These two massive volumes—the first published originally in 1988, the second now joining it with much fanfare—chronicle the period during which T.S. Eliot developed from the scion of a prosperous Midwestern family to the poet of The Waste Land and “Prufrock,” but also to a banker and one-man editorial staff of a fledgling new journal...
Year: 2013
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In God We Fail
The recent flood of secession petitions in the wake of the re-election of President Barack Obama has raised secession to something more than the curiosity or esoteric joke that it has been heretofore. In the 1990’s an occasional newspaper article appeared about the League of the South or the Vermont independence movement, treating them as...
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Surviving the Budget Crisis
My dear Hobson, The bleak tone of your email has distressed me. You report waking on the morning of November 7 convinced that a vast majority of politicians—Republicans and Democrats—are certifiable lunatics. According to your somewhat incoherent letter—were you inebriated, or are all those sentence fragments and dangling prepositions the dismal product of your recently...
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The Rise and Death of the Disinformation Media
Americans can now pick from a welter of news outlets on the internet and from such independent sources as this magazine. Yet most Americans still get their news from the usual disinformation sources: the major newspapers and broadcast and cable TV. This became clear to me in 2012. After resisting for decades, in July 2012...
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Home Truths on Ecology
The relationship between Greens and Conservatives in England is notoriously fractious. Many conservatives see Greens as sub-Marxist semibeatniks, and many Greens see conservatives as military-industrial Morlocks. Yet etymology alone suggests that conservatism and conservationism should shade into each other, just as blue blends into green and back again in the color spectrum. And even if...
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Getting the Scoop
“All we want are the facts, ma’am.” —Sgt. Joe Friday Not long ago I was sorting through old papers for disposal. I came across a clipping saved for some forgotten reason. On the reverse was this headline: “NAACP Chief Says More Assistance Needed.” This headline might have appeared in my hometown paper today (though I...
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The Press: Hidden Persuasion or Sign of the Times?
Modern Western societies are commonly called industrial or democratic societies. They might just as well be named mass-communication societies, for the average citizen is supposed to be informed about what goes on in and around the city whose welfare and leadership he is supposed to assume. As the medium through which comes the data about...
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Frost/Nixon
David Frost is a schizophrenic. His creative personality bestrides the Atlantic ocean. When he’s at home in England, Sir David, as he’s known, fronts daytime-television panels and gives splendid summer parties at the country home he shares with his wife, Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard. For many years, he also hosted a Sunday-morning interview hour in which,...
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Democracy and the Golden Mean
A naive visitor arriving in the United States from abroad might conclude from the popular emphasis on “moderation” in contemporary American political discourse that Americans live under a government that represents a moderate theory of the appropriate scope and power of the state and harbors only modest political ambitions. If he happens to be a...
Issue
March 2013
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The New Cinderella
The salient difference between Cinderella and her sisters, unfortunately for all you defenders and upholders of the Protestant work ethic out there, is not that she eats her bread in the sweat of her brow while they eat sweetmeats, try on varicolored gowns, and loaf about. The salient difference between them is that Cinderella is...
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Neocons in the Dock
The nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense has sparked a firestorm of opposition from Israel’s fifth column in the United States. It is a useful example of just how the Jewish state’s parasitic relationship with America works. Israel cannot stand alone: She is a European colony in the midst of an Arab sea...
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The (Mis)Information Economy
From digital broadcasts that allow TV stations to report more quickly from the scene of breaking news, to websites that can distribute information to tens of thousands of readers in mere seconds, to Facebook and Twitter and other social media that provide a “crowdsourcing” element, quickly able to detect and correct mistakes, the rise of...
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Second-Time Charms
Second-term U.S. presidents tend to focus more on world affairs than on domestic issues, for good or for ill. In January 1957, Dwight Eisenhower authorized the commitment of U.S. forces “to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence” of any nation that requested help against communist aggression. Ronald Reagan, after his reelection in...
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Ugly Realities
I was thrilled to see that Aaron D. Wolf was poised to address the “ugly reality” behind the murder-suicide perpetrated by Kansas City Chiefs player Jovan Belcher (“Handgun Culture, Cultural Revolutions, January). Unfortunately, instead of confronting the real problem, Mr. Wolf went on a puritanical tirade against cohabitation. The “ugly reality” that the mainstream media...
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Beautygate!
Here’s an opinion that might as well be a fact of life: Men of all ages find beauty queens to be attractive. Yes, I know, it’s quite a newsflash. Remember, you read it here first. Yet judging by the media’s reaction when longtime sports play-by-play man Brent Musburger paid a compliment to Katherine Webb, the...
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Liberty, Justice, and Abortion For All
Last June, the Supreme Court decided that the ObamaCare individual mandate passed constitutional muster under Congress’s taxing power. It left undecided a host of other issues that are now being litigated in the lower courts. Under the HHS mandate that followed ObamaCare, employers with 50 or more full-time employees must offer health-insurance coverage for sterilization...
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A Debt-Free Country?
There “does not exist an engine so corruptive,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1821, “of the government and so demoralizing of the nation as a public debt. It will bring on us more ruin at home than all the enemies from abroad . . . ” Jefferson left Paris in 1790 three years before the French...
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Fiscal Miffed
The House of Representatives, at 10:57 p.m. on January 1, passed the Fiscal Cliff bill, with Republicans voting 2 to 1 against it. Speaker Boehner’s negotiations with President Obama had been a disaster. The President’s only concession was his definition of rich, which he raised from $200,000–$250,000 per year to $400,000–$450,000. Other than that, nothing—no...
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Granny and Jesus
Granny had been brought up in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and went to church once every two or three years, usually on Mother’s Day, hoping my father would join her and learn to appreciate her innumerable virtues. He never went. On Sunday mornings, he worshiped God at the Bobby Jones Golf Course—no exceptions. ...
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That Hideous Absolutism
To the modern mind, religion and magic are related. Both are based on superstition, and both have been proved false by science. C.S. Lewis thought otherwise: Magic is more closely related to science. Both function as alternatives to religion, both lack skepticism, and, most importantly, both desire to control the world. Science, not religion, is...
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Facts and Opinions
“I think it’s been very hard for Speaker Boehner and Republican Leader McConnell to accept the fact that taxes on the wealthiest Americans should go up a little bit, as part of an overall deficit reduction package.” This haplessly phrased bit of Obamaspeak is one out of many illustrations of a confusion between fact and...
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No Left-Wing Christians
Does the Left-Wing Christian really exist? I think not, if we mean someone who equates leftism with Christianity. People like Garry Wills are not now and probably have never been Christian in any meaningful sense of the term. They simply put a veneer of Christian imagery on the banalities they have picked up from...
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Back to the Stone Age III: Natural Men C—Women and Men
I said at the beginning that man is a mammalian species. From this one simple fact flow many important consequences for the human race. As the word “mammal” indicates, our females nurse their young, which requires diversification of the roles played by males and females, but even those words males and females tell us...
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The Last Thing on Anyone’s Mind
In a tiny hamlet next to where I live, high up in the Swiss Alps, two gay friends of mine have set up house, and a beautiful old chalet it is. One, a German, is straight out of central casting of a Panzer commander; the other, an Englishman, more P.G. Wodehouse than John Bull. Both...
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Back to the Stone Age III: Natural Men A
I have been arguing for decades that any conservative point of view, to be usable or even defensible, has to be grounded in an understanding of human nature derived from observation of man’s nature and history. In an age where a Church may dictate morality, this understanding may be less necessary, though it must...
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So Much for Democracy
Americans seem to think that they are citizens of a self-governing democracy. Actually, democratic self-government is not possible in a regime where immense wealth and influence are concentrated in a few hands an unelected, irresponsible, and heavily biased mass media control public discourse the political process is dominated by advertising men the population is...
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The Drone of Conquest
There has been considerable discussion lately about the federal government’s potential use of the U.S. Army against American citizen civilians. It might be worth a moment to pause and remember February 17, 1865. On that winter day, the U.S. Army, with malice aforethought, robbed, raped, and burned out the white and black people of the...
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Trifkovic, Fleming, & Chronicles on Trial at The Hague
Last week I testified, for the third time in a decade, before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague. I appeared as a defense witness in the trial of Radovan Karadzic. Just like on the occasion of my previous testimony, the prosecutor paid scant attention to the substance of my statements. He...
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A Godly Man in an Ungodly Age
“To govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.” With those brave, wise, simple words,...
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Pope Benedict XVI: A Brief Reflection
I have not had the time or the inclination to wade through the commentary on Pope Benedict’s unexpected resignation, but I assume that much of it is angry, vituperative, and dismissive, because such commentary is one of the hallmarks of our degraded age. I wanted instead to offer a brief note of gratitude for Benedict’s service as...
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More Fallacies
Dubious ideas that are taken for granted as true in American public discourse: Government and Big Business are enemies. The U.S. practices a free-trade policy. Wars are bad except those carried out by the U.S. because our intentions are always benevolent. It is good that our daughters now have equality with our sons in the...
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A Little Education
Wife’s away, and so, as befits children and bachelors, I sit at the breakfast table reading labels. Here in Europe, labels are quite entertaining for someone with a semantic cast of mind, as many are printed in all the languages of the Community states, plus a few odd ones, just in case some of these...
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Euro Irreversible?
The international media have for some time depicted Finland as the black sheep of the European Union because of her reluctance to pay for other member countries’ debt and thus help to save the eurozone from its present crisis. This impression was reinforced by recent statements made by senior government officials in Finland, including foreign...
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Back to the Catacombs
The small neo-Gothic chapel in the confines of St. John’s cemetery in the New York City borough of Queens was filling up quickly on that brisk autumn Sunday. The cemetery itself is something of a New York landmark—a resting place for the heroes and villains of its turbulent past. The modest tombstones of firefighters killed...
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Mercy Is Courage
The Hobbit Produced by New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Wingnut Films Directed by Peter Jackson Written by Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens Distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures For this month’s column, I’ve enlisted my son Liam to write the review, since he knows far more than I do about J.R.R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson’s film...
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The Sickness Unto Death
George Santayana’s dictum—“Those who forget the past . . . ”—has long since become one of those clichés beloved of high-school history teachers, who never tire of repeating it to their indifferent charges. But Santayana would surely have agreed that forgetting is sometimes necessary. To dwell obsessively on the past, as any spurned lover knows,...
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I Get No Kick From Sham Pain
“Who reads?” That’s what I’ve heard more than once from an “English professor” who spends a lot of time online. Well uhuh, I say, sounding rather like Butt-head, I uh, um you know, read stuff, but he listens not to me. And I admit that I read less than I used to. On the other...
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Big Brother’s Big Plans
Some people have no sense of humor. In the summer of 1998, Eric Rudolph, bomber of two abortion clinics, a lesbian bar, and the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics, was on the run from the law in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Scores of FBI agents and other officials, trailed by reporters and television crews,...
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The United States of Surveillance
There’s a monster on the loose It’s got our heads in a noose And it just sits there—watching. —Steppenwolf (the rock group) Big Brother is watching you; he’s also listening, sniffing, recording, and analyzing. His private little brothers—everyone from major corporations to your doctor and your local grocer—are also snooping on...
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Institutionalizing Compassion
Writing in the mid-1980’s, Forrest McDonald observed that America’s founders would have recognized their handiwork as late as the early 1960’s, but not after. Despite technological changes, the Civil War, the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and two world wars, the governments most Americans dealt with were state and local. Except for the draft board...
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Death Becomes Him
When 20-year-old Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered 26 people, most of them children, after killing his own mother at home, the nation went into one of its periodic orgies of recrimination—mostly directed at the National Rifle Association, which had to shut down its Facebook and Twitter accounts thanks to the...
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We Happy Few
I am a longtime subscriber and have always enjoyed your happy-warrior approach to our absurd political and social situation. However, I must commend you all for the November (“The Failure of Democracy”) and December (“Classical Liberalism: Enemy of Christianity”) issues. The articles on democracy and liberalism were absolutely brilliant. They were all insightful, extremely well...
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Duking It Out
Bravo to Roger D. McGrath for his perceptive defense of John Wayne against liberal snipers (“John Wayne and World War II,” Sins of Omission, December). As Sergeant Stryker said to Pfc. Benny Ragazzi after he called up a Sherman tank to blast a Japanese pillbox in Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), “Ya did all right.”...
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Thoroughly Modern Millies
So I spurred my mule, and I went riding on down the road Minding my own business, ’n’ I wasn’t bothering a soul. So finally I rode into town, And I seed the man standing at the window, pulling off his clothes. Every time he’d pull off a piece, he threw it out the window....
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Movie Czar
The latest school massacre has all the do-gooders crying for more gun control, yet few have touched upon the blood-splattering, shoot-’em-up electronic games that the unhinged nerd who murdered 27 people in Newtown, Connecticut, played. His favorite was Call of Duty, a first-person-shooter game where participants use assault rifles, machine guns, and other weapons to...
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Managing the Quagmire
Twenty years ago Leon Hadar published Quagmire: America in the Middle East, an eloquent plea for U.S. disengagement from the region. He warned that American leaders had neither the knowledge nor the power to manage long-standing disputes involving faraway people of whom we know little. Attempts at meddling, he wrote, invariably made the various actors...
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Robert Bork, R.I.P.
I met Judge Robert Bork once, in the summer of 1989, when I was interning at Accuracy in Media. I was working on a feature story for the Washington Inquirer, AIM’s weekly newspaper, about the Smithsonian Institution’s use of tax dollars to fund the performance of Santeria and Palo Mayombe rituals on the Mall in...
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The Patton You Didn’t Know
Thanks to the movie, most Americans are familiar with George Patton—the crusty, outspoken, and brilliantly aggressive general of World War II fame. Yet few know of his exploits as a young officer. There is nothing about Patton’s early career in any of our standard history textbooks, an omission that is unfortunate. At one time we...
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Gay Marriage in the Dock
In the 2012 election, same-sex marriage made gains at the ballot box for the first time—however narrowly—in all four states where “marriage equality” was presented to the voters for decision. Have the American people been successfully fooled? Maybe the more germane question is, Are large numbers of the American people self-deceived about homosexuality? We must...