PERSPECTIVE Little Aristocracies of Our Own by Thomas Fleming VIEWS The End of the American Middle Class by John Lukacs The lonely new age. Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be by James O. Tate Arriving at indistinction. STORY Your Hit Parade by Anthony Bukoski NEWS Anatomy of a Meltdown by David ...
Year: 2008
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What Is History? Part 9
Truth does not reside in a collection of facts; truth is shown by the form of their presentation, once their significance has been seized on. In the record, little of all this is given. Telling the truth, then, requires sagacity and style, ...
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A Spy Thriller to the Wise (Review: Agent Zigzag)
It is almost inevitable that a reader of my interests and disposition should slightly miss the point of this book, described in a Daily Express blurb as “a good spy thriller,” and that is precisely what I propose to do. Spy thrillers are plentiful; ...
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The “Isms” That Bedevil Bush
On reading George Bush's discourse to the New York Economic Club last week, Cicero's insight came to mind:
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Three Coins
The weather in Rome has been on the chilly side, but compared with Rockford in January, it’s positively balmy. Warm enough, in fact, to risk a charge of heresy (or at least philistinism) by capping the first full day of The Rockford Institute’s ...
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Sudan, Ethiopia, and the American Empire
Sudan and Ethiopia are neighboring countries that are both ruled by authoritarian regimes; each is engaged in a brutal counterinsurgency operation against rebel forces—the former, in Darfur; the latter, in Ogaden. Curiously, these countries are treated quite differently by Washington; and this difference reveals a great deal about the ...
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National Religion
Americans are a people of deeply held religious conviction. If any has doubts, let him look on the most serious of our sacred holidays and believe. Naturally, it is a federal holiday, but that fact alone does not convey the magnitude of this special ...
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Our Open (Borders) Secret
The long campaign of 2007-08, already sputtering out in fizzled squibs, childish ploys, and pointless personal recriminations, has offered few of the moments of drama or high comedy that Americans have rightly come to expect of our political candidates. The debates ...
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Responses: The Totalitarian Founders of the E.U.
Some of the postings follow the usual pattern witnessed here in the UK. The fanatical Europhiles just hurl abuse. Some more intelligent critics get things wrong by relying on established, politically controlled, or popular sources, which are incomplete. Regarding my alleged Germanophobia (the classic ad hominem ...
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American Delusions
“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie . . .” —2 Thessalonians 2:11 American public life thrives on delusions treated as facts: *That you can have a First World economy and military with a Third World population. *That the U.S. government, which has almost unlimited access...
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National Religion
Americans are a people of deeply held religious conviction. If any has doubts, let him look on the most serious of our sacred holidays and believe. Naturally, it is a federal holiday, but that fact alone does not convey the magnitude of this special day. For, unlike other federal holidays, this one carries with it...
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Rotten Democracy
For decades, Kenya has been an oasis of peace, compared with her neighbors Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, and Somalia. That changed on December 30, 2007. After 24 years of the corrupt presidency of Daniel arap Moi, Kenyans had high hopes when, in December 2002, they elected Mwai Kibaki as their president for the next five years. ...
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Memoirs of a Bridegroom
If the typical life of a young couple resembles an Oriental bazaar, where the clamoring for jewels, perfumes, spices, silks, and other aphrodisiac appurtenances of fata morgana breaks on the morose tightfistedness of those who can afford them, in my case the reverse was true, not only because I could afford nothing, but because my...
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Cupid’s Thunderbolt
In the weeks immediately following the encounter with the illegal immigrants in the arroyo, Jesús “Eddie” and Héctor were men possessed by a single idea, though not the same one. Jesús could think only of joining up with the recently formed Critter Company, based in El Paso but with a chapter in Deming, and fighting...
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A Self-Made (Mad)man
By now, it should be clear to all but the most loyal Republicans that the government of the United States is controlled by madmen. In the beginning, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney seemed comparatively normal; their first few months in office were a relief after the farcical second term of Bill Clinton. It was...
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Immigrant Birthright
Any doubts you may have had about the absurdity and falseness of American electoral politics would have been removed if you had lived through the barrage of advertising that preceded our South Carolina presidential primary. Every single one of the Republican candidates pretended to have become Horatio at the Bridge, single-handedly holding back the onslaught...
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“Here—This Is it!”
In the Catholic Church, apologetics—explaining the Faith—was on its way to becoming a lost art during the post-Vatican II era. But thanks to Mother Angelica’s efforts on EWTN and the many classic publications emanating from Ignatius Press, this important form of evangelization has not been completely lost. However, the uproar caused last summer by the...
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Marxist Obsessions
There Will Be Blood Produced and distributed by Miramax Films Directed and written by Paul Thomas Anderson Many American film reviewers must labor under the spell of Marxist sentimentality. It’s as though they have never recovered from their undergraduate viewing of Battleship Potemkin (1925), Sergei Eisenstein’s clever but facile Soviet-propaganda film. Not surprisingly, whenever left-wing...
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The Tragedy of Mexico
Twenty-eight years ago, in the summer of 1980, I moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, to take a job teaching English and journalism at a university there. The job ended just as soon as it began: On the first day of classes, the university, a private institution with connections to the country’s thriving neofascist movement and, thence,...
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After the Deluge
“Who would call in a / foreigner—unless / an artisan with skill to / serve the realm, / a healer, or a prophet, or / a builder, / or one whose harp and song / might give us joy. / . . . but when have beggars come by / invitation?” —Homer It should be...
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Governor Berry and the Mad Farmers’ Liberation Front
Wendell Berry’s voice is rich and mellow, carrying a slight grit that comes from weathering, age, and experience. His accent is strong enough to flavor his words but mild enough to soothe his listeners. It is a surprisingly gentle voice for one so radical. I sit listening to the Kentucky gentleman. With me are a...
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Sudan, Ethiopia, and the American Empire
Sudan and Ethiopia are neighboring countries that are both ruled by authoritarian regimes; each is engaged in a brutal counterinsurgency operation against rebel forces—the former, in Darfur; the latter, in Ogaden. Curiously, these countries are treated quite differently by Washington; and this difference reveals a great deal about the current modus operandi of the American...
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The Future of Tyranny
My mother, an incurable Democrat, God forgive her, adored Adlai Stevenson. To her mind, he and Richard Nixon offered the extreme and opposite poles of spiritual reality, like Saint Michael and Lucifer. Among today’s politicians, Sen. Barack Obama inspires the same rare kind of devotion. I am not suggesting that this passion is warranted; on...
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The Greek Conservative Revival
Last fall, in mid-September, a series of unprecedented fires raged across a large part of Peloponnese (including the area surrounding ancient Olympia), killing 68 people. Then, on September 16, something else happened that caused widespread panic—at least among liberals: For the first time in 30 years, a national conservative party (the People’s Orthodox Rally) won...
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The “Smart” Port
In saner times, countries had borders, and along these borders were ports for the inspection and tagging of goods coming into or leaving the country. The border, after all, would be the logical place to conduct such business, since it is the terminus ad quem cargo would be outside or inside a country. Globalization, however,...
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To Catch a Terrorist
The watershed U.S. Supreme Court decisions Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, we are told, “empowered women” to control their lives. In reality, they empowered the Police State and set the U.S. Imperium on a trajectory where it not only could deny the personhood of the unborn but could legally classify whole groups of...
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The Loss of American Identity
I have never been able to get it through my thick skull that one’s identity, culture, and national sovereignty should not stand in the way of making money. For whatever reasons, I have always had a real attachment to my name, my family, my people, my place, my way of life. I have never felt particularly...
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Three Coins
The weather in Rome has been on the chilly side, but compared with Rockford in January, it’s positively balmy. Warm enough, in fact, to risk a charge of heresy (or at least philistinism) by capping the first full day of The Rockford Institute’s 2008 Winter School with, not a glass of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, but a...
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Waiting for the Big One
The global economy is like the St. Andreas Fault. You know that a terminal disaster is inevitable, but you keep your fingers crossed and try not to think about it. When a tremor occurs, you often fear it could be the Big One and sometimes panic, but then, when the dust settles, you sigh with...
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Bobby Fischer, R.I.P.
Bobby Fischer, the reclusive, troubled, and often unpleasant chess genius from Brooklyn who single-handedly crushed the myth of Soviet invincibility, died of kidney failure in Iceland on January 17 at the age of 64. Robert James Fischer was born out of wedlock to a prominent Hungarian atomic physicist, Pal Nemenyi, who was involved with the...
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Scuppering the Serbs
I live in New York and London, and among the gruesome sights I’ve had to endure these last few years has been the sight of a vainglorious James Rubin, of Madeleine Albright fame, prancing about the hot spots of these multicultural havens for the rich and infamous. Rubin is married to Christiane Amanpour, the...
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Our Open (Borders) Secret
The long campaign of 2007-08, already sputtering out in fizzled squibs, childish ploys, and pointless personal recriminations, has offered few of the moments of drama or high comedy that Americans have rightly come to expect of our political candidates. The debates have been as drab as Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits, as wooden as Barack Obama’s imitation...
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Rudy the Unready
Not so long ago, Rudy Giuliani was the consensus front runner for the Republican presidential nomination. He had won the first beauty contest of the primary season, from the nation’s most self-important electorate, the neoconservative punditariat: George Will, Norman Podhoretz, John Podhoretz, David Frum, and Richard Brookhiser all lined up behind Giuliani, together with an...
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Facts? Who Needs ’Em!
In 2006, lawmakers in the Lone Star State were horrified that a large percentage of Texas high-school graduates required remedial courses to gain the skills needed to succeed in college. So they directed the commissioner of higher education and the commissioner of education to assemble teams of college and high-school faculty to recommend changes to...
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On Mackerel Snappers
In his review of Joseph Pearce’s Small Is Still Beautiful: Economics as if Families Mattered (“Big Is Still Ahead,” Reviews, January), Kirkpatrick Sale writes, “True enough, Schumacher became a Catholic just before Small Is Beautiful came out in 1973 and remained devout until his death in 1977 . . . But his classic book has...
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After the Deluge (Review: Immigration and the American Future)
It should be obvious to anyone who has taken the slightest trouble to examine the immigration question that America is faced not with an immigration “problem,” or even a “crisis,” but with a massive ...
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TRUCKERS WITHOUT BORDERS—March 2008
PERSPECTIVE Our Open (Borders) Secret by Thomas Fleming VIEWS The Loss of American Identity by Roger D. McGrath California, today—your state, tomorrow. The Tragedy of Mexico by Gregory McNamee Riches unrealized. NEWS Facts? Who Needs ’Em! by William Lutz Some critical thinking in Texas. REVIEWS After the Deluge by Jack Trotter Chilton Williamson, Jr., ed.: Immigration and the American Future Clark ...
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The Way We Are Now—The Campaign
A strongly shared sense of right and wrong has maintained a working peace and harmony within many societies over long periods. This is probably what saw the class-ridden British through an empire and two world wars. It is what kept the South ...
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Kosovo: A Threat to Israel’s Survival
There are many self-styled friends of Israel in the United States who have been enthusiastically supportive of Kosovo’s independence for years. People like Sen. Joe Lieberman, Rep. Elliot Engel, Morton Abramowitz, William Kristol, Douglas Feith and ...
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The Return of Ethnic Nationalism
In Africa last week, President Bush deplored the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s, defended his refusal to send U.S. troops to Darfur and decried the ethnic slaughter in Kenya. Following a fraudulent election, the Kikyu, the dominant tribe in Kenya, have been subjected to merciless ...
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Paying Insurgents Not to Fight
It is impossible to keep up with all the Bush regime’s lies. There are simply too many. Among the recent crop, one of the biggest is that the “surge” is working. Launched last year, the “surge” was the extra 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops sent to Iraq. These few extra troops, Americans were told, would...
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Kosovo: A New Day of Infamy for a New Century
The grotesque charade in Pristina on Sunday, February 17, crowned a decade and a half of U.S. policy in the former Yugoslavia that has been mendacious and iniquitous in equal measure. By encouraging its Albanian clients go ahead with the unilateral proclamation of ...
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Enemies of the Motu Proprio
In a private conversation before the release of the motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum,” a leading personality of U.K. Catholicism predicted that the reinstatement of the Traditional Latin Mass would grant again such an abundant flow of graces that it would even effect the restoration of society on sound Christian principles. While that outcome remains to...
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A Spy Thriller to the Wise
It is almost inevitable that a reader of my interests and disposition should slightly miss the point of this book, described in a Daily Express blurb as “a good spy thriller,” and that is precisely what I propose to do. Spy thrillers are plentiful; they are summer reading at its Sardinian beachiest. To review one...
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Total Accuracy
I was married once. Twice, actually. No, just the once, really, because the union had been annulled before I married again for the second or, rather, the first time, on the legal grounds of mutual and substantial misunderstanding. In reality, just then I had met the woman who would become my second or nearly first...
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The Everlasting Frontier
Although the American frontier was officially closed 118 years ago, Americans remain in thrall to its mythic spell and the romance of the American West. Europeans have always viewed our cultural obsession with condescension, though they themselves—the Germans and the Italians especially—are hardly immune to its allure. (On my first visit to the Grand Canyon...
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Who’s That Angel of Death?
No Country for Old Men Produced and distributed by Miramax Films Directed and written by Joel and Ethan Coen It’s not often that an audience gasps at the end of a movie and shouts, “What?” or “You’ve got to be kidding” at the screen. But that’s just what several people did in the theater in...
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The Curious Career of Billy the Kid
For most of the 19th century, the American West was a fairly tranquil place. The myths of Hollywood and the wishful thinking of certain revisionist historians notwithstanding, throughout the region, for every gunfighter there were a hundred stockbrokers, and for every outlaw, ten-thousand farmers. The West was urban as much as rural, settled as a...
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Honor Killings in Canada
As Canadians were preparing for the Christmas season, they were shocked to learn that Aqsa Parvez, a 16-year-old Muslim girl from the Toronto area, was strangled to death by her devout father, a cab driver of Pakistani origin. It appears her crime was a refusal to wear the traditional hijab when she was not at...
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Unsettling Accounts
Your Excellency: One Sunday in September, about 60 adults gathered between Masses in the sanctuary of the basilica to hear a professor from our local university speak on the history of Islam. This speaker, a pale, young man with close-cropped hair, stood at the front of the basilica with the altar at his back and...