The jihadist murder of two American servicemen by a “Kosovar”-Albanian Muslim at Frankfurt Airport on March 2 combines the fruits of the United States’ criminally misguided Balkan policy over the past two decades and of Europe’s suicidal immigration policy since the 1960’s. While it is probably too late to have either of them reversed, hope springs eternal:...
Year: 2011
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Tocqueville’s Ancien Régime Book III
In the third book of his Ancien Régime, Alexis de Tocqueville takes up the intellectual origins of the French Revolution. AT notes the at first sight strange phenomenon, that in absolutist France intellectuals were free to challenge the most fundamental political, social, and religious institutions and beliefs. While each “philosopher” had his own system and...
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Organized Coercion
The more it changes, the more it’s the same, hmmm? In this present instance, meaning our country’s seemingly fresh-scented wrangle over union power. The scent isn’t fresh at all, nor is the wrangle. The arguments are old, the question at stake is old: namely, when is the public interest served by giving organized coercion...
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Blowback: “Kosovars” Strike Again
The jihadist murder of two American servicemen by a “Kosovar”-Albanian Muslim at Frankfurt Airport on March 2 combines the fruits of the United States’ criminally misguided Balkan policy over the past two decades and of Europe’s suicidal immigration policy since the 1960’s. While it is probably too late ...
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Organized Coercion
The more it changes, the more it's the same, hmmm? In this present instance, meaning our country's seemingly fresh-scented wrangle over union power. The scent isn't fresh at all, nor is the wrangle. The arguments are old, the question at stake is old: namely, when is the public interest served ...
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Robert Gates, Neo-Isolationist?
Robert Gates, Neo-Isolationist? by Patrick J. Buchanan • March 3, 2011 • Printer-friendly “(A)ny future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as Gen. MacArthur so delicately put it,” Robert Gates has just told...
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Tocqueville’s Ancien Régime Book III
In the third book of his Ancien Régime, Alexis de Tocqueville takes up the intellectual origins of the French Revolution. AT notes the at first sight strange phenomenon, that in absolutist France intellectuals were free to challenge the most fundamental political, social, and religious institutions and beliefs. While each
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Free Speech or Federal Tyranny?
Today’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church has encouraged many decent conservatives to think that the United States will not so quickly go down the garden path of political correctness as Canada and the EU. I think this view is seriously mistaken. As everyone knows, the Westboro Baptist “Church”...
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Free Speech or Federal Tyranny?
Today’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church has encouraged many decent conservatives to think that the United States will not so quickly go down the garden path of political correctness as Canada and the EU. I think this view is seriously mistaken. As everyone knows, the Westboro Baptist “Church” is a...
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Interview With The Archbishop of Kirkuk
In his Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini, on “The Word of God in the Life and the Mission of the Church,” Pope Benedict XVI challenged Islamic countries to offer the same religious freedom that Muslims usually enjoy in predominantly Christian countries. Alas, the news is far from encouraging in countries such as Iraq and Egypt, where...
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A Sicilian Mirage
Everybody laughed at me as usual. The state of absolute passivity outwardly resembling the comatose, but distinguishable from it by voluntary alimentation and libation, was derided by my friends as unattainable. A Sicilian mirage. Yet it had been an idée fixe for years, my vision of a holiday so impeccably philistine it would reduce me...
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The Women Come and Go. . .
If the media could invent a headline that comprehensively described the definitive news of the world today, it would be something like Experts Confirm Top Rail Is on Bottom. For almost my entire working life I have been hearing how the upper classes are being displaced by the lower ones, the American native-born by immigrants...
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Britain’s Leftists: Allies of the Islamists
The people of England, after very considerable provocation, have lately come to fear England’s Muslims. Britain’s leftists have shifted in the opposite direction. From an entrenched hostility to the mores of their own country and out of sheer perversity, the leftists have intensified their attacks on the Catholic Church, while making a point of defending...
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Growing Up Too Fast
In 2008, a young friend from the Czech Republic spent six months in the United States, in part to help me research a book on Roman Polanski and the mores of Hollywood in general. At first she was highly impressed by what she found there; she thought she had encountered a higher civilization. No one...
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Something Serious At Stake
In his prefatory essay to the premier issue of First Things in March 1990, editor Richard John Neuhaus stated that the purpose of the journal would be to discuss the relationship between “religion and public life.” Pastor Neuhaus also said that the journal might have been defined as a journal of religion and culture, culture...
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The Scandal in Vancouver
I am not alone in being utterly astounded by the fact that Dr. Srdja Trifkovic has been refused entry into Canada. This amazing decision is all the more scandalous in that it was taken ad hoc in response to the hate campaign by self-declared representatives of one Bosnian ethnic group carrying out a vendetta...
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Bruised Reeds
In his Introduction, journalist Peter Seewald, who talked to the Holy Father over several hours at Castel Gandolfo for this book, points out that it is the first time a pope has engaged in such a personal interview. Although Seewald’s questions appear at times a little convoluted and repetitive, he can rightly take credit for...
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The Grit and the Gritless
True Grit Produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen The Green Hornet Produced and distributed by Columbia Pictures Directed by Michel Gondry Screenplay by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg The King’s Speech Produced by See-Saw Films Directed by Tom Hooper Screenplay by David Seidler Distributed by The Weinstein...
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The Elusive Conflict
Of the making of Civil War books there shall be no end. There are so many, most of which cover the same bloody ground in much the same slogging way, without any new insight or contribution. To make matters worse, American historians have rewritten the war as a simplistic moral melodrama between the forces of...
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Going Down With the Good Ship Lollipop
“As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt Have you been to a toy store lately? Barbie’s got some heavy competition these days. The Bratz collection, for instance: Yasmin, Sasha, Cloe, Jade—all household names for several years now. Check out that hot little number Sasha in her...
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A Life Rediscovered
ISI Books, the publishing arm of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, is doing a great service by putting out the Lives of the Founders series, emphasizing “important but unjustly neglected figures of the American Founding.” Leaving aside for a moment the problems inherent in thinking about the last quarter of the 18th century as an “American...
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Another Brown Scare
In the run-up to World War II, when FDR was locked in a political struggle with his conservative Republican opponents, Roosevelt’s “brain trust” came up with a scheme to win the war of ideas and get rid of the President’s bothersome critics. Today, we call it the “Brown Scare.” It was a campaign of vilification...
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Cutting Our Teeth On Twilight
To date, Stephenie Meyer’s young-adult novels about a teenage girl (Bella Swan) and her vampire boyfriend (Edward Cullen) have sold well over 100 million copies worldwide, and the movie versions are still coming. When a phenomenon is of this scale it doesn’t matter what a book is, artistically; you have to take such a cultural...
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Too Big To Bail
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner boasted on December 16 that 2008’s $700 billion bailout of an assortment of private enterprises would ultimately cost taxpayers less than congressional analysts had predicted. The green eyeshades had calculated that the enormous wealth transfer would end up docking us taxpayers a mere $25 billion. Without providing further detail, the secretary...
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Latino Fretting
Two days before Christmas, Edward Schumacher-Matos, a scribe for the Washington Post, worked himself into a lather because he believes the GOP is doomed at the ballot box unless it accommodates “Latino” concerns, mainly on immigration. Schumacher-Matos is wrong. The GOP can retain control of American politics as long as it gets most of the...
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Jumpin’ Jim Gavin
Like most kids I loved reading about Americans who rose from nothing to greatness. When I got to college and encountered my first left-wing history professor, I learned that Horatio Alger characters were pure myth—except I had already read and heard about dozens of them. One of my favorites was Jumpin’ Jim Gavin, the heroic...
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Oh I Wish I Was in Dixie
For a native son of the Midwest who has sympathized with the Southern states in the War of Northern Aggression for as far back as he can remember, I can see why some Southerners might find a certain justice in the impending fiscal collapse of the state that launched Abraham Lincoln, coming as it has...
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State of the Tepid
President Barack Obama’s second State of the Union Address was almost entirely focused on domestic issues. This was appropriate, considering the magnitude of social, economic, and moral problems America is facing, and the attendant impossibility of pursuing grand global themes for as long as those problems remain unresolved. His proposals for resolving them are surprisingly...
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The Eurozone: Time for a Divorce
The events of recent months present the eurozone as a dysfunctional bourgeois family, the latter-day Buddenbrooks morphing into Karamazovs. At the plot’s core is the loveless marriage of two incompatible, increasingly embittered partners. Teutonius is a rich yet parsimonious workaholic who abhors mortgages and long holidays. His much younger spouse, Meridiana, has inherited all the...
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An Arab Shopping Spree
What is it with the wives of despots? Leïla Ben Ali (Baba), ex-first lady of Tunisia and a former hairdresser, makes her escape from the country her hubby and her relatives raped, but not before a brief stop at the bank where she demands and receives one-and-a-half tons of gold—worth 67 million big ones—which she...
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To Save One Child
Gloria is angry. This is nothing new, of course, but these days her righteous indignation is directed against Hollywood. She is angry at Hollywood stars who adopt children only to neglect them, and she is outraged by stage parents who prostitute dim-witted girls like Britney and Lindsay and Miley to the entertainment “industry.” She says...
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A Game of Bridge on a Hot Afternoon
In retrospect, I find it shocking that, during World War II, Americans submitted without resistance to a kind of government-imposed serfdom that transformed our habits and our hearts. We have always prided ourselves on being independent, rebellious, even irreverent in the face of authority. In our mythology, we celebrate the defiant eccentric, the rebel, the...
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Not Necessarily Muslim
A January 24 bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport left 35 dead and scores injured, as the Russian capital’s transportation system was targeted by terrorists for the second time in less than a year. The most likely culprits are Muslim terrorists from the North Caucasus who had struck Moscow’s metro system in March 2010. In the...
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More Neocon Follies
I have received only one copy of your filthy magazine, but that is enough. I based my decision to subscribe to Chronicles on an ad you mailed me. The ad made it appear that Chronicles is a serious, conservative publication similar to those I already subscribe to: the Wall Street Journal, Human Events, National Review,...
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Suffer the Little Children—March 2011
beyond the revolution To Save One Child by Thomas Fleming views Growing Up Too Fast by Christopher Sandford Going Down With the Good Ship Lollipop by Jack Trotter news Interview With the Archbishop of Kirkuk by Alberto Carosa reviews A Life Rediscovered by John Willson American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll by Bradley J. Birzer The Elusive Conflict by H.A. Scott Trask The American Civil War: ...
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The Scandal in Vancouver
I am not alone in being utterly astounded by the fact that Dr. Srdja Trifkovic has been refused entry into Canada. This amazing decision is all the more scandalous in that it was taken ad hoc in response to the hate campaign by self-declared representatives of one Bosnian ethnic group ...
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Banned From Canadistan
On Thursday, February 24, I was denied entry to Canada. After six hours’ detention and sporadic interrogation at Vancouver airport I was escorted to the next flight to Seattle. It turns out I am “inadmissible on grounds of violating human or international rights for being a proscribed senior official in the service of a government...
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Banned From Canadistan
On Thursday, February 24, I was denied entry to Canada. After six hours’ detention and sporadic interrogation at Vancouver airport I was escorted to the next flight to Seattle. It turns out I am “inadmissible on grounds of violating human or international rights for being a proscribed senior ...
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When 007 is caught with a smoking gun
What do you do? The is the question that everyone should have been asking from the first news of Raymond Allen Davis’s arrest in Pakistan three weeks ago. Mr. Davis, after shooting and killing two Pakistanis, was put under arrest. The US immediately demanded his release, claiming diplomatic immunity and insisting that he...
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When 007 is caught with a smoking gun,
What do you do? The is the question that everyone should have been asking from the first news of Raymond Allen Davis's arrest in Pakistan three weeks ago. Mr. Davis, after shooting and killing two Pakistanis, was put under arrest. The US immediately demanded his release, claiming diplomatic immunity and ...
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Jerks on a Shopping Spree II
A Random Walk Through the Mall The adventure begins as you drive into the parking lot. In the many states where traffic laws do not extend to private property, the lot should have a large sign: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Malls are private property, and when some cowboy pulls out of a parking...
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Jerks on a Shopping Spree II
A Random Walk Through the Mall The adventure begins as you drive into the parking lot. In the many states where traffic laws do not extend to private property, the lot should have a large sign: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Malls are private property, and when some cowboy pulls out ...
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The Tragedy of American Education
Robert E. Holloway is a high school teacher in suburban Northern Virginia. He is probably considered a decent man by his neighbors, a competent educator by his peers, and a figure of some authority by his students. He is the embodiment of much that is wrong with this country’s education system, however: a bigot,...
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The Tragedy of American Education
Robert E. Holloway is a high school teacher in suburban Northern Virginia. He is probably considered a decent man by his neighbors, a competent educator by his peers, and a figure of some authority by his students. He is the embodiment of much that is wrong with this country’s education system, however: a bigot, a...
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Bush’s New “Axis of Evil”
George W. Bush must have been the despair of the history department of every school his daddy managed to get him into. Consider his latest excursion into the history of the republic, at Southern Methodist, where the Great Man’s papers are to be housed. What’s interesting about our country, if you study history, is...
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Egypt: Steady As She Goes
Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman has announced that President Hosni Mubarak was stepping down from the office of president of the republic “and has charged the high council of the armed forces to administer the affairs of the country.” In other words, the Army has taken over. This is the least bad outcome on...
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“Finally We are Free”
The cry of the protestors in Cairo, as they greet the news of the military coup that has toppled Hosni Mubarak. What’s next? An interim government, perhaps the troika proposed by Mohammed El Baradei, with the reality of power remaining in the hands of the military. Then comes the countdown to the day when the...
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Bush’s New “Axis of Evil”
George W. Bush must have been the despair of the history department of every school his daddy managed to get him into. Consider his latest excursion into the history of the republic, at Southern Methodist, where the Great Man's papers are to be housed. What's interesting about our country, if you ...
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Egypt: Steady As She Goes
Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman has announced that President Hosni Mubarak was stepping down from the office of president of the republic “and has charged the high council of the armed forces to administer the affairs of the country.” In other words, the Army has taken over. This is the least bad outcome on offer...
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“Finally We are Free”
The cry of the protestors in Cairo, as they greet the news of the military coup that has toppled Hosni Mubarak. What’s next? An interim government, perhaps the troika proposed by Mohammed El Baradei, with the reality of power remaining in the hands of the military. Then comes the countdown to the day when the...