“Viva Mexico! Viva Mexico!” As he spoke those words, murderer and rapist Humberto Leal felt the gush of pentobarbital run into his arm. Like the late, lamented Mexican hero José Ernesto Medellín, whom Texas executed in 2008, Leal and his legal backers, including the Mexican government, argued that his guilty verdict was null. The Vienna...
Year: 2011
Post
Running in Circles
The esteemed editor of this magazine was not at all persuaded by my discussion of Twitter in the first installment of this new column (“Weiners and Losers,” September). I would have been more than a bit disappointed if it had been otherwise. Though I have been using Twitter in various ways for over four years...
Post
Arabian Fall
In the U.S. mainstream media, the developments that have followed the misnamed “Arab Spring” have been curiously underreported. The reason seems clear: In recent weeks those developments have taken a clear turn away from Western-style democracy, pluralism, tolerance, respect for human rights, etc. It now seems obvious that the turmoil has undermined the region’s authoritarian...
Post
A Magical September
On September 1, 1957, a pretty French girl by the name of Patricia and an Italo-French couple, Feruccio and Ellen, joined me in the old harbor of Cannes waiting to board the super-new luxury liner Cristoforo Colombo. Our destination was Capri, and we had decided to go on the spur of the moment. Capri’s season...
Post
Deforming Education
“Priminent [sic] National Education Reformer Making a Home in Nashville,” announced the headline on Google News. Just in the nick of time, you might think, but when you read the story on Missouri News Horizon’s website, you will find that the great reformer, one Michelle Rhee, is serving up the usual empty portions of educationese...
Post
Mrs. Pyle and the Japs
The Pyles lived on the corner of Bahia Vista and Pomelo. Even on the sunniest day, you could barely see their one-story house, crouched in the dark shadows of three sprawling oaks hung with Spanish moss. The huge lot on which the house sat was bordered by a chain fence. No one else in town...
Post
A Gentleman and a Scholar
The call came just before dinner on a Wednesday in April—a bright, windy day when spring was just taking hold and seemed so full of possibilities. Coach had died the previous Friday in his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio. I hoped that he had not been alone. I’m told that a close friend, a man who...
Post
Breivik: No Patriot, No Christian
As of this writing, stories describing the horrifying bombing and shootings committed in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik are still coming in, but there is enough information available for an attentive reader to draw some preliminary conclusions about the self-identified mass-murderer. Breivik’s actions and certain sections of his lengthy manifesto belie the mainstream media’s portrayal...
Post
Faith of Our Forepeople
So, at this big funeral the other day for a local real-estate executive, the congregation is preparing to sing “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Great old hymn, yes? Glad expectations arise. That is, until the second verse: “Christians, we are treading where the saints have trod.” Wait now—didn’t it used to be “Brothers”? Sure did. A lot...
Post
Of Martyrs and Men
George McCartney (“The First and Final Command,” In the Dark, June) seems to believe that the Trappists of Tibhirine died as Christian martyrs. I do not. If the film he reviewed, Of Gods and Men, portrays them accurately, they prayed in the local mosque regularly; in other words, they repeatedly and publicly worshiped a false...
Post
September 11: What Has Changed?—September 2011
beyond the revolution Deforming Education by Thomas Fleming views U No What I Meen: Technology and Illiteracy by R. Clay Reynolds Tarzan’s Way by Andrei Navrozov news September 11: Ten Years After by John C. Seiler, Jr. reviews The Monism of Perfection by Chilton Williamson, Jr. The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life by Kenneth ...
Post
NATO After Libya: A Threat to European Stability
Address given on Monday, August 29, at the international conference Central Europe, the EU and the new Russia at the Czech Parliament in Prague. More than two decades after the end of the Cold War, NATO is an obsolete and harmful anachronism. It has morphed into a vehicle for the attainment of misguided American...
Post
The Jobs Go Out, Like the Tide
Mike Dorning of Bloomberg has an interesting article on “The Slow Disappearance of the American Working Man.” The statistics set forth in the article are dire. Only 63.5% of American men have jobs, very near the low recorded in 2009, itself the lowest level of male participation in the labor force since these statistics...
Post
Jerks: The Natural Man
“La plupart de jeunes gens croient etre naturels, lorsqu’ils ne sont que mal polis et grossiers.” La Rochefoucauld’s caustic observation on the false simplicity of young people who mistake crudeness for nature tells us that the cult of the primitive antedates both Rousseau and the Romantic writers who wrought so much mischief. Society...
Post
The Ron Paul Story
The most interesting Ron Paul Story these days is the Ron Paul Story. What? It’s like this. I well understand why so many disgruntled and disgusted Republicans are turning in despair to a man who probably cannot get the nomination, much less win in a general election. Paul’s supporters have come, however dimly, to...
Post
The Libyan Endgame
Regardless of whether Muammar Qaddafy is killed, brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, or exiled, his regime has collapsed beyond recovery. After a five-month air war against his forces NATO has succeeded in decisively tipping the balance on the ground in favor of the rebels. This does not mean that the war...
Post
Jerks: Cases of Arrested Development
In the new millennium, the Americans acting badly are spoiled children who have never learned what it would mean to grow up. 100 years ago, this type was already developing, and Booth Tarkington describes some of these characters in his fiction—the Penrod stories, Little Orvie, and, most effectively, the character of Georgie Minafer in...
Post
The Libyan Endgame
Regardless of whether Muammar Qaddafy is killed, brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, or exiled, his regime has collapsed beyond recovery. After a five-month air war against his forces NATO has succeeded in decisively tipping the balance on the ground in favor of the rebels. This does not mean that the...
Post
The Middle East Heats Up
The string of attacks on civilian and military targets in southern Israel by gunmen suspected to have crossed from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula was a complex, carefully coordinated operation. Israeli sources say that its intelligence services, army and police were taken by surprise by the scale and slick organization of the multiple assaults staged near Eilat. More serious than...
Post
Today’s Rich Are Different
It used to be that plutocrats felt they were part of the society in which they lived, or at least felt the need to act as if they were part of that society. Thus, when they decided to give away some of their enormous fortunes, their gifts generally reflected a desire to improve the...
Post
Today’s Rich Are Different
It used to be that plutocrats felt they were part of the society in which they lived, or at least felt the need to act as if they were part of that society. Thus, when they decided to give away some of their enormous fortunes, their gifts generally reflected ...
Post
The Fire This Time
“You’ve damaged your own race,” said Mayor Michael Nutter to the black youths of Philadelphia whose flash mobs have been beating and robbing shoppers in the fashionable district of downtown. “Take those God-darn hoodies down,” the mayor went on in his blistering lecture. “Pull your pants up and buy a belt, ’cause no one...
Post
Who’s Really Downgrading America?
The decision by Standard & Poor’s to strip the United States of its AAA credit rating, for the first time, has triggered a barrage of catcalls against the umpire from the press box and Obamaites. S&P, we are reminded, was giving A ratings to banks like Lehman Brothers, whose books were stuffed with suspect...
Post
London’s Postmodern Riots
As a former resident of Winchmore Hill I am well familiar the surrounding areas of north London—Wood Green, Ponders End, Enfield…—affected by three successive nights of rioting and looting which has now spread to other parts of the capital. Burglaries, car thefts and vandalism started being a problem in our N21 neighborhood two decades ago, but the Hobbesian mayhem of...
Post
London’s Postmodern Riots
As a former resident of Winchmore Hill I am well familiar the surrounding areas of north London—Wood Green, Ponders End, Enfield…—affected by three successive nights of rioting and looting which has now spread to other parts of the capital. Burglaries, car thefts and vandalism started being ...
Post
Who’s Really Downgrading America?
The decision by Standard & Poor's to strip the United States of its AAA credit rating, for the first time, has triggered a barrage of catcalls against the umpire from the press box and Obamaites. S&P, we are reminded, was giving A ratings to banks like Lehman Brothers, whose books ...
Post
The Lesson for Democrats: Any Republican Will Do
He blew it. Two days before the United States was officially set to default on its debts on August 2, President Barack Obama had the Republicans where he wanted them. All he had to do was announce that he’d trudged the last half mile towards a deal, but that there is no pleasing fanatics...
Post
Strange Doings
Awhile back the folks out in Seattle got in a dudgeon when they learned that their county, King, was named after William R.D. King, who was elected Vice-President in 1852. They wanted the world to know that the county was ever after to be considered as named for The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King,...
Post
Fiscal Hawks vs. Security Hawks
The Republican Party is a stool that stands on three legs: social conservatives, economic conservatives and foreign policy conservatives. Yet since Ronald Reagan departed and George W. Bush arrived, that coalition has been under a growing strain that may yet pull it apart and redefine what conservatism means in 21st century America. Is a...
Post
Democracy at Work (for Better or Worse)
A little perspective on the debt-ceiling fracas might not be amiss. And so… Whoever said it first spoke a mouthful: Rome wasn’t built in a day. To which I would add: congressmen didn’t build it either. Members of Congress bicker, bellow and throw nails under each other’s pickup tires seemingly trying to block meaningful...
Post
Turn on the Radio
Paul Youngblood and I will be on the air at 3-5 CDT today, chatting amiably about Syria and government-funded contraception–and anything else that comes up. Please call in and save me from Rockford’s rabid welfare dependents who call up screaming insults. [Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Comments To post a comment,...
Post
Bernard Mandeville
Bernard Mandeville was a Dutch physician (b. 1670 in Rotterdam), who moved to England, apparently to learn the language. In 1704 he published a poem of doggerel couplets, The Grumbling Hive, which he included in his 1714 book, The Fable of the Bees, Or, Private Vices, Public Benefits. It is one of those rare books whose title...
Post
Secure of Private Rights
“For who can be secure of private right, If sovereign sway may be dissolved by might?” —John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel Dryden’s question, posed more than 300 years ago, supposes a just distinction but also a connection between one kind of rights, which he calls “private,” and another, “sovereign sway,” or legitimate public order. The...
Post
The Tyranny of Democratic Politics
In his classic history of the Lombard Communes—the finally doomed medieval republics of Northern Italy—W.F. Butler suggests that the creative and individualistic nature of the Italian people favored a rich cultural life over a stable political one. This could explain why modern Italy, historically a politically dysfunctional country, is nevertheless a civilized and delightful one. ...
Post
Stand Like a Man
In June, Brigadier General Loretta Reynolds, USMC, became the first woman to take command of the Corps’s legendary recruit depot, Parris Island. “Lori” is a feminist’s dream. In March 2010, she became the first Woman Marine to hold command in a combat zone, when she served in Afghanistan as commander of Headquarters Group, First Marine...
Post
Ron Sims
People call me up and say they want to beat me to a pulp. I am, they tell me, a lowlife muckraker, and obviously a racist to boot. Some of my closest friends express doubts about my sanity. An apparently well-subscribed website appears to be devoted to my downfall and calls for my books to...
Post
Are We Still Entitled to Some Privacy?
More often than not, current events offer an opportunity for meditation. This is the case today: The friends of a politician turned international financier, now to be tried for rape, have rallied round him, claiming his privacy has been invaded. Though in this case the claim is downright preposterous, by appealing to the right to...
Post
Unsolved Mysteries
I have always been amazed at the sub-intellectual process by which liberals all know at almost the same time and in the same form what they are supposed to think. It is amazing. Of course, it has nothing to do with ideas or learning—it has to do entirely with attitude, fashion, and presenting oneself as...
Post
Tom Roeser, R.I.P.
Tom Roeser was perhaps Thomas to his parents and teachers and those who never met him. But for those of us fortunate enough to have glided within his ambit—even for a few moments—he was “Tom.” There was no pretense about him. There was no standing at one or two removes from him. He was warm...
Post
Modernists Amuck
The Tree of Life Produced by Cottonwood Pictures and River Road Entertainment Written and directed by Terrence Malick Distributed by Fox Searchlight Entertainment Midnight in Paris Produced by Letty Aronson Written and directed by Woody Allen Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics Evelyn Waugh once remarked that, while reading Ulysses, one could watch James Joyce...
Post
Serial Killer
The New York Times, in a 2,128-word obituary (nearly three times the length of this article), fondly recalled Jack Kevorkian as “A Doctor Who Helped End Lives.” Kevorkian, 83, the Michigan pathologist turned assisted-suicide activist, died in a hospital, a more dignified locale than the 1960’s-era Volkswagen microbus where he uncorked the Thanatron, his suicide...
Post
White Like Me
Few men in America are as reviled by the liberal establishment as Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), he is “a courtly presenter of ideas that most would consider crudely white supremacist.” Keep in mind that the SPLC is an organization that cites Thomas Fleming, editor of...
Post
Archduke Otto—The Smears
I am grateful to Dr. Trikovic for his reply to my response to his article defaming Archduke Otto since he thereby proves my case entirely. Not one of the challenges to his sources is he able to gainsay or rebut. The most he can do is claim some sort of generalised misinterpretation of his position. There is but...
Post
China’s Future: Ascendency or Fragmentation?
As the American Empire declines, many see the People’s Republic of China, with its dynamic economy and powerful military, surpassing the United States and emerging as the new world power. The reality is more complex, and China’s future more uncertain. According to one set of statistics, China has seen impressive economic growth as a result...
Post
The Enchanted Orchard
I moved to the northern reaches of California’s Sonoma County, known as the Russian River, in 2008 and eventually settled in a house, built in 1930, in the midst of an ancient orchard. Peaches, pears, plums, persimmons, walnuts, grapes, apples, figs—an incredible cornucopia, which gave without prompting, drew me to this enchanted orchard in a...
Post
Charities Off the Dole
As of June 1, residents of the Land of Lincoln are free to enter into civil unions, which allow same-sex couples to enjoy the benefits, protections, and responsibilities under Illinois law that are granted to spouses. According to the richly appointed homosexual-rights movement that lavished funds and exerted pressure upon the politicians who passed the...
Post
Peace With Zulus
Like most literate Brits of my generation, I grew up immersed in the book 1066 and All That, the brilliant parody of historical writing published in 1930 by W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman. Among the large chunks of the book I can still recite verbatim is the catalogue of Victorian colonial wars, which mimics with...
Post
Anglo-Saxon Reality
Some poems in Celtic languages are older, but the earliest sizable body of vernacular literature in Europe is the Old English, dating, by liberal estimation, from the seventh century to the twelfth. It is of very high quality, especially the verse. Altogether, these heroic monologues, Bible paraphrases, riddles, battle accounts, saints’ lives, prayers, religious allegories,...
Post
James Arness
Early in June, James Arness died. Everyone thinks of him as Matt Dillon, the brave and incorruptible town marshal of Dodge City in the television series Gunsmoke. I think of him as the father of one of my childhood friends and as one of the last actors in Hollywood to have fought in World War...
Post
Reviving the West: The Case for Europe
In the early years of the current century, confident predictions about the inevitable rise of Europe to a position of world power and influence filled the air over the Atlantic. The recent travails of the European Union have undermined that confidence. The apparent and impending economic collapse of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and...