A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. —John Adams Honest history is one of the many casualties of the ethnic spoils competition that now dominates American society. —Clyde Wilson Blood will tell. —proverbial wisdom There is a great deal of ruin in a nation. ...
Year: 2009
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Everybody in America
As I understand gun control, the idea is to disarm criminals unless they work for the government. Police used to see their duty as to protect people. Since the feds took over training them, more and more of them think their job is to swagger, push people around, and make military-style assaults. An Obama spokesperson...
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Courage, Mr. Holder
Lecturing a conscript conclave of Justice Department bureaucrats, Attorney General Eric Holder last week called America a “nation of cowards” for not spending more time talking about race. Reading his speech, however, one recalls the sage counsel of Pat Moynihan to President Nixon in 1970: This whole subject might benefit from a long period of...
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Clueless Catholic
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The Long Retreat
“The situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating,” said President Obama, as he announced deployment of 17,000 more U.S. troops. “I’m absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism in that region, solely through military means.” “(T)here is no military solution in Afghanistan,” says Secretary of Defense Robert Gates....
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Nation of Cowards
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Patriarch Aleksy, R.I.P.
Aleksy II, Patriarch of Moscow and head of the Russian Orthodox Church, died of heart failure on December 5, 2008, at the age of 79. Born in Estonia in 1929 into a pious family of Russian émigrés of German extraction, Aleksei Mikhailovich Ridiger was ordained a priest in 1950, completed his ...
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Who Remembers “Guns and Butter”?
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s policy of Great Society spending and the Vietnam War is credited with the rising American inflation that persisted until checked by President Reagan’s supply-side policy. In Johnson’s time, the American economy and the U.S. dollar were strong, and there was no current account deficit. Yet, LBJ’s policy of guns and butter...
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Lincoln Follies
A few of us now decrepit pre-Reagan “conservatives” can remember the brief flicker of hope of saving the republic that we had around 1980. Around about that time we were heartened by the founding of the Washington Times, which, it was thought, might become an effective foe of the mainstream ...
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Metrics of National Decline
Metrics of National Decline by Patrick J. Buchanan • February 16, 2009 • Printer-friendly “Bush Boom Continues” trilled the headline over the Lawrence Kudlow column, as George W. Bush closed out his seventh year in office. “You can call it Goldilocks 2.0,” purred Kudlow. Yes, you could. But what a difference 12 months can make....
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Those Amazing Muslims
A Muslim businessman who with his wife created the Bridges TV Network to offer a kindler gentler image of Islam has been arrested for cutting off the head of his estranged wife, who had sough and received an order of protection. Muzzammil “Mo” Hassan, who has been has been lauded by Jay Leno and NPR,...
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Rendering Unto Lincoln
“Now he belongs to the ages,” Edwin Stanton is supposed to have said, when he learned of President Lincoln’s death. In a trivial sense at least, Stanton was obviously correct. We have Lincoln’s face on the five-dollar bill—a bill that used to be worth more than a Happy Meal, before ...
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Mr. Lincoln’s War: An Irrepressible Conflict?
“[T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions…are ...
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The Treasury of Counterfeit Virtue
“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us!” —Robert Burns A few years ago, a well-known conservative historian lamented that the American public was not morally engaged to undergo sacrifice after the September 11 attacks, unlike it was in its heroic response to Fort ...
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To Brighten Your Day
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“Buy American”—or Bye-Bye America
“Buy American”—or Bye-Bye America by Patrick J. Buchanan • February 11, 2009 • Printer-friendly “British jobs for British workers!” thundered Gordon Brown, as he emerged from the shadow of Tony Blair to become prime minister. His populist sloganeering has now come back to bite him. Across Britain, thousands laid down tools in wildcat strikes in...
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Obama as Lincoln: Mask and Mirror
Ron English, the self-styled “Robin Hood of Madison Avenue” who specializes in “liberating” commercial billboards and defacing them (albeit artistically) with his anticapitalist messages, has painted a portrait of Obama as Lincoln: The President’s thick lips, crinkled brow, and eyes sparkling with a preternatural intelligence are seamlessly merged with the ...
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It Can’t Be Repeated Too Often (Until It Sinks In), Cont’d
The American educational system at every level is an immensely expensive obstacle to culture and learning. America is not a Christian county. It is a post-Christian country. Ex-President Bush is guilty of great crimes and has done his country irreparable damage. (Although only an insignificant handful of people have noticed.) By launching ...
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Lincoln and God
Before the first shots were fired in the U.S. Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln had begun to style himself as an instrument of the Lord. But as William H. Herndon, a law partner and Lincoln biographer, wrote, “[t]he very idea that he was in the hands of an invisible, irresistible, ...
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Money, Money, Money
It’s beat-up-on-the-rich time in America: a cheap alternative to paying a veterinarian’s bill for the dog you just kicked violently upon checking your 401(k) statement. This, too, will pass, along with the recession, that’s to say. The sun will break through the clouds, and we’ll return to being a nation of strivers, with a built-in...
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It Can’t Be Repeated Too Often (Until It Sinks In)
The purpose of Political Correctness is to suppress true ideas. Its proponents have no interest in suppressing falsehood. You cannot have a First World economy and military with a Third World population. The Republican Party is not and never has been a conservative party. (For most of American history, until less than ...
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Lincolnism Today: The Long Marriage of Centralized Power and Concentrated Wealth
In the Anglo-American experience, the partisans of concentrated wealth and advocates for political centralization have long been connected. Over the last three centuries, that connection has grown stronger, and in the United States this process accelerated dramatically during and after the Lincoln administration. Lincolnism, the idea that the central state ...
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Shattering Lincoln’s Dream
I just got a copy of a thoughtful new book, Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President, by Thomas L. Krannawitter. The book mentions me a couple of times, in polite disagreement. Krannawitter, now of Hillsdale College, is a disciple of Claremont McKenna College’s Harry V. Jaffa, as ...
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A Week of Lincoln
Thursday, February 12, 2009, marks the Bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. To mark the occasion, ChroniclesMagazine.org will post at least one article each day of the week beginning February 9, and concluding with Friday the 13th. Up first on Monday is Daniel Larison's View from the February issue, ...
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The Era of American Leadership Is Over
Vast numbers of people in the United States and abroad are hoping that President Obama will end America’s illegal wars, halt America’s support for Israel’s massacre of Lebanese and Palestinians, and punish, instead of reward, the shyster banksters whose fraudulent financial instruments have destroyed economics and imposed massive sufferings on people all over the world....
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THE LEGACY OF LINCOLN—February 2009
PERSPECTIVE Rendering Unto Lincoln by Thomas Fleming VIEWS The Treasury of Counterfeit Virtue by Clyde Wilson Abe’s indulgence. Obama as Lincoln by Justin Raimondo Mask and mirror. Lincolnism Today by Daniel Larison The long marriage of centralized power and concentrated wealth. NEWS The Financial Crisis by William J. Quirk How it happened, and why it is still happening. REVIEWS Strippers to the Rescue by Stephen B. Presser William ...
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What is History? Part 23
To know truly is to know by causes. —Francis Bacon Success begets excess, and excess begets death. —Anonymous Something is going on and will not stop. You are outside the going on, and you are, at the same time, inside the going on. In fact, the going on is what you are. —Robert Penn Warren...
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Nancy Pelosi’s New Deal
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” sayeth Rahm. Opportunistic and cynical, yes. But also savvy political counsel that transformational presidents have always followed. FDR exploited the Depression to launch his New Deal, bring an end to a Republican hegemony of seven decades and make Democrats the majority party, until Richard Nixon...
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The Prism’s Prison
Sometimes it seems that I have become the master of a single plaintive note, sung by the disembodied voice of the patron saint of grasshoppers, Marie Antoinette, from somewhere beyond the tomb. And it is true that often, when I reread whatever I have written, I am reminded of Russian dictionaries of fenya, or for...
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Treasure Mountain
In the elation and excitement produced by Héctor’s interview with the curandera, he and Jesús “Eddie” could barely resist the impulse to start at once for Ladron Peak. A late-winter storm of unusual force for central New Mexico restored them to their senses, blanketing the peak and the mountains to the southwest and east in...
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The Class of ’59: Intimations of Mortality and Posterity
Some good folks in my hometown are planning a reunion of my high-school class, which, come June, will have graduated 50 years ago. It was a class of about 500. Three hundred are known, of which 53 are already deceased. (Our average age is 67.) It is a strange and unsettling experience to contemplate the...
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The Treasury of Counterfeit Virtue
“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us!” —Robert Burns A few years ago, a well-known conservative historian lamented that the American public was not morally engaged to undergo sacrifice after the September 11 attacks, unlike it was in its heroic response to Fort Sumter and Pearl Harbor....
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Lincolnism Today
In the Anglo-American experience, the partisans of concentrated wealth and advocates for political centralization have long been connected. Over the last three centuries, that connection has grown stronger, and in the United States this process accelerated dramatically during and after the Lincoln administration. Lincolnism, the idea that the central state can and should use its...
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I Gave Them a Sword
Frost/Nixon Produced by Imagine Entertainment and Studio Canal Directed by Ron Howard Screenplay by Peter Morgan Distributed by Universal Pictures On August 9, 1974, the day Richard Nixon officially resigned from the presidency, I discovered just how rabid political hatred could become short of taking up arms. I was in my faculty cubicle after...
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America’s Coldest Winter
Your Excellency: To illustrate how Christians must live in both this world and the next, our parish priest recently quoted a Jesuit who once said: “In our right hand we carry the New York Times. In our left hand we carry the Bible.” Another story underlines this Jesuitical observation. An older couple were perplexed by...
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Lincoln and God
Before the first shots were fired in the U.S. Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln had begun to style himself as an instrument of the Lord. But as William H. Herndon, a law partner and Lincoln biographer, wrote, “[t]he very idea that he was in the hands of an invisible, irresistible, and inevitable deaf power which...
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Shattering Lincoln’s Dream
I just got a copy of a thoughtful new book, Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President, by Thomas L. Krannawitter. The book mentions me a couple of times, in polite disagreement. Krannawitter, now of Hillsdale College, is a disciple of Claremont McKenna College’s Harry V. Jaffa, as I once was. The Jaffa...
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Obama as Lincoln
Ron English, the self-styled “Robin Hood of Madison Avenue” who specializes in “liberating” commercial billboards and defacing them (albeit artistically) with his anticapitalist messages, has painted a portrait of Obama as Lincoln: The President’s thick lips, crinkled brow, and eyes sparkling with a preternatural intelligence are seamlessly merged with the high forehead, biblical beard, and...
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McCain’s Revenge
Did John McCain throw the election? Is it just me, or was there a certain elegaic tone to the Republican presidential campaign, a McCain’s Last Hurrah narrative that precluded victory around the time the stock market took a dive? It was then that McCain signed a joint statement with his Democratic rival, urging lawmakers “to...
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Whither Obama’s Foreign Policy?
According to the Washington Post, a senior diplomat from a major European country, a Middle Eastern ambassador, and an Asian ambassador—all of whom represent “major, big-league countries”—have been getting lots of messages from their home offices wondering how exactly President Obama will exert his influence over the contracting American Empire. Apparently “Barack Obama’s folks aren’t...
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Homeric Lessons
“Should one have lived, only to read the twenty-third song of the Iliad, he could not lament of his existence,” commented G.E. Lessing. Of course, in Lessing’s day, many of the literati could have read the Iliad in Greek. Today, the typical reader experiences the Iliad in translation, and he has over 100 translations to...
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Hot Rod Lincoln
He knew that he was destined for greatness. The son of uneducated manual laborers, immigrants to Illinois, he was never much of a student, but he would become a successful lawyer. From a young age, though, his sights were set on political power. Through his political connections, he got himself elected to the Illinois House...
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The North Worth Saving
“Defeat in detail” is a military concept that denotes the rout of an enemy by dividing and destroying segments of his forces one by one, instead of engaging his entire strength. A brilliant example was Stonewall Jackson’s 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign, when his force of 17,000 beat three mutually unsupported Union commands almost four times...
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Patriarch Alesky, R.I.P
Aleksy II, Patriarch of Moscow and head of the Russian Orthodox Church, died of heart failure on December 5, 2008, at the age of 79. Born in Estonia in 1929 into a pious family of Russian émigrés of German extraction, Aleksei Mikhailovich Ridiger was ordained a priest in 1950, completed his theological studies in St....
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Strippers to the Rescue
“Courts of justice cautiously abstain from deciding more than what the immediate point submitted to their consideration requires.” —Mr. Justice Nicholl In what was probably the most laudable achievement of his administration, President George W. Bush placed on the Supreme Court two justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito, who believe...
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To Spurn a Stranger Cur
By the time you read this it might be very old news, and if it is, treat it as a background briefing. But if the son-of-a-bitch I’m writing about is still out on bail and moving his ill-gotten assets around Israel and the environs, pay attention. What you read can one day save your savings....
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Rendering Unto Lincoln
“Now he belongs to the ages,” Edwin Stanton is supposed to have said, when he learned of President Lincoln’s death. In a trivial sense at least, Stanton was obviously correct. We have Lincoln’s face on the five-dollar bill—a bill that used to be worth more than a Happy Meal, before Lincoln’s disciples degraded the currency—and...