So, thanks again for the love in the cradle and all of the changes that kept me dry. And thanks again for the love at our table and tannin’ my bottom when I told you a lie . . . It’s a tear-jerker of a song, and the only thing that rescues Ricky Skaggs’ “Thanks...
Year: 2010
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A Man of One Idea
The Russian edition of Viktor Suvorov’s Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War? sports a blurb on the back, quoting a review of the English translation of the book published in a British newspaper on May 5, 1990. Suvorov, runs the quotation, is arguing with every book, every article, every film, every NATO directive, every...
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Sam Francis’s Mad Tea Party
Reading up for a book on the fate of democracy since Tocqueville published Democracy in America in 1835, I recently came across an excellent study, Aristocratic Liberalism: The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville, by Alan S. Kahan. Professor Kahan includes these men in a group of...
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Journalism as Direct Mail
“Politics and abuse have totally corrupted our tastes,” Horace Walpole complained to a correspondent in 1771. “Nobody thinks of writing a line that is to last beyond the next fortnight.” Politics in Great Britain in the late 18th century was as agitated as that of America early in the 21st, although the divisions it reflected...
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The Center Cannot Hold
The Church of England is made up of three parts: evangelical Protestants, Anglo-Catholics, and liberals. They have long been at war, and soon this war will lead to the final rending of that Church. The Anglo-Catholics will break away when women are ordained bishops, as some already did when the Church of England first ordained...
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Igor Stravinsky
Virginia Woolf once wrote that human nature suddenly changed in the year 1910. Certainly, the accepted idea of what popular entertainment could look and sound like underwent a rude shock on June 25 of that year, when the ballet The Firebird, by 28-year-old Igor Stravinsky, received its premiere at the Paris Opera. From the small...
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A Mortal Blivet
The Edge of Darkness Produced by GK Films, Icon Productions, and BBC Films Directed by Martin Campbell Screenplay by William Monahan and Andrew Bovell from the original television script by Troy Kennedy Martin Distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures In The Edge of Darkness, director Martin Campbell has tried to compress the six hour-long episodes...
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We Hardly Knew You
First, you realized that “Holden Caulfield” wasn’t innocent anymore; then, that he was old; then, that he is dead. J.D. Salinger was 91 when he passed away recently in Cornish, New Hampshire, and that means not only that he had been disappeared and aged for a long time, but that he never was young even...
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Brush the Distance
Catharine Savage Brosman’s latest book, Breakwater, is a stimulating addition to her always intriguing poetic realm. The book is packed with superlative individual poems, and their cumulative effect strikes this reviewer as majestic. Breakwater is divided into three sections. Section I is an extended love poem involving the poet and the man to whom she...
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When We Were Kings
You ain’t a pimp and you ain’t a hustler. A pimp’s got a Caddy and a lady got a Chrysler. —“Young American,” by David Bowie Each year, on the third Saturday of August, people line the sidewalks along Woodward Avenue in Detroit for the annual Dream Cruise. In the ambiance of the affluent northern suburbs...
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It’s the Jobs
Which presidents of the United States have done a job of work? This little survey is limited to those born in the 20th century. Before that, everybody worked. Let’s start with our present leader. He has never lifted a shovel or driven a truck or had to make a payroll. He has never grown a...
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The Eclipse of the Normal
Nearly a century ago, G.K. Chesterton wrote of “the modern and morbid habit of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal.” Today the very word normal is almost taboo. Perish the thought that there is anything abnormal—let alone sinful, vicious, perverted, abominable, sick, unhealthy, or just plain wrong—about sodomy. (Unsanitary? Let’s not go there.) As...
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Rothbard Was Right!
As the Tea Partiers swarm town-hall meetings, and talk of nullification, the Tenth Amendment, and even secession is in the air, I can’t help thinking, Rothbard was right! That’s Murray Newton Rothbard (1926-95), the libertarian economist and theorist whose uncompromising intelligence instructed an entire generation of the freedom movement’s leading lights. Rothbard’s career spanned the...
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Battle of the Narrative
When a manufacturing company is confronted with the reality of a huge drop in product sales, the initial reaction on the part of the managers is to blame the marketing department and to demand that it come up with a new and more effective advertising campaign. After all, the notion that their air-conditioning units are...
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Frankfurt School Tories
It is a strange world in which allegedly conservative politicians will go to great lengths to demonstrate their politically correct bona fides. For years, we have witnessed this tendency within the Republican Party. A recent example is the new Republican Party website (www.gop.com), which one might confuse for the websites of the NAACP or La...
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Love Is a Decision
Small-town America is dying, but not without help. According to Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas, it takes effort to leave your home, and small towns are doing a fantastic job of encouraging their best and brightest to do just that. Hollowing Out the Middle is the result of a seven-year study by Carr and Kefalas...
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Well, Naturally, We’re Gullible
I love Sarah Palin. That’s not necessarily because of anything she believes or advocates, but because of the pleasure I derive from watching the apoplexy she causes in liberals, especially in a university setting. Not only is Palin a strong conservative, but she has a regular middle-class background and a passionate religious commitment. This combination...
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Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery . . . That, according to Forbes.com, is what I should be feeling, but as a native Michigander, I find it hard to be miserable, let alone depressed, on a cloudless day in February. Even mere half-Poles are naturally pessimistic, but a blazing sun in a bright blue sky greatly...
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Tears of a Clown
Watching the finals of the Australian Open was a revelation. The worthy loser, Andy Murray, praised the winner, Roger Federer, by saying that he, Murray, could cry like Roger, but as yet could not play as well. He then broke down and wept in front of thousands. The crowd loved it and cheered Andy to...
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Dark Age to Dark Age
The decline and fall of the Roman Empire began to haunt the West’s imagination many centuries before Gibbon’s masterpiece immortalized the phrase. Indeed, it is hard not to agree with Friedrich Heer’s judgment that every European empire since Charlemagne’s time—the Holy Roman Empire, Czarist Russia, Napoleonic France, Hitler’s and Stalin’s failed experiments—was a conscious attempt...
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Cheating “Honest” Men
Sometimes I like to remind myself of what a nobody I am. It does not take much to trigger these fits of humility. A glance in the mirror or at the ever-expanding bulge in my vest is usually enough to call to mind at least two deadly sins that have tempted me all too often. ...
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Putting America Back to Work
The United States is experiencing her highest national unemployment rate since the early 1980’s. Back in 1981, in order to stimulate the creation of jobs in the private sector, President Reagan encouraged Congress to pass the Kemp-Roth Job Creation Act. Today, the Obama administration is doing nothing of the sort. Most Americans are not even...
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Bringing Back the Old Economy
In 1960, my father attended what was then Case Institute of Technology. Even though it was the most expensive school in Ohio, he was able to pay his tuition with his summer jobs. When he graduated, mechanical engineers were in demand; American manufacturing was booming, and the jobs being offered to good young engineers generally...
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Jobs Recall
Secretary of Transportation (and former GOP congressman) Ray LaHood unleashed a storm of controversy when he told a House committee looking into sudden-acceleration accidents involving Toyotas that “if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it, take it to a Toyota dealer . . . ” The reaction of the neocon establishment was predictable:...
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Anatomy of a Murder
The November murder of a missionary Orthodox priest in Moscow highlighted the threats to Russia’s stability from extremist groups, including Muslim terrorists and the far right. The priest, Daniil Sysoyev, and his aide, Vladimir Strelbitsky, were shot down in a church in Moscow’s Southern Administrative Okrug on November 19. The gunman, whom some sources described...
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Killer Language
Thanks to F.W. Brownlow for an informative article in the February issue (“Of Genes, Vowels, and Violence,” Correspondence), which was a rebuttal to a previous article by Philip Jenkins. It has become increasingly obvious that the traditional story of the evolution of the English language—that a small, all-male military caste of Anglo-Saxons quickly imposed their...
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Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street—April 2010
perspective Cheating “Honest” Menby Thomas Fleming views Putting America Back to Workby Tom Pauken Bringing Back the Old Economyby Tom Piatak news Sam Francis’s Mad Tea Partyby Chilton Williamson, Jr. reviews Brush the Distanceby John Freeman [Catharine Savage Brosman, Breakwater: Poems] Dark Age to Dark Ageby Thomas Fleming [Adrian Goldsworthy, How Rome Fell] A Man...
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It’s True What They Say About Dixie
Throughout most of American history region has been a better predictor of political position than party. That aspect of our reality has been neglected and suppressed in recent times as the rest of the country has conspired or acquiesced in transforming the South into a replica of Ohio. Yet the notorious squeak vote on the...
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How to Stave Off Economic Recovery
“[With health care done] Democrats will turn unequivocally to the economy, putting forth additional efforts to accelerate the recovery.”—John Harwood, The New York Times, March 29 “Efforts” such as, um, well, hmmmmm . . . Something anyway: a cycle of speeches from the White House; federal grants for job creation; exhortations to start hiring and...
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The Real Anti-Americans
As Democrats, after a Sunday rally on the Capitol grounds, marched to the House hand-in-hand to vote health care reform, Tea Partiers reportedly shouted the “n-word” at John Lewis and another black congressman. A third was allegedly spat upon. And Barney Frank was called a nasty name. Tea Partiers deny it all. And neither audio...
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Bibi’s Hollow Victory
“The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital.” With this defiant declaration, to a thunderous ovation at AIPAC, Benjamin Netanyahu informed the United States that East Jerusalem, taken from Jordan in the Six Day War, is not...
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Frum’s Firing
By now, many Chronicles readers have no doubt heard that David Frum was fired from his cushy job at the American Enterprise Institute, following an online column claiming that the passage of Obamacare was the GOP’s “Waterloo,” which could have been avoided if the GOP had been more willing to negotiate with Obama. Frum is...
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Trollope the Casuist
When the noble art of casuistry was driven from the field by an army of moral pygmies led by Descartes, Locke, and Kant, a gaping hole opened up. In an ethical system devoted exclusively to abstract rights or abstract duties, how could the real problems of life be discussed? The answer (and I owe this...
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Netanyahu for President
Benjamin Netanyahu is back in the United States, rallying his troops and hectoring the administration. I stand in such awe of this man that I propose we suspend our now pointless requirement of being American born and run Mr. Netanyahu as the candidate of both parties. Why not? It’s not as if the US government,...
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The Sydney Carton Party
The Sydney Carton Party by Patrick J. Buchanan • March 23, 2010 • Printer-friendly “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” From “A Tale of Two Cities,” Sydney Carton’s words, as...
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The Triumph of the Insurance Companies
That cry you heard when the 216th vote was cast in favor of President Obama's
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The Wars of Tribe and Faith
When the Soviet Union disintegrated, most Americans likely had never heard of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan. Yet the ethnonationalism of these Asian peoples, boiling to the surface after centuries of tsarist and communist repression, helped tear apart one of the great empires of history. There swiftly followed the collapse of Yugoslavia. Yet, if one...
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American Naifs Bringing Ruin to Other Lands
According to news reports, the U.S. military is shipping “bunker-buster” bombs to the U.S. Air Force base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Herald Scotland reports that experts say the bombs are being assembled for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The newspaper quotes Dan Piesch, director of the Centre for International Studies...
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Education ‘Reform,’ From the Top Down
My goodness, it’s just one favor after another the U.S. government wants to do for us. By week’s end, the president and his minions hope to have bought, embarrassed or intimidated enough fellow Democrats into passing, at long last, health care “reform.” In the meantime, the White House lets us know it wants action on...
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The Poodle Gets Kicked
Actually, Joe set himself up. From the moment he set foot on Israeli soil, our vice president was in full pander mode. First, he headed to Yad Vashem memorial, where he put on a yarmulke and declared Israel “a central bolt in our existence.” “For world Jewry,” Joe went on, presumably including 5 million Americans,...
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Are Obama and Hillary Clinton Really Bumblers?
Are they really bumblers? The opinion columns quiver with reproofs for maladroit handling of foreign policy by President Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Those who cherished foolish illusions that Obama’s election presaged a substantive shift to the left in foreign policy fret about “worrisome signs” that this is not the case. It’s...
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The Disemboweling of America
Though Bush 41 and Bush 43 often disagreed, one issue did unite them both with Bill Clinton: protectionism. Globalists all, they rejected any federal measure to protect America’s industrial base, economic independence or the wages of U.S. workers. Together they rammed through NAFTA, brought America under the World Trade Organization, abolished tariffs and granted Chinese-made...
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On Dueling, Divorce, and Red Indians
In February 1861, Joseph Sadoc Alemany, the first Roman Catholic bishop of the state of California, wrote an urgent pastoral letter to his flock. This letter was published immediately in the New York Freeman’s Journal, and for this indiscretion its editor was imprisoned for a year in Fort Lafayette, and ...
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Going Green for Goldman
What’s behind the cult of “global warming”? We’ve been hearing about it for years on television, in magazines, from politicians, and from certain corporate entities: Mankind is destroying the earth, and the only solution is to “go green.” Unless we radically change our behavior, the oceans will rise, catastrophe will ...
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Three Cities, Three Empires
Stendahl begins his peculiar autobiography, The Life of Henry Brulard, with his alter ego standing at the summit of the Janiculum Hill, surveying the city of Rome, west to east. It is October 16, 1832, and Brulard faces his cinquantaine in three months. Fifty years, he thinks! But Raphael’s Transfiguration ...
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Who Should Pay the Piper?
Greece this past weekend saw the worst rioting since the debt crisis began. After Athens had announced new tax hikes and budget cuts to reduce a deficit of 13 percent of gross domestic product, mobs drove guards from Greece’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and attacked police. In our own country, students, teachers and administrators...
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Little Bitty Pretty One
The television screen shows five-year-old Tara being awakened from a sound sleep at 6 a.m. She has a beauty pageant to get ready for. To shake off her sluggishness she is given a carb-rich donut and some caffeine-loaded Mountain Dew. After “breakfast” Tara is dressed in a two-piece bathing suit and ...