“American culture is an infinite regression to moronic vulgarity.” —Thomas Fleming Napoleon famously called the English “a nation of shopkeepers.” Can we say that Americans are a non-nation of shoppers? Are you ready for our first Luo-American president? Are you ready for C-H-A-A-A-N-G-E!? Are you ready for a President who got his start in politics...
Year: 2008
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The Food Crisis
These are bad times to be an eater in America, as anyone who has suffered sticker shock at the supermarket can tell you. The cost of necessities such as bread, milk, and eggs has risen steadily in the last two years—by as much as 30 percent in some parts of the country. Vegetables, fruits, meats,...
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Belgrade’s Dilemma: Kosovo or “Europe”
A month has passed since the parliamentary election of May 11, and Serbia is still without a new government. The new National Assembly was convened briefly on May 10, while the Municipal Council of Belgrade remains paralyzed for at least another month. A new general election, some time in early fall, may prove to be...
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Why the Oil Price Is High
How to explain the oil price? Why is it so high? Are we running out? Are supplies disrupted, or is the high price a reflection of oil company greed or OPEC greed? Are Hugo Chavez and the Saudis conspiring against us? In my opinion, the two biggest factors in oil’s high price are the weakness...
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The European Union, A Prison of Nations
Various multiethnic states (imperial Russia, the Habsburg Monarchy, pre-World War II Kingdom of Yugoslavia) have been labeled—often unfairly—as “prisons of nations.” That designation will apply more aptly to the European Union when the Lisbon Treaty, signed by all 27 EU heads of states ...
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Defending the West in Vienna
A select few who see the peril to which their neighbors are oblivious and who proceed to save their community against overwhelming odds, is a familiar literary and cinematic concept. Earlier this month (May 11-12) I had the pleasure of addressing one such real-life group ...
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Nationalism, Patriotism, and Internationalism I
Recent press reports inevitably describe Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica as a
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What Is History? Part 12
Revolutions turn into institutions; revolts that renew the youth of old societies in their turn grow old; and the past, which was full of new things, of splits and innovations and insurrections, seems to us a single texture of tradition. . . . . ...
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SURVIVING THE GLOBAL ECONOMY—June 2008
PERSPECTIVE The Pursuit of Happiness by Thomas Fleming VIEWS The Decline and Fall of the American Economy by Paul Craig Roberts Offshoring our security. Outgrowing Agriculture by Katherine Dalton Food and national security. States of Autarky by Greg Kaza The benefits of self-sufficiency. It’s 2028, and All Is Well by Srdja Trifkovic The ...
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The Pope and the Anti-Christ
At midday on April 16, a crowd gathered outside the White House to catch a glimpse of Pope Benedict XVI entering the grounds for his elaborate welcoming ceremony. Supporters of the pontiff—mostly families and people from neighboring office buildings—were sandwiched between an iron fence and angry protesters. The angriest and best organized of these protesters...
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Curiosity as a Social Force
“Curious Barbara’s got her nose in a sling,” goes the Russian admonition against prurience, more puzzling, if anything, than the equivalent English adage concerning the killing, in similarly umbrageous circumstances, of the cat. Why should Barbara meet with such a fate? Just how did it happen that curiosity brought about the death of Fluffy? As...
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Election 2008 Guide
As I was downloading oldies onto my computer the other day, I found a classic hit from the 1950’s: “Yakety-Yak” by the Coasters. Back in the 50’s, every kid in America—white, black, Hispanic, or Asian; native or naturalized—identified with that song. Several assumptions undergirded the lyrics: Mothers and fathers rear children together; they are on...
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Give Us Your Coyotes
From Aesop on, through Ovid, Chaucer, La Fontaine, and Dryden, to George Orwell, the genre of the animal fable (whether in verse or prose) has been useful to moralists and critics of human behavior. Paul Lake’s satire belongs to this lineage. Identified as “A Political Fable,” it is, as the back cover asserts, a 21st-century...
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For Better and For Worse
That Christmas was, in every respect, the horror Héctor had feared it would be. Homesick, broke, unchurched (AveMaría, after the second round-trip drive to the Assemblies of God church in Lordsburg, had decided to hold a Sunday prayer service at home instead), cooped together like rats in a cage, the Villas, with the Juárezes, endured...
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Abortuary Hero
Wayne Webster’s Rockford abortuary takes the lives of about 35 babies per week. In that same time frame, however, there are two or three “turnarounds”—mothers who decide at the last moment not to execute their children. The most likely cause is the doughty band of Christians who gather to pray outside the slaughterhouse on the...
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The Skeptical Mind
“Skepticism is less reprehensible in inquiring years, and no crime in juvenile exercitation.” —Joseph Glanville In an intellectual climate characterized by conformity and wishful thinking, John Gray is among the most interesting and consequential thinkers contemporary Britain has to show. From his office at the London School of Economics (where he is professor of European...
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Stop It
Stop-Loss Produced by Paramount Pictures, Scott Rudin Productions, and MTV Films Directed by Kimberly Peirce Screenplay by Kimberly Peirce and Mark Richard Distributed by Paramount Pictures On March 29, 2008, Suffolk County police officers vigorously fulfilled their sworn duty at the Smith Haven Mall in Lake Grove, New York. Alerted by the mall’s security...
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States of Autarky
A great many economists and politicians contend that the absence of trade inevitably leads to armed conflict. Thus, in the interests of national security, they insist on virtually unlimited trade and castigate those who favor its restriction as proponents of autarky—a term that few understand yet most agree to be negative, isolationist, and perhaps even extremist....
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The Food Crisis
These are bad times to be an eater in America, as anyone who has suffered sticker shock at the supermarket can tell you. The cost of necessities such as bread, milk, and eggs has risen steadily in the last two years—by as much as 30 percent in some parts of the country. Vegetables, fruits, meats,...
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Christmas in Abbeville
Last winter, I traveled to Abbeville, South Carolina, for its Fifth Annual Olde South Christmas. To the casual observer, this event might appear to be merely an instance of savvy small-town marketing—an attempt to capitalize on the trade in nostalgic simulacra of a simpler time. It had been suggested to me that, despite the superficial...
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Blood on the Keys
The Technicolor splatter of blood on the keys in the corny movie A Song to Remember (1945) is a vulgar incarnation of a romantic image of obsessed genius. That image has perhaps more authenticity than a few might suppose, for in the shot, the hands on the keyboard actually do belong to an obsessed genius,...
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The Coming Republican Donkey
The end is near for our Golden Age of Republican Party rule. The first blow came in 2006, when horrified voters kicked the GOP back to minority status in Congress. And, come November, Republicans may emerge from elections without a veto-proof Senate and without one of their own demagogues occupying the White House. If the...
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Outgrowing Agriculture
It may be hard for us in the United States to imagine that food could ever be scarce here. We may worry about avian flu and mad cow disease, and about the general safety of our increasingly mass-produced food supply, as from time to time some Americans sicken or die from tainted meat or spinach. ...
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My MSM Rules
When it comes to understanding the Mainstream Media (MSM), I have two simple rules. Rule One: Take off 50 IQ points whenever the MSM cover religion, and bump that up to about 100 points whenever the religion is Catholicism. Exhibit A: Some months back, Pope Benedict gave a homily during Ordinary Time restating basic Catholic...
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The Decline and Fall of the American Economy
The United States has three large economic problems. The overarching one is that the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency is wearing out from continuous and large trade deficits and from government budget deficits that have to be financed by foreigners because the U.S. savings rate is approximately zero. Judging by the dollar’s loss...
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Return to Short Creek
Recently, the state of Texas undertook a police action that amply demonstrates the radical transformation of public attitudes to family, children, and the role of the state over the past half-century. In April 2008, Texas authorities staged mass raids on a polygamist compound near San Angelo, in which they took custody of several hundred children. ...
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A.B.S. In Brothelology
When I read about the carnal and scatological monkeyshines at American universities, I wonder where the American professoriate gets the nerve to call what they impart “higher education.” What it is, of course, is lower education, and a prime example of such comes from Randolph College, a private liberal-arts school in Lynchburg, Virginia. The school’s...
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Soundtrack to the New Old South
Sometime in the early 1990’s, while attending an event called a “song swap” in Athens, Georgia, I met an extraordinarily gifted songwriter named Patterson Hood. The swap itself was essentially a weekly gathering of aspiring tunesmiths sharing their latest creations; we would sit in a circle and each play our songs, the other musicians joining...
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Lieutenant Ramsey’s War
Ed Ramsey never aspired to be a hero. He was only 12 years old when his father committed suicide. He was a natural-born hell-raiser; bootleg whiskey and fighting were his passions. His mother thought the Oklahoma Military Academy might salvage him. He loved horses and all things martial. The academy had both. Ramsey thrived at...
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If My Daddy Could See Me Now
September 11, 2001, we are often told, “changed everything.” In Washington, D.C., and Baghdad, Iraq, that may have been true. President George W. Bush and a handful of his advisors, who had been itching for a fight with Iraq since before the inauguration, now saw their opening. It would take another year and a half...
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It’s 2028, and All Is Well
Thursday, June 1—My final American Interest was published today in Chronicles. In the aftermath of the Second Revolution, the column has outlived its purpose. Pontificating on the evils of one-worldism, empire, global hegemony, propositional nationhood, jihadist infiltration, foreign interventionism, and “nation-building” was a necessary and often frustrating task, back in the awful days of George...
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Speaking of Gorging
A few weeks ago, I attended a most wonderful party, with music, pretty girls, lots of champagne—and even some people who did not move their lips while reading the labels of the expensive bubbly and Scotch whiskey they were imbibing. Namely, Tom Wolfe, Lewis Lapham, Graydon Carter, Edward Jay Epstein, and other such New York swells....
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The Pursuit of Happiness
“This used to be a hell of a good country. I can’t understand what’s gone wrong with it.” When people of a certain age and experience begin to think about when and how America went wrong, they almost inevitably hear echoes of George Hanson’s little sermon, delivered by Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider. An ACLU...
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On Law-Abiding Suspects
R. Cort Kirkwood’s article, “Jack Bauer, Agent of Anarcho-Tyranny, U.S.A.,” (Views, May) is the best article on the subject of encroaching tyranny I have ever read, bar none. Frankly, when I first glanced at the May issue’s cover, and the title of the article itself, I thought, “Not another yahoo condemning a great edge-of-your-seat show,...
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Buchanan and Churchill
Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, by Patrick J. Buchanan. New York: Crown. 544 pp. $25.95 A Review published in The Wanderer . Since this is my unedited text, any errors are the fault of the author and not ...
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Church and Nation: A Credal Nation, Part I
In introducing this series last week, I noted that I had been careful in my choice of the title
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Is Bush Becoming Irrelevant?
After losing both houses of Congress in the 1994 election, Bill Clinton expostulated: The president of the United States is not irrelevant! On learning his trusted aide from Texas Scott McClellan has denounced as an “unnecessary war” the same Iraq war McClellan defended from the White House podium, George Bush must feel as Clinton did....
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Church and Nation: America’s Original Sin
Can a faithful Catholic be a good American? Can a good American be a faithful Catholic? While these questions may seem relics of the era of the Know-Nothings and “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,” they are still around today. And, as some comments on recent posts on this website have shown, an increasing number of people—both...
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Inquiring Minds Want to Know II
If Obama is not elected will there be riots? If Obama is elected, will there be riots? Are Americans capable of recognising and electing good leaders? (We can't know because it has been so long since they have seen one.) What would happen if a ...
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Ignatius II
The Epistle to the Romans is in many ways the most significant contribution made by St. Ignatius to the formation of the early Christian Church. Before plunging into the text, though, I would like to sketch a little of what I think we can agree on. The Church begins ...
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The Lost Tribes of Israel
As Israel enters its 61st year, Israelis may look back with pride. Yet, the realists among them must also look forward with foreboding. Israel is a modern democracy with the highest standard of living in the Middle East. In the high-tech industries of the future, she ...
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Serbian Election: Socialists, the Unexpected Kingmakers
Last Sunday night, as the results of Serbia’s parliamentary elections became known, the country’s President Boris Tadić made a remarkable statement. “I warn the parties that have lost this election,” he declared, “not to play games with the will of the citizens and try to form a government that would take Serbia back to the...
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Liberalism as Addiction
Modern liberalism, so apt to see every social pathology as a form of mental or emotional illness, invites the application of a similar perspective on itself. Whether the issue in question has to do with teenage promiscuity, adultery, prostitution, drug and alcohol abuse, kleptomania, school shootings, child abuse, gang warfare, or corruption in government (though...
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His God Is Marching On
If you relied on wire service accounts, Catholic commentary, and the few snippets of video on the evening news, you can be forgiven for believing that the White House Welcoming Ceremony held for Pope Benedict XVI on April 16 was entirely “warm,” “friendly,” and marked by “mutual admiration and respect.” But beneath the surface, the...
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Letter From Castelnau de Montmiral: Out-Twee the Foreigner
An Englishwoman’s home is her castle, so they say, and mine have stood up to various attacks. From the neighbor who jumped my parents’ fence one day, brandishing a chainsaw, to cut down an inoffensive birch tree that had been upsetting his dog—itself a vicious Alsatian trained to draw blood first and ask questions later—to...
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The Rhetoric of Fashion
“For his birthday his wife gave him a riding crop that cost 100 francs,” a writer called Arnold Ruge complained of his newly married friend, a fellow German émigré in Paris, and the poor fool does not ride, nor has he a horse. Everything he sees he wants to have, a carriage, smart clothes, a...
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“Clear®”: The Price of a Civil Airport Shakedown
I first read about it in the newspaper: a new concept in speeding up airline security called Clear®. The idea is to pre-inspect, via extensive background checks, passengers traveling by air so that bottlenecks in the security lines can be eliminated, and “cleared” passengers, whisked through. I may not be nuts about being “inspected,” but...
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Liberalism as Addiction
Modern liberalism, so apt to see every social pathology as a form of mental or emotional illness, invites the application of a similar perspective on itself. Whether the issue in question has to do with teenage promiscuity, adultery, prostitution, drug and alcohol abuse, kleptomania, school shootings, child abuse, gang warfare, or corruption in government (though...
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James Stewart
James Stewart was born 100 years ago, on May 20, 1908, the same week that Constantin Stanislavski published his “grammar” of acting at the Moscow Arts Theatre, essentially an effort to formulate a codified, systematic approach by which the actor psychologically wrenches himself into “becoming” his fictional character. There is no doubt in my mind...
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Print Lives!
The first thing one notices about Print Is Dead is that it is, in fact, a stack of bound pieces of paper with words printed on them. The author, Jeff Gomez, notes the irony of this in his Introduction. On the other hand, the book is a shabby-looking volume that appears intentionally to violate the...