The standard opinion has it that, ever since they set foot on the new continent, the English settlers felt they were one people, Englishmen united by their common language, common origins, common enemies, so that it was only natural that their independence, once achieved, should lead them to the framing of one new national body,...
You know within a few moments of meeting him whether a “celebrity” is going to be a regular guy. It’s not just the winning smile, or his willingness to pose for endless selfies; it is whether or not he’s matured around a recognizable value system, the presence or otherwise of a due sense of modesty...
No one excels at polemics as the French do, save for the English at certain periods of their history (the 17th and 18th centuries, for example), and Le suicide français is a masterly specimen of the genre by Éric Zemmour, the author of many books of fiction and nonfiction and a columnist for Le Figaro. ...
I’ve been watching, spellbound, a German documentary released in the wake of the Nazi occupation of the Sudetenland. It’s entitled Sudeten Deutschland kehrt heim (“German Sudetes Come Home”), and I’m going to gloss over the debating point – delicious, though I trust a trifle too obvious for my discerning readers’ taste – of this being...
According to the latest available figures, no fewer than two million Iraqis, many of them Christians, have been chased out of their homes by the militiamen of the Islamic State, and now their tragic plight may fall into oblivion amid the indifference of international public opinion, especially in the West. But there are men who...
The flyleaf of this book sports a quote (“One finally gets the musical whole of Dostoevsky’s original”) from an enthusiastic notice in the New York Times Book Review of a new translation of The Brothers Karamazov, which the Pevear-Volokh onsky tandem unleashed upon the English-speaking world a quarter of a century ago. As the author...
A successful War of Independence established 13 free and independent states in North America in 1783. This was followed, unfortunately for us, by the French Revolution and then by the 19th century, preeminently a time of violent government centralization. Subsequent events, as well as nationalist emotion and propaganda, have seriously damaged our ability to see...
Philip Larkin, the poet-librarian of Hull University, died December 2, 1985, over 29 years ago. In the years since Andrew Motion published the first biography (1993), and Anthony Thwaite published both the first complete edition of the poems (1989) and the first collection of letters (1992), a small industry has grown up devoted to the...
American Sniper Produced and distributed by Warner Brothers Screenplay by Jason Hall Directed by Clint Eastwood We’re told that during his later career director John Huston frequently preferred reading a good newspaper while his actors performed a scene before the camera. He believed in leaving them to their own devices, among which he trusted thespian...
The late Jean-François Revel wrote a once-famous book with the title Comment les démocraties finissent. Revel was not a stupid man, and I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon “we tired the sun with talking,” but as a political philosopher, he was a prisoner of the leftist ideology that treats terms like equality and democracy as substantial...
The week after the murdering scum of ISIS beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya—their crime was being Christian—the European Commission opened an investigation of Christian schools in Britain for allegedly “discriminating” against nonreligious teachers. In other words, the unelected bureaucrats of Brussels want to force Christian schools to stop giving preference to religious staff while...
American Sniper has generated more commentary, both scathingly critical and laudatory, than any film in recent memory. The story of “America’s deadliest sniper,” Texas-born and -bred Navy SEAL Chris Kyle (credited with more than 160 “confirmed” kills), himself shot down in 2013 by a disturbed war veteran he was trying to help, has become a...
In mid-February, U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen issued an injunction enjoining the Obama administration from implementing the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program (DAPA). Under DAPA, over four million illegal aliens present in the United States would be shielded from deportation and would be eligible to receive work permits,...
I thank Robert Charron for his kind words (“Wealth Transfer,” Polemics & Exchanges, February), most welcome in the rather discouraging intellectual environment of France. I’m sorry to have given the impression I was falling for the Robin Hood fallacy. The main idea I was trying to convey is that the typical democratic politician (with notable...
I pretty much devoured the “Minority Cultures” issue (February) in one sitting. Every issue is stellar, but the great thing I find again and again is that reading all these fine writers is like loving so many different works of a particular composer that it is hard to make up one’s mind as to which...
On April 1, 1815, Otto Eduard Leo pold von Bismarck was born on the family estate at Schönhausen near Berlin, in what used to be Prussia. He came into this world at the end of a quarter-century of pan-European crisis, which started with the French Revolution and ended with Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. Bismarck’s bicentennial...
This year marks the 150th anniversary of Appomattox. In recent times, academics studying the Civil War have reached a striking degree of consensus about how that war should be understood, and its practical implications today. Sadly, that consensus has one enormous omission. Overwhelmingly, scholars agree that the war was about the defense and preservation of...
If a Muslim prays in a mosque and nobody sees her, does Allah still hear her prayers? That question might seem more urgent than rhetorical for a certain Bosnian immigrant after Dr. Arshad Shaikh, the president of the Muslim Association of Greater Rockford (MAGR), told the Rockford Register Star on February 9 that “It would...
F flag, n.—A piece of cloth of no particular value or interest, that, when it comes to symbolize a nation, regardless of that body’s importance, significance, affluence, or influence, takes on uncommon and indeed unnecessary grandeur and symbolism; in American terms, the “Stars and Bars,” the addressing of which requires from military personnel a salute...
I’ve been a libertarian activist since the age of 16 or so—long before the term libertarian became known and widely used by the general public. Indeed, when I announced my conversion to parents, friends, and associates I distinctly recall a number of them saying something to the effect of “Gee, I didn’t know the librarians...
G.K. Chesterton had a low opinion of his own abilities as a novelist. “[M]y real judgment of my own work,” he confessed, “is that I have spoilt a number of jolly good ideas in my time”: I think The Napoleon of Notting Hill was a book very well worth writing; but I am not sure...
Sometimes I wonder why I spend the lonely night dreaming of a song, but mostly I don’t. Mostly I don’t, because the nightingale doesn’t tell his fairy tale unless he hopped a ride on the Cunard or the White Star Line. No, the real problem is what does happen every day or night, and Jon...
Those of us blinded by white privilege are fortunate to live in this enlightened age. Without PCs, Facebook, Twitter and publications like Salon.com, we’d never know how bad we are. We are thus instructed by this hysterical tweet from Salon’s Twitter feed on March 27: “If you’re white, you’re racist and don’t realize it. http://slnm.us/PtdXyAA”....
In what has been called the “Catholic moment” in America, in the late 1940s and 1950s, Catholics were admonished from pulpits to “live the faith” and “set an example” for others. Public lives were to reflect moral beliefs. Christians were to avoid those “living in sin.” Christians who operated motels and hotels did not rent...
The forces that do not want a U.S. nuclear deal with Iran, nor any U.S. detente with Iran, are impressive. Among them are the Israelis and their powerful lobby AIPAC, the Saudis and their Sunni allies on the Persian Gulf, a near unanimity of Republicans and a plurality of Democrats in Congress. Is there a...
American aircraft went into action against Islamic State positions in Tikrit on March 25 in direct support of a stalled Iraqi offensive. The following day General Lloyd Austin, top commander in the Middle East, told Congress that he would like his forces to protect the Syrian “moderate” rebels who are currently trained and armed by...
“The truly apocalyptic view of the world,” wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein, “is that things do not repeat themselves. It is not absurd to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately...
Cinematically, as well as politically, we are sort of in a John Wayne moment: which is where Ted Cruz comes in. Things in this town of ours ain’t a-going real good right now. Everything, in fact, seems to be falling apart, save in the eyes of folk who wish America would either drop into the...
Though “Bibi” Netanyahu won re-election last week, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will still look into whether the State Department financed a clandestine effort to defeat him. Reportedly, State funneled $350,000 to an American NGO called OneVoice, which has an Israeli subsidiary, Victory 15, that collaborated with U.S. operatives to bring Bibi down. If...
Srdja Trifkovic discusses Senate probe of “anti-Netanyahu” U.S. Government funds on RT International. In the final few days before the general election in Israel, it was announced that a bipartisan U.S. Senate committee with subpoena powers was investigating the possibility that the Obama administration has aided efforts to defeat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The investigation...
In November 1956, President Eisenhower, enraged he had not been forewarned of their invasion of Egypt, ordered the British, French and Israelis to get out of Suez and Sinai. They did as told. How far we have fallen from the America of Ike and John Foster Dulles has been on painful display this March. An...
The recent Israeli Knesset elections surprised the world by returning Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party to power. The resounding win put Netanyahu on the path to becoming the longest serving PM in Israeli history and caused some consternation and disappointment both in the White House and Brussels. There are two main reasons for Bibi’s...
Following the horrendous terrorist attack in Tunis, it is inevitable that I am reminded of my week-long Chronicles assignment to Tunisia in September 2012. In view of the carnage that left 20 Western tourists dead on March 18, it is worth revisiting my notes posted in the immediate aftermath of that trip. “I covered some...
Increasingly I find myself in the position of the dissident in an old Soviet joke, protesting against the regime on a street corner by handing out leaflets. A passerby takes one, sees that it’s a blank sheet of paper, and asks why there are no words. “Who needs words?” counters the protester. “Isn’t it all...
With Hillary Clinton scrambling to explain her missing emails, much of America is wailing, “Please don’t make us watch this movie again!” Why, then, would the Republican Party, with a chance to sweep it all in 2016, want to return us to the nightmare days of George W., which caused America to rise up and...
Maybe the question is, who’d want a degree from a university whose administration, on learning of a frat-boy incident on a bus, behaves as though God had personally dispatched the whole academic bureaucracy to wreak revenge. “P-o-o-o-o-or Okies,” as we Texas Longhorns used to chant from the Cotton Bowl stands. I mean, what else do...
In an interview for the German news magazine Zuerst! (April 2015) Srdja Trifkovic considers the significance of Otto von Bismarck’s legacy, 200 years after his birth. Dr. Trifkovic, how would Bismarck react if he could see today’s map of Europe? Trifkovic: He would be initially shocked that the German eastern border now runs along the...
As the European Coal and Steel Community of Jean Monnet evolved into the EU, we were told a “United States of Europe” was at hand, modeled on the USA. And other countries and continents will inevitably follow Europe’s example. There will be a North American Union of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and a Latin...
For now, several suspects from the Caucasus have been arrested. Let us note that all of the political murder victims of recent years—Markelov, Politkovskaya, and Nemtsov have been somehow or other tied to the Caucasus region. Remember, it was Nemtsov who lobbied Denmark not to extradite the Chechen criminal Ahmed Zakayev. Later he cowardly denied...
Excerpts from Srdja Trifkovic’s latest interview with Mike Church on Sirius XM Satellite Radio ST: The decision-makers in the Western capitals do not know history and they do not care about it. They believe that they operate in a totally new environment in which the examples of the past are not relevant to the actions...
Even a seasoned cynic sometimes gasps in disbelief. “President Putin misinterprets much of what the U.S. is doing or trying to do,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told a press conference in Geneva on March 2. “We are not involved in ‘numerous color revolutions’ as he asserts. In the case of Ukraine, such assumptions...
Last Wednesday I wrote in this space that Chechnya’s strongman Ramzan Kadyrov put pay to my own feeble attempts at black humor when he said there was “not the slightest doubt” that the assassination of Nemtsov had been the work of the Western secret services. Since then the joke has grown even funnier – so...
America, we have a problem. In the blood-soaked chaotic Middle East, with few exceptions like the Kurds, our friends either can’t or won’t fight. The Free Syrian Army folded. The U.S.-armed Hazm force in Syria has just collapsed after being routed by the al-Nusra Front. The Iraqi army we trained and equipped fled Mosul and...
I used to have a test for when an immigrant is truly Americanized (if such a thing is possible these days): When he starts liking football as much or more than soccer. I reached that point almost five years ago, during the excruciatingly boring 2010 World Cup. However, I found this test to be woefully...
Only government thinks it can move the sun across the sky. Like me, you may be suffering from “jet lag” today because of the “lost” hour yesterday when most of the country – excepting only the sensible states of Arizona and Hawaii – switched to Daylight Savings Time. (Excuse me, now it’s spelled “Hawai’i.” We...
A generation arose and took its place in the life of Russia, which did witness Boris Nemtsov as a political heavyweight. The governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, vice-premier, who was seen as an heir to Yeltsin, breathtaking ascension in his political career, and an ability to make country-wide policy—all this left Boris Nemtsov together...
Srdja Trifkovic’s latest RT interview The U.S. perceives the Ukrainian crisis as an opportunity to damage Russia and bring Ukraine into NATO, says Srdja Trifkovic, Foreign Affairs Editor of Chronicles Magazine. He says a decision to ship lethal weapons to the Kiev regime has already been made. RT: Despite an improving situation in Ukraine, we...
Hard as it is to believe, a claim has oozed out of the leftist brain pan that may be more embarrassingly idiotic than the claim that Islamic fanatics needs jobs and midnight basketball to extinguish the burning desire to chop off heads. Mother Jones, a conveyor belt for crackpot leftist theories, says eating three meals...
Eric Holder’s Justice Department has completed its investigation into whether Ferguson cop Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown in cold blood for racist reasons when he shot the black teenager last August. What did the massive six-month FBI investigation discover? According to the Washington Post, “after canvassing more than 300 homes and reviewing physical, ballistic, forensic,...