A review of Watchmen (produced and distributed by Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures; directed by Zack Snyder; screenplay by David Hayter and Alex Tse) and Duplicity (produced and distributed by Universal Pictures; directed and written by Tony Gilroy) The title of Alan Moore’s 1986 comic-book series Watchmen alludes to the Roman satirist Juvenal, who asked, “Who watches...
Month: April 2009
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A Republic, If You Can Restore It
PERSPECTIVE Free Men of a Republicby Thomas Fleming ROUND TABLE Can the Republic Be Restored? “A Limited Presidency” by Clyde Wilson“Adams’ Federalism” by John Willson“Just One More Thing” by William J. Quirk“Is America a Republic?” by Donald Livingston“Reviewing Judicial Review” by Stephen B. Presser“The Classless Republic” by Chilton Williamson, Jr.“The United States, In Congress Assembled”...
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Return to Rome
Paul Theroux laments that the world is aging badly, that the world he knew as a young man has nearly vanished, that the decline and decay of precious things is everywhere apparent. Theroux should know; he travels more than I do. Also my own ventures at home and abroad depressingly confirm his impressions. Except when...
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Gay “Marriage” Fantasy
You really can’t have “gay marriage,” you know, irrespective of what a court or a legislature may say. You can have something some people call gay marriage because to them the idea sounds worthy and necessary, but to say a thing is other than it is, is to stand reality on its head, hoping to...
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American Contributions to World Civilisation
Many of the prominent characteristics of our culture—venal politicians, callous and stupid bureaucrats and police, promiscuous and perverted clergymen, debased currency—were inherited from the Old World, where they have a long history. However, we Americans are proverbially an inventive people and we have made many innovative cultural contributions of our own to the world. Like...
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What Is History? Part 28
Even the dullest consumer has got the point that no matter how he casts his vote for president or for Congress, his interests will never be represented because the oligarchy serves only itself. . . . They are happier with the way things are, with half the electorate permanently turned off and the other half...
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Cold Gospel
Just as the New York Times was front-paging a supposed upsurge in atheism (God? What God?) came complementary tidings from the Pew Research Center. To wit, it’s not church spats over “gay marriage” or pedophilia that seem to be driving explicit Christians out the door. A complex of concerns causes their switch to another religion...
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Not Your Father’s National Review
What held National Review together during its heyday was anticommunism. The kiddies who post at NRO either don’t know this, or are embarrassed by it. Yesterday, Mario Loyola, commenting on the prospect of the Obama administration potentially prosecuting members of the Bush administration for encouraging torture, ruefully notes that there is historical precdent for this....
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Su Rancho Es Mi Rancho
Reading the newspapers, I wonder which straw will break the camel’s back when it comes to illegal immigration. What will finally cause Americans to rise up and take back their country? The tenth family killed by an illegal-alien drunk driver? The 100th housewife butchered by an illegal-alien murderer? Or the next lawsuit that awards damages...
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Fat Henry Is Still Dead
It’s bad enough that yesterday was Earth Day. Over at NRO, Andrew Stuttaford reminded us that yesterday was also the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s becoming the King of England. Except that Stuttaford, an English atheist who left England for New York, sees this anniversary as an occasion for celebration, and Henry as a “Liberator”...
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Regulation for Financial Sanity
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) just reported that U.S. banks lost money at a $100 billion annualized rate during the fourth quarter of 2008. Sounds grim, but it only describes the visible part of the iceberg our financial Titanic has hit. AIG, a giant insurance company, alone has been covered by the Federal Reserve...
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The Apologists
For 50 minutes, Obama sat mute, as a Marxist thug from Nicaragua delivered his diatribe, charging America with a century of terrorist aggression in Central America. After Daniel Ortega finished spitting in our face, accusing us of inhumanity toward Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Obama was asked his thoughts. “I thought it was 50 minutes long. That’s...
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How Things Change Out From Under Us
Anyone who has been around for a while and who pays any attention to the news sees many disturbing changes. Recently, I read a report that two children, ages seven and eight, had an altercation at school during recess. They were carted off in handcuffs by the police. The teachers or principal had dealt with...
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Filmlog: Un dimanche à la campagne (A Sunday in the Country)
At least half of my favourite films are French. For my money they are the best film-makers. The Brits, Italians, and Russians are not bad. The Germans, Spanish, and Scandinavians are horrid (except the Norwegians). The civilised French perspective that marks their best movies is what I would call realism with a heart. Something like...
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The Way We Are, No. 4
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,But leech-like to their fainting country cling—Shelley I have finally reconciled myself to the sad truth that I will probably never get to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom. I’ll probably never get to sit next to Ruth Bader Ginsburg at dinner, shake hands with Rush Limbaugh, or tour...
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Mainline Marital Melange
We know the stereotype, do we not? Eyes like marbles, jaw clinched tight as a bear trap; icy baritone voice; accusatory finger slashing the air. Yea, brothers and sisters, hear the word of the Lord, Who condemns . . . For some wacko reason, popular culture (you know what I mean—talk shows, movies, plain old...
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Politics and Economics in America
All things at Rome are for sale. —Juvenal Thomas Jefferson has left us an account of a supper-table conversation in the very earliest days of the U.S. government. Vice President John Adams (who was intended by nature for a preacher) declaimed at length about the virtues of the British government, which, he ...
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Filmlog: The Bullfighter and the Lady
Dr. Fleming wrote in the comments section of his article on Budd Boetticher’s Decision at Sundown that Netflix has 90% of titles a film lover can reasonably expect to find. I would only disagree that, for anyone who loves classic films, a subscription to Turner Classic Movies is also indispensable (no matter how reprehensible Turner...
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Everything In Its Place
On December 9, 2008, as I read through the federal criminal complaint against the latest Illinois governor to be indicted for the merest portion of his crimes, I could not help but feel uneasy. Sure, it was great fun to imagine Governor Hot Rod sweating it out in his holding cell, awaiting arraignment later in...
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What Is History? Part 27
There are two kinds of people in this world: those who give to other people and those who spend all their lives taking, or planning to take. Either by bulling around on one end of the economic scale or whining on the other. —Ferrol Sams I’ve learned that when all is said and done, more...
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March Madness, 1939
On Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler's panzers smashed into Poland. Two days later, an anguished Neville Chamberlain declared war, the most awful war in all of history. Was the war inevitable? No. No war is inevitable until it has begun. Was it a necessary war? Hearken to Churchill: One day, President Roosevelt told ...
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Should We Kill the Fed?
For the financial crisis that has wiped out trillions in wealth, many have felt the lash of public outrage. Fannie and Freddie. The idiot-bankers. The AIG bonus babies. The Bush Republicans and Barney Frank Democrats who bullied banks into making mortgages to minorities who could not afford the houses they were moving into. But the...
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Meet Rod Blago
As the former governor of Illinois crisscrossed the country on his farewell tour, I kept imagining him lying back in his seat, scalp being massaged by his personal hairstylist (it takes work to keep that Serbian gangster hairdo in pristine shape), while an old Mac Davis song played on an endless loop on his iPod:...
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Valor
A review of Valkyrie (produced and distributed by United Artists; directed by Bryan Singer; screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie) and Slumdog Millionaire (produced by Celador Films; directed by Danny Boyle; screenplay by Simon Beaufoy; from Vikas Swarup’s novel; distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures) In Valkyrie, screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie and director Bryan Singer tell the story of Col....
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St. Elmo’s Pay
When news of Lepanto arrived in Rome, the Pope exclaimed, “Now Lord, you can take your servant, for my eyes have seen your salvation.” The battle’s outcome gratified the pontiff, but it may not have surprised him. Legend holds that, at the moment the Turkish admiral was slain on his quarterdeck, Pius V had sensed,...
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The Ulema and I
On the flight to Bombay—which a British single mother with an addiction to horse tranquilizers, or a benefits administrator dispensing them, would call Mumbai—I came across a Times of India news report entitled “6,000 Ulema back fatwa on Terror.” I recalled that the first time I heard the word fatwa was in connection with Salman...
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A Bittersweet Conclusion
After so many years living in exile up north, Héctor had forgotten how pleasant fall in the Chihuahuan Desert can be, the summer heat banished for good and the first snows not yet upon the desert mountains that enclose the city on three sides. From his office on the top floor of the Museo de...
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Letter From Chile
While traveling by bus in Chile in January 2008, I drew the attention of two other English-speaking passengers to a graffito, which read: Viva Pinochet Libertad! As people whose sole knowledge of the world came from the left-wing press and broadcasters, they were both shocked and puzzled that Pinochet and liberty could be linked in...
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“It Takes Brass To Get Gold”
All things at Rome are for sale. —Juvenal Thomas Jefferson has left us an account of a supper-table conversation in the very earliest days of the U.S. government. Vice President John Adams (who was intended by nature for a preacher) declaimed at length about the virtues of the British government, which, he said, if purged...
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Regulation for Financial Sanity
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) just reported that U.S. banks lost money at a $100 billion annualized rate during the fourth quarter of 2008. Sounds grim, but it only describes the visible part of the iceberg our financial Titanic has hit. AIG, a giant insurance company, alone has been covered by the Federal Reserve...
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What God Has Joined
Seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) believed that God moderates reason. That is to say, faith prevents man from falling deeply into error. Yet the writing of this brilliant man of faith—in particular, his Discourse on Method (1637)—has encouraged a separation of faith and reason that has tended to divide human beings from the very...
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The Naked Truth
The Reader Produced and distributed by The Weinstein Company Directed by Stephen Daldry Screenplay by David Hare from Bernhard Schlink’s novel In 2005, Miss Kate Winslet (Mrs. Sam Mendes) appeared on Ricky Gervais’s Extras as a comedic version of herself, sporting a 1942 nun’s habit on a film set. She was supposed to be...
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Not Our Fathers’ Auto Industry
The U.S. automotive industry operates in a highly regulated environment, a fact largely overlooked in recent congressional hearings over federal loan guarantees to domestic firms. These regulations affect more than three million American blue- and white-collar workers employed in the industry, along with shareholders and other investors, including retirees (and their spouses) vested in pension...
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The Way of the World
In his essay on “self-reliance,” Emerson wrote that “travelling is a fool’s paradise.” He was referring to those who travel to escape the boredom or sadness of their lives, and who hope to return home somehow transformed. Yet we may add those who travel to boast (“Look, here I am at the Parthenon!” or “I...
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Scholarly Pornography
“[T]he most heroic sentiments will lose their efficacy, and the most splendid ideas will drop their magnificence, if they are conveyed by words used commonly upon low and trivial occasions, debased by vulgar mouths, and contaminated by inelegant applications.” —Samuel Johnson In January 2005, one of the premier scholarly publishers in the English language, Princeton...
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Scarlett and Michael
The other night, while watching The Godfather on television for roughly the 50th time, I was struck by a parallel that had never occurred to me before. The movie’s sentimental musical score reminded me of “Tara’s Theme” in Gone With the Wind. My mother used to whistle that melody all the time; she loved the...
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The Return of the Neocons
The disastrous denouement of the Iraq war, and the revelation that we were lied into invading a country that represented no credible threat to us, had supposedly discredited the authors of that reckless adventure—the neoconservatives centered in and around the American Enterprise Institute. AEI served as the headquarters of the neocon network in Washington, a...
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Israel’s Counterelites
Conventional wisdom has it that the recent parliamentary election in Israel has swayed Israeli politics further to the political right. After all, the balance of power in the 120-member Knesset has shifted quite dramatically. The political bloc that included the centrist Kadima Party and Labor, which dominated the outgoing government in Jerusalem, was reduced from...
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A Pearl and Some Swine
It’s Lent, so naturally I’m thinking about Barack Obama. Well, specifically, about his inauguration. You remember, don’t you—the day that hope became sight? I don’t want to be overdramatic, but it now seems obvious to me that President Obama’s inauguration explains just about everything that’s wrong with Christian churches in America. And really, this has...
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Su Rancho Es Mi Rancho
Reading the newspapers, I wonder which straw will break the camel’s back when it comes to illegal immigration. What will finally cause Americans to rise up and take back their country? The tenth family killed by an illegal-alien drunk driver? The 100th housewife butchered by an illegal-alien murderer? Or the next lawsuit that awards damages...
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Meet Rod Blago
As the former governor of Illinois crisscrossed the country on his farewell tour, I kept imagining him lying back in his seat, scalp being massaged by his personal hairstylist (it takes work to keep that Serbian gangster hairdo in pristine shape), while an old Mac Davis song played on an endless loop on his iPod:...
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Our Expensive Crock
At times I think they have to be doing it on purpose. It’s simply not possible that such density of stupidity exists on such a high level. Take Afghanistan, for example. Like a hellfire and brimstone preacher who cannot prize his eye off the pouting dolly bird in the front row, Obama seems mesmerized by...
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NATO at 60: A Hollow Shell
When NATO marks its 60th birthday on April 4, there will be much celebration. Proponents will hail not only the alliance’s longevity and past successes but its goals in the coming decades. Their optimism is based, in part, on statements by the new government in NATO’s leading power, the United States. While the administration of...
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Dead Romans and Live Americans
“Libero Ingresso” says the little sign on the doors of an Italian shop. English speakers who know enough Italian to translate the words, Free Entrance, sometimes wonder if there was a time when Italian shopkeepers charged customers an admission fee, to be refunded, perhaps, if a purchase was made. It is just the sort of...
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ANARCHOTYRANNY
Over the course of its 11 years at the helm of the United Kingdom, the Labour Party has acquired a reputation for authoritarianism. However, even its harshest critics would have doubted the evidence of their senses when awaking one morning to find that an opposition MP had been arrested for releasing information that embarrassed the...
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Stimulus Winners and Losers
The faltering economy is the major concern of most Americans. According to a recent AP poll, 47 percent of us are at least somewhat worried about losing our jobs, up from 28 percent one year ago. And 71 percent know a friend or relative who has lost his job within the past six months. Thus...
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Pick Yourself Up
In his Inaugural Address, President Obama declared: “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.” The President was paraphrasing Fred Astaire from the 1936 movie Swingtime. Fred and Ginger sang Jerome Kern’s song “Pick Yourself Up,” which begins, “Nothing’s impossible I have found, / For...