeed, the second half of the 20th century was, in our country, “the age of Nixon,” as Robert Dole declared in his eulogy for the man at Yorba Linda in 1994, then Mark Feeney has undertaken to demonstrate just how that age fits into the larger category of the 20th century itself as “the...
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Regime Change
Whenever Washington targets some poor, misbegotten country for “regime change,” references to that unfortunate nation’s media by Western journalists are usually preceded by the modifier state-owned or state-controlled. The inference is clear: These guys are shills, not real journalists. Yet the West has its own state-owned and controlled media: The Brits have the BBC, and...
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Shoddy Goods, Shoddy Selves
Victor Navasky’s memoirs, which discuss his longtime relation to the Nation and how he came to publish that magazine, create for the reader two misleading impressions before he gets beyond the dust cover. Contrary to the blurbs of Bill Moyers, Barbara Ehrenreich, E.L. Doctorow, and Kirkus Reviews, this book is neither “elegant” nor “subversive” nor...
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The Wrong War
I am nervous about the course I am teaching, this coming fall, about World War II. As I will explain to the class from the outset, there are a few things I do not know about the topic—namely, when the war began, when it ended, where it happened, who were the key protagonists on each...
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Things That Go Bump in the Night
“We are born with the dead / See, they return and bring us with them.” —T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” “The philosophical and ideological currents of a period necessarily affecting its imaginative literature,” wrote Russell Kirk in “A Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale,” the supernatural in fiction has seemed ridiculous to most, nearly all this...
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Getting China Straight
The challenge that the rise of China presents to the United States is more pressing than any other global issue except for the ever-present threat of jihad. Beijing is rapidly becoming a regional power of the first order, the Asian hegemon that will need to be contained, confronted, or, in some way, appeased. Its ruling...
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Iraq: The Way Out
Two years and three months after President Bush announced the end of “major combat operations” in Iraq, the war is far from over. Large areas of the country are affected by an open-ended guerrilla insurgency. Periods of intense violence are followed by brief and temporary lulls. Vice President Dick Cheney asserted on May 31 that...
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Guantanamo Bay
Guantanamo Bay is the subject of continuous debate. Can the United States detain indefinitely members of the Taliban captured in Afghanistan, or Al Qaeda insurgents captured in Iraq, at our military base in Cuba? What sort of interrogation measures are permissible by international law in order to obtain information to protect Americans from the continuing...
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The Republic We Betrayed
A republican government is an exercise in human optimism, and patriotic republicans must engage in an unremitting struggle against that human entropy we used to know as Original Sin. Any American citizen today can quote, or at least dimly recall, Washington’s declarative challenge in his Farewell Address: Of all the dispositions and habits which lead...
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Downing Street Memo
The Downing Street Memo, a British-government document on Iraq leaked in May to the Sunday Times, may be as close as the American public will get to a “smoking gun” implicating the Bush White House in manipulating this country into war. A July 23, 2002, memo (actually, the minutes of a British cabinet meeting) written...
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Raiching the Constitution Over the Coals
The Supreme Court is often described as the final redoubt of states’ rights. In the last decade, we have heard much about the Court’s “New Federalism” jurisprudence. The Court, we have been warned, is seeking to return the Constitution to the horse-and-buggy days of yesteryear. Legal oracles such as the New York Times’ Linda Greenhouse...
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On Covering Islam
As a paleoconservative and traditional Catholic, I greatly enjoy Chronicles and look forward to every issue. I am, however, increasingly disturbed by the consistent and growing demonization of Muslims in the magazine. I think it is quite reasonable to accept that Islam has some extremely rough edges. It has bloody borders, most terrorists are Muslims,...
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We the Subjects—August 2005
PERSPECTIVE The Republic We Betrayedby Thomas Fleming Enslaving ourselves. VIEWS Republicanism, Monarchy, and the Human Scale of Politicsby Donald W. LivingstonOur kingless monarchy. Powers, Principalities, Spiritual Forcesby Harold O.J. BrownCharging toward the Dies Irae. Please Tread on Meby Clyde WilsonThus always to presidents. NEWS The Republican Party’s Welfare Queensby Doug BandowMay a thousand Enrons bloom....
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Effeminate Gospel, Effeminate Christians
Every definition of masculinity into which our Lord Jesus Christ does not fit belongs in the rubbish heap. Indeed, there could be no greater example of a man than He. Contrary to modern portrayals, Jesus was neither a sensitive metrosexual nor a macho-macho man. The tenderness that He displayed toward those whom He loved (including...
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Effeminate Gospel, Effeminate Christians
Every definition of masculinity into which our Lord Jesus Christ does not fit belongs in the rubbish heap. Indeed, there could be no greater example of a man than He. Contrary to modern portrayals, Jesus was neither a sensitive metrosexual nor a macho-macho man. The tenderness that He displayed toward those whom He loved (including...
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A Dirge Transposed
“A novel,” wrote Stendhal, “is a mirror carried along a road.” In Cyn-thia Shearer’s new book, the road, literally speaking, is that between the invented town of Madagascar, Mississippi, where the action is centered, and Memphis, the other major setting; metaphorically, it is the distance the South has traveled from about 1950 to the early 21st...
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Guys of the Golden West
During the first half of the second-to-last decade of the 19th century, three young gentlemen traveled from their native region of the northeastern United States to the trans-Mississippi West, still a few years short in those days of the official closing of the American frontier. Though alike in being Ivy Leaguers, well-born, well-bred, and well-heeled,...
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Play It Again, Plum!
“It has been well said of Bertram Wooster that though he may sink onto rustic benches and for a while give the impression of being licked into a custard, the old spirit will come surging back sooner or later.” —P.G. Wodehouse, The Mating Season Robert McCrum demurs from critical comparisons of P.G. Wodehouse with the...
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Essentials for a Lasting Peace in the Middle East
No solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is possible unless we clearly define the obstacles that can and must be surmounted. This conflict, which culminated in open warfare in 1948, is rooted in the incompatible claims of two distinct groups regarding the same territory and resources. In 1947, the United Nations partitioned...
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Fact and Fiction
Kingdom of Heaven Produced and distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Directed by Ridley Scott Screenplay by William Monahan Crash Produced and distributed by Bull’s Eye Entertainment Directed and written by Paul Haggis As I watched Kingdom of Heaven, Sir Ridley Scott’s most recent directorial effort, a feeling of déjà vu descended upon me, the story...
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Antiwar Federalists
The contrast between the importance of the subject of Richard Buel’s new book—New England’s defiance of federal authority during the years of commercial embargo and war with England—and the dullness and conventionality of the narrative reminds us that history is too important to be left to the current occupants of the academy. To enter the...
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Embryonic Stem Cells
Embryonic stem cells are always a controversial topic, especially when politicians wrangle over whether the government should support the practice of harvesting them. Some argue that only embryonic stem cells are valuable, while others have shown that research employing adult or umbilical-cord-blood stem cells has greater success. This debate is not about facts, however, but...