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,...
“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...
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...
Russell Berman, the Walter A. Haas Professor of Humanities at Stanford, has published a book, Anti-Americanism in Europe, that focuses on European dislike for the United States. Berman explains that “anti-Americanism has emerged as an ideology available to form a postnational European identity.” In place of the nationalist, anti-immigration mood of the 1990s, anti-Americanism permits...
Whatever happened to Randolph Scott ridin’ the range alone? Whatever happened to Gene and Tex And Roy and Rex, the Durango Kid? Whatever happened to Randolph Scott His horse plain, as can be? Whatever happened to Randolph Scott Has happened to the best of me. So sang the Statler Brothers in their 1974 country hit. ...
As we round the curve, the driver pulls up short—at least, as short as you can when you’re only going five miles per hour in the first place. As the minibus shudders to a halt, we all shift in our seats to get a better view out of the windshield. There, up ahead on the...
We Americans are in a serious quandary. Our national mythology—like the mythologies of most nations—requires us to pay tribute to the heroes of the past. Once upon a time, Fourth of July speeches routinely invoked the bravery of George Washington and his men, their sufferings at Valley Forge, and their surprise crossing of the Delaware. ...
The L.A. Mayoral election has been misunderstood and misrepresented by the national media, which rarely understands the consequences of events taking place in California, a state that functions more like a separate nation. The media portrayed former California Assembly speaker and L.A. city councilman Antonio Villaraigosa’s landslide victory in May as a national example for...
Thirty years after publishing Black Mischief, his hilarious novel about Abyssinia, the only independent African monarchy at that time, Evelyn Waugh wrote that the unthinkable in 1932 had come to pass. The Europeans were departing Africa, leaving the administration of the benighted natives to Ministries of Modification presided over by Basil Seals of the United...
PERSPECTIVE Heroes in the Age of the Antiheroby Thomas Fleming Unbreaking glass. VIEWS Guys of the Golden Westby Chilton Williamson, Jr.A glorious sunset. A Place to Standby Wayne AllensworthTexas and the making of men and heroes. Cowboy Heroesby Roger D. McGrathLearning the Code of the West. Effeminate Gospel, Effeminate Christiansby Aaron D. WolfFrom authority to...
Once again, Church historian Aaron D. Wolf slanders evangelicals with his essay “The Christian Zionist Threat to Peace” (Views, May). Using the classic ploy of quoting from a dictionary-type source in his introduction allows him to set up his own dispensationalist straw man to knock down in the rest of his polemic. Mr. Wolf does...
Some republicans object to using the term nuclear option to describe their plan to end filibusters on the Senate floor during confirmation hearings, but the image of total war is a fitting one for the possible direction of the “upper chamber” these days. The 11th-hour compromise between the squishes in both parties will only serve...
In a letter to the editor (Polemics & Exchanges, May) Henry Heatherly says that, in my March Sins of Omission column, “A Hero Among Heroes,” I refer to Audie Murphy firing a .50 caliber machine gun from “a German tank destroyer” and thus made a mistake, because the caliber of German machine guns on their...
The names are legendary; the tales of heroism, a part of our heritage as Texans and Americans. Houston, Crockett, Bowie, Travis: All, save William Barret Travis, were nationally known figures before they came to Texas, which was then considered Mexican territory. Sam Houston had been governor of Tennessee, a protégé of Andrew Jackson, a war...
In last month’s American Proscenium, I focused on the news that Washington is reaching out to various Islamist activists opposed to the secularist regime of Bashir Assad, and notably to the supposedly “moderate” elements of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. The editorial, entitled “Aid and Comfort to the Enemy,” concluded that such policies reflect either...
The obvious moral of the Newsweek affair is that journalists, and leftist journalists (the common type) in particular, are habitual liars unworthy of respect. To those of us interested in Balkan affairs, the whole Koran to-do elicits a wry smile. Front-page stories from the 1990’s, including countless fact-free accounts of “Bosnian rape camps,” “Kosovo genocides,”...
The French and the Dutch rejections of the proposed E.U. constitution by referenda (May 29 and June 1, respectively) shook the European neoliberal federation—though it was unwilling to concede defeat: The European Union’s Luxembourg presidency and the leaders of France and Germany immediately declared that the process of ratifying the charter should proceed in other...
If every man is worthy of a biography (as Johnson suggested), then every people, no matter how small, deserves a decent one-volume history that makes the story of the Bretons or the Armenians intelligible to foreigners. That is the admirable purpose of Blackwell’s “The Peoples of Europe” series, which presents the “usually turbulent history” of...
PERSPECTIVE The Suicide Strategy of the Westby Thomas Fleming Turkish bizarre. VIEWS The Emerging American Empireby Douglas WilsonMammon versus Allah. The Rise of Chinaby William R. HawkinsSeeing is believing. Transforming the Middle Eastby Ted Galen CarpenterWashington’s high-stakes gamble. Getting Europe Straightby Srdja TrifkovicSlouching toward Eurabia. NEWS Why Russia Does Not Fear an Iranian Bombby Wayne...
I first met Samuel Francis more than 30 years ago, when he was a graduate student in Chapel Hill and a stalwart member of the Carolina Conservative Society—subsequently, the “Orange County Anti-Jacobin League” when it lost its university recognition on a point of principle. I was a brand-new faculty member, a refugee from Columbia University,...
Anyone who doubts that China is rising fast as the new power in Asia need only take the ride I took last fall through Shanghai, from the Hongqiao International Airport to the Bund area along the Huangpu riverfront. It was just after dark, and this mammoth city was lit up in an awesome display the...
It was a beautiful day in May 1979 when the Georgetown University Law School held its commencement. Honorary degrees were awarded to Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Judge John A. Danaher, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. It was an hour with extraordinary coincidence...
Iraq’s Christians may be on their way to extinction, thanks to the Bush administration’s decision to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime. Today, Iraq’s mostly Catholic and Orthodox Christians are fleeing the country, with their destination of choice being, ironically, Syria, another target for “regime change” on the neoconservative hit list. More than two years ago, Chronicles...
When President George W. Bush met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Bratislava, Slovakia, this past February, the first item on the White House’s laundry list of discussion points for the summit was nuclear programs, including Russian aid to Iran’s nuclear-power effort. After the meeting, Putin told reporters that the issue of nuclear proliferation was...
Americans, it has been observed, have little or no strategic sense. Strategy, as any schoolboy used to know, comes from a Greek word meaning “generalship” in the broad sense of the art of “projecting and directing” (OED) a campaign as opposed to the tactical abilities needed to marshal men on the battlefield. The American can-do...
It is increasingly clear that the Bush administration’s nation-building policy in Iraq is merely one component of an ambitious project to transform the Middle East politically. That goal is consistent with the principles that President Bush expressed in his Second Inaugural Address, in which he announced that “it is the policy of the United States...
Sin City Produced by Dimension Films Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller Written by Frank Miller Distributed by Dimension Films and Miramax Films So you have been wondering what happened to Frodo, a.k.a. Elijah Wood, after he drifted off into that glorious sunset at the end of The Return of the King? It seems...
Pope Benedict XVI, in an appeal to the sheep newly his own on the day of his enthronement, said, “Pray for me that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.” We can be sure he knows who these wolves are after a quarter-century as head of the Holy Office. Here are some of...
Let us begin by assuming that we agree that Islam is inherently militant. The words Muslim and Islam are derived from the Arabic word for “submission.” Submission to the absolute authority of Allah is essential. The heart of Islam is submission to the central credo that there is only one god, Allah, and Muhammad is...
Two decades ago, Ronald Reagan committed his greatest foreign-policy blunder: intervening in Lebanon’s civil war. After Muslim opponents of the bedraggled Lebanese government targeted U.S. diplomats and Marines to deadly effect, however, he “redeployed” U.S. forces to ships offshore and sailed away. Now, the Bush administration risks sliding back into the Lebanese imbroglio. The bloody...
If we wish to understand and profit from a great artist, the essential thing to grasp is his vision, as unfolded in his work. Much less important is something that, unlike the God-given vision, he shares with all of us—his opinions. Still, the opinions of a creative writer with the societal breadth and historical depth...
I first encountered the name Samuel T. Francis in 1984, when Joe Sobran thrust a nondescript-looking little book, published in typically amateurish format by the University Press of America, into my hands and asked my permission to review it. (I was, in those days, the literary editor for National Review.) Its title was Power and...
“E avanti a lui, tremava tutta Roma!” —Victorien Sardou, Luigi Illica, and Guiseppe Giacosa, Tosca At the time of its publication in 1984, John Lukacs’s Outgrowing Democracy: A History of the United States in the Twentieth Century was recognized by discerning critics as a highly significant work combining a fresh originality, at once topical and...
Richard Wilbur’s long and distinguished writing career demonstrates that a poet can go against literary fashions, shunning what passes for received wisdom, and still earn critical praise and become an important figure on the literary landscape. Few of his contemporaries have accomplished even part of what he has managed: to produce work of outstanding quality,...
The applicant for our research fellowship was a likeable physician who spoke with passion about the mind-brain problem. My professional world is overrun by people who believe that, if we just do enough imaging studies, in which a subject works on some cognitive test while complex machinery detects which parts of the brain are activated,...
President George W. Bush has long been known as a neoconservative, but only recently has he picked up the appellation neo-Thomist. It is, admittedly, not the first term one would choose to describe a man whose speeches are filled with visions of Wilsonian grandeur. Writing in the January 31 Weekly Standard, however, Joseph Bottum argues...
There is a scene in Oliver Stone’s powerful and haunting antiwar film Born on the Fourth of July (1989), in which Ron Kovic’s mother is bending down before the television (this is B.R.—before the remote) and wincing. It is the Fourth of July, 1969, and long-haired antiwar protesters are surging through the capital with angry...
According to an April 2 report published by Intelligence Online, for some months now, Washington has been putting out feelers to various Islamic activists who spearhead the opposition to the Syrian regime. According to this source, American diplomats are also cultivating contacts in Qatar with TV preacher Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “with whom they frequently discuss...
An American foreign policy based on a national-security strategy consistent with this country’s traditions and values would have three main objectives in relation to Europe. The first would be to promote the preservation of the Old Continent as the cradle of our common civilization, with which North America shares a similar world outlook. The second...
Tuesday, April 5, was a beautiful day in Rockford. By the time the sun had burst through our windows in a blaze of red and orange, the chill had already left the air. The pitter-patter of little feet—squirrels on the rooftop; children on the floor below—was accompanied by the excited trills of songbirds. With few...
While teaching at UCLA, I heard a student ask one of my teaching assistants why the United States dropped The Bomb on Japan and not on Germany. The T.A. immediately responded, “Another example of racist America.” A doctoral student, he did not seem to know that Germany surrendered more than two months before we had...
Paul Franco, a professor of government at Bowdoin College, describes his book on English political theorist Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) as an “introduction.” That modest claim is fully justified in light of the many volumes on politics, philosophy, aesthetics, education, and religion that Franco’s subject left behind in his productive life of 89 years. Franco observes...
Digitomania is the compulsion to digitize all human activity. Its compulsive nature is betrayed by the casual, thoughtless manner in which we are casting ourselves down the slippery cyberslope, “acknowledging” the “perils” yet completely unwilling and unable to pull ourselves back. Digitomania gaily mirrors 17th-century Europe’s “tulipomania.” That classic bubble is described with wicked humor...
The “scandal” surrounding House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) has all the earmarks of a Washington feeding frenzy—which means, in short, that most ordinary Americans couldn’t care less. Financial shenanigans in the Imperial City? I’m shocked, I tell you—shocked! Yet there is a lesson here, albeit not the one the Democrats and other “good government”...
The passing of James Moses, after a long battle with cancer, is sad news for many in the Chronicles circle. Jim was an occasional contributor to Chronicles, a John Randolph Club member, and a longtime foot soldier in Old Right causes. A native of northern New Jersey, Jim was a graduate of the legendary Bergen...
In April, Condoleezza Rice made a stunning display of her keen analytical mind and verbal agility. During a joint press conference with the Hungarian foreign minister, the secretary of state found herself defending the Bush administration’s decision to abstain rather than veto a U.N. resolution turning over crimes committed in the Darfur region of the...
PERSPECTIVE Love the One You’re Withby Thomas Fleming Life in occupied America. VIEWS Education and Authorityby Michael McMahonRespect in the marketplace. Honor to Whom Honorby Harold O.J. BrownBelow reproach. America’s Unthinking Militaryby Robert D. HicksonServants of the imperium. Government: Good or Bad? Big or Little?by Thomas StorckReframing the debate. NEWS First Prize, Second Hand, Third...
PERSPECTIVE Peace in the Land of Sojournby Thomas Fleming Gods and promises. VIEWS A Brief History of Quagmireby Doug BandowSix decades of passionate attachment. A Tale of Two Citiesby Leon T. HadarDifferent visions of Israel’s future. Israel and Americaby Ivan ElandParallel lives, similar mistakes. The Christian Zionist Threat to Peaceby Aaron D. WolfSpend your vacation...
In assessing the political conditions necessary to establish a lasting peace in Israel-Palestine, Americans are confronted with a theological question: Does the Bible insist that Christians take a certain view regarding the treatment of the Jewish people in particular, their presence in the Holy Land, or the placement of the borders of Israel? One particular...
Héctor Villa was discovering the hard way that running afoul of the authorities in America is like riding a horse into quicksand, as Rodolfo Fierro, the Centaur’s chief executioner, had had the misfortune to do: You escape from the fatal mire only by miracle (something God had not seen fit to vouchsafe poor Fierro). For...