James Webb, a genuine war hero and author of a worthy book (Fields of Fire) draws no interest as a Presidential candidate, but numerous Republicans who have never been anything but parasites and cannot even read, much less write a good book, are considered promising statesmen. I am told we must be a multicultural country....
Year: 2015
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Stumbling to War With Russia?
Turkey’s decision to shoot down a Russian warplane was a provocative and portentous act. That Sukhoi Su-24, which the Turks say intruded into their air space, crashed and burned—in Syria. One of the Russian pilots was executed while parachuting to safety. A Russian rescue helicopter was destroyed by rebels using a U.S. TOW missile. A...
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Russian Jet Down: Erdogan’s Reckless Gamble
In his latest RT interview Dr. Trifkovic considers the ramifications of Turkey shooting down a Russian war plane over northern Syria on November 24. ? RT: For more reaction let’s go to Srdja Trifkovic, foreign affairs editor at Chronicles Magazine. Turkey says it’s taking a tougher stand against Islamic State, and yet it downs a jet of...
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Will Europe Man Up?
If the purpose of terrorism is to terrify, the Islamic State had an extraordinary week. Brussels, capital of the EU and command post of mighty NATO, is still in panic and lockdown. “In Brussels, fear of attack lingers” was Monday’s headline over the Washington Post‘s top story, which read: “Not since Boston came to a...
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Strangers in a Strange Land
Regarding my last post on working class support for Trump, a Breitbart report on a Reuters poll tells us something important about America’s state of mind: According to the Reuters survey, 58 percent Americans say they “don’t identify with what America has become.” While Republicans and Independents are the most likely to agree with this...
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The End of Obamaworld
In denouncing Republicans as “scared of widows and orphans,” and castigating those who prefer Christian refugees to Muslims coming to America, Barack Obama has come off as petulant and unpresidential. Clearly, he is upset. And with good reason. He grossly, transparently underestimated the ability of ISIS, the “JV” team, to strike outside the caliphate into...
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The Wall Street Journal States the Obvious on Working Class Whites
In noting that 55% of Donald Trump’s supporters are working class whites, the Wall Street Journal states the obvious: Although the Trump phenomenon has surprised nearly everyone, it becomes intelligible against the backdrop of recent American history. For decades, white working-class men have been the most volatile element in the American electorate. Changes in the...
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Terrorist Attacks: Causes and Implications
In his latest RT interview Dr. Trifkovic considers the state of play following the announcement by Russia’s FSB security agency that the plane crash over Sinai was a terrorist attack. RT: Srdja Trifkovic, foreign affairs editor at Chronicles magazine, is in Belgrade . . . What are you thoughts on the new information about the plane...
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The Paris Terrorist Attacks: Eurocrats in Denial
In the wake of the bloody terrorist attacks in Paris, French President Francois Hollande has asked for extended emergency powers and has promised an intensified assault on Islamic State in Syria. Hollande has further called on the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution on combating terrorism as a basis for forming a “unified” multi-national...
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In Search of a New Free-World Leader
Is Vladimir Putin the new leader of the free world? All we currently know is that the job seems open, and that Putin has seemingly sent in his resume, showing openness to the idea of an anti-Islamic State alliance with British Prime Minister David Cameron. For contrast, see Barack Obama’s demeanor while talking to the...
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Is Putin Our Ally in Syria?
Among the presidential candidates of the Republican Party and their foreign policy leaders on Capitol Hill the cry is almost universal: Barack Obama has no strategy for winning the war on ISIS. This criticism, however, sounds strange coming from a party that controls Congress but has yet to devise its own strategy, or even to...
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Islam in the House of Yes
Liberalism, as the recent attacks on La Ville Lumière have shown, cannot provide the basis for a sustainable society. By liberalism, I do not mean Democrats versus Republicans, or the ideology of invite the world versus that of bomb the world. I mean all of it together. There must be some basis for saying no...
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No, They Aren’t French
I have seen news reports stating that French authorities are concerned about the hundreds of French Islamists who have gone to Syria to fight for ISIS and have returned to France. This is misleading. Such people are not French, whatever their citizenship may be. They are unassimilated Moslem immigrants, or the descendants of unassimilated Moslem...
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Immigrant Invasion: Der Untergang des Abendlandes
Over 8,000 migrants entered Serbia on November 11 on their way from the Middle East to Western Europe. The item went unreported by the major media because it was not newsworthy. Daily totals may vary, not much, as the Great Invasion of 2015 continues unabated. Millions are on the move, with unknown further multitudes tempted...
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The Republican War—Over War Policy
Rand Paul had his best debate moment Tuesday when he challenged Marco Rubio on his plans to increase defense spending by $1 trillion. “You cannot be a conservative if you’re going to keep promoting new programs you’re not going to pay for,” said Paul. Marco’s retort triggered the loudest cheers of the night: “There are...
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More Maxims of American Life
Silence is unhealthy and un-American. Everybody has a right to talk and play their media as much as they want to, anywhere any time. Every child has the right to a quality education. A college education is the key to a well-paying job. Same-sex couples have the same right to government benefits as everybody else....
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Fraternity Sues Rolling Stone, Author For $25 Million
The fraternity that Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Rolling Stone smeared in their discredited tale about a gang rape at University of Virginia has filed a $25 million lawsuit against them. This is the third lawsuit arising from the yarn. The first two came from three fraternity members and a dean at the college. And we...
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Can Europe Survive This Invasion?
“A modern day mass migration is taking place . . . that could change the face of Europe’s civilization,” warned Hungarian President Viktor Orban. “If that happens, that is irreversible. . . . There is no way back from a multicultural Europe,” said Orban. “If we make a mistake now, it will be forever.” Orban...
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Offside at Mizzou
I tell you, it’s great to be alive and cognizant that the greatest thing going on at the University of Missouri, large-domed citadel of learning and culture, is—you guessed it—football! Truly, the U of M Tigers don’t have such a tiger-ish record this season, just four wins against five losses (with four of those losses...
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TPP’s 5,544-page Flim-Flam
No wonder the Obama regime kept the Trans-Pacific Partnership secret as long as it could. It’s far worse than even its greatest critics imagined: 5,544 pages of bureaucratese that will help only international lawyers and big companies, while slamming small companies and middle-class workers in America. Here’s a sampling of what you’ll need to know...
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Maxims of American Life
What goes up must continue to go up and up. People love us for our good intentions when we tell them to be like us. If a few bad ones resist we can bomb them. We must be right because after every war our enemies want to move to the U.S. Whoever dies with the...
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Nothing to See Here, Move Along
As Steve Sailer says, you aren’t supposed to notice some things—like rising mortality rates for middle aged, working class whites that I discussed last week: A startling new study that shows a big spike in the death rate for a large group of middle-aged whites in the United States was rejected by two prestigious medical journals, the study’s co-author,...
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Dalton Trumbo Had It Coming
“Dalton Trumbo was a socialist, but he loved being rich.” So says Bryan Cranston, who stars in Trumbo, out this week, and plays the screenwriter who went to prison with the Hollywood Ten in the time of Harry Truman. Actually, Trumbo was not a socialist. Bernie Sanders is a socialist. Trumbo was a Stalinist, a...
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Ohioans Just Say No
In some quarters on the right, drug legalization is the cause du jour. These persons see drugs as harmless, or at least less harmful than laws against drug use, and also frequently claim that legalizing drugs will prove politically popular, particularly among younger voters. This Tuesday’s crushing defeat of Ohio’s Issue 3, which would have...
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White Privilege in Action
Mortality rates for middle aged white Americans are rising, as reported by the New York Times: “Something startling is happening to middle-aged white Americans. Unlike every other age group, unlike every other racial and ethnic group, unlike their counterparts in other rich countries, death rates in this group have been rising, not falling. That finding...
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War in Syria? Where Is Speaker Ryan?
“The United States is being sucked into a new Middle East war,” says the New York Times. And the Times has it exactly right. Despite repeated pledges not to put “boots on the ground” in Syria, President Obama is inserting 50 U.S. special ops troops into that country, with more to follow. U.S. A-10 “warthog”...
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All Talk, No Action
By Monday, interestingly enough, the Russian invasion of Syria was receding as a topic of public concern. Apparently there no longer seemed anything explosive in the tidings of Vladimir Putin’s slam-bang entry into that remote theater of conflict. This was notwithstanding those Russian airstrikes against the anti-Assad rebels whom the United States, supposedly, has been...
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Erdogan’s Successful Gamble
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took a gamble after his Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority last June 7: he would call another election, rather than let Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu look for a coalition partner in good faith. Contrary to most preditions, last Sunday the AKP regained its majority with 49%...
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China’s One Child Policy—and Ours
If you’re an old pro-lifer like me, you remember the many battles over China’s one-child policy. Mao actually encouraged large families. He thought population problems would be solved by communist economic planning, a large population would make China stronger—and the 60 million he murdered needed to be replaced. After he died in 1976, his successor,...
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The Worst State
Things are pretty dismal all over the country, but some places are worse than others. Usually, published rankings of American states are compiled by liberals who value such things as high-school and college graduation rates, personal income, internet speed, and the availability of abortion clinics. That’s why Massachusetts and Minnesota commonly come out on top. ...
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America’s Best Friend, R.I.P.
A funeral can sometimes seem like a going out of business sale, an occasion for taking stock, not so much of the deceased as of your friendship with him. It is strange that, presented with such an opportunity, pastors and friends usually do so poor a job of evoking the life of the departed. One...
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Our Special Middle Eastern Friend
As everyone knows, when you cross a camel with a mule, you get a member of the Saudi ruling family. A camel crossed with a snake produces a Qatari ruler, and, finally, a camel that’s made whoopee with a pig conceives a Kuwaiti sultan. Mind you, I’m being a bit rough on these animals, which...
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Sharpening the Swords
On June 25, one day before the U.S. Supreme Court declared that a man can marry a man and a woman can marry a woman, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Louise Melling, the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Miss Melling’s announcement that the ACLU would no longer support the...
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Top of the World, Ma
Black Mass Produced by Cross Creek Pictures Directed by Scott Cooper Screenplay by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, based on the book Black Mass, by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill Distributed by Warner Brothers Ever since The Great Train Robbery flashed on the screen in 1903, Americans have been enthralled by gangster movies. They not...
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Abortion Delusion
Planned Parenthood Dominatrix Cecile Richards sat defiantly before a congressional panel on September 29, making little effort to conceal her disgust at the perfunctory speeches made in front of her. She exuded a fierce confidence that dwarfed the resolve of her Republican opponents, presaging the House’s passage the very next day of a gutted stopgap...
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Who Hates Trump?
Politics is all about hatred. Never mind who you’re voting for: It’s who you’re voting against that really counts. And that’s why any disagreement I may have with Donald Trump’s actual policies is completely irrelevant. Because what really matters is that all the people I really hate—the media, the leadership of both parties, the entire...
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Crescent Moon Over Europe
Jean Raspail, the French novelist and explorer, now 90 and living in a suburb of Paris, must be experiencing the eerie feeling of living inside The Camp of the Saints, his most famous work, as he follows the contemporary news reports from across the Continent. The tens of thousands of Third World migrants are arriving...
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We Asked For It
For almost two decades, or ever since Tony Blair became prime minister, the British have moaned about a lack of opposition in politics. All our politicians “sound the same,” we say—and they do, it’s true. Our parliamentary system may be designed for confrontation, but so far this century the Labour and Conservative parties seem to...
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The First American Pope
Americans invented modern advertising, publicity, and celebrity, three dubious accomplishments of Homo sapiens rapidly adopted by the rest of the world. St. John Paul II was the first pope to recognize its immense power and put it to work, but it has been left to Pope Francis to perfect the papal technique. In this sense,...
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Trump and the Culture of Political Correctness
Why would the much-married Donald Trump, billionaire, self-promoter, real-estate developer, and leading figure in the world of flashy entertainment, a man who until recently apparently accepted the views of his class on hot-button political and social issues, suddenly become the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination? The man’s been successful in a variety of...
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Henry Radetsky and Fritz Kreisler
Tossing around a word like music is problematical—and culture is even harder to deploy meaningfully. Nevertheless, I am going to give both a try in a revealing juxtaposition that was brought to my attention by that world-traveling anthropologist Henry Radetsky, an academic colleague and a valued friend. Henry is a cultured man I have learned...
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The Incomparable Max
Sir Max Beerbohm, 1872–1956, was a famous caricaturist with a style very much his own. He was a successful author, too, though not a prolific one: a book of stories (Seven Men), a set of parodies (A Christmas Garland), and one fantasy novel (Zuleika Dobson) make up the sum of his output for most people. ...
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Syria: Time for Maturity
A successful strategist is able to balance costs and benefits in the attainment of clearly defined objectives. This task demands prioritizing: Primary and secondary political goals need to be articulated, and military resources allocated accordingly. The Obama administration’s strategy for defeating the Islamic State (aka ISIS) has failed so far because a secondary objective—Washington’s a...
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Boundaries
On a flank of the White Mountains not far from the Maine state line lies a small New Hampshire town called Albany, population 735. Every seven years, town officials arrange for a surveyor to walk the boundaries of the town, clearing brush, cleaning up markers, and checking to see whether a neighboring, larger town might...
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After Obergefell: What Now?
I have previously suggested in these pages that the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Obergefell v. Hodges—the five-to-four decision which declared that two Americans of the same sex have a constitutionally guaranteed right to marry each other—may be the worst in the history of the Court. First, there was no adequate legal or constitutional basis...
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The Truth in Plain Sight
After decades of massacres on the school grounds of America, theories advanced to explain them come down to two: the ready availability of guns in this country, and the number of “angry white males” among student bodies (though in the case of the Virginia Tech killer, the perpetrator was Asian). These explanations fit nicely into...
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Bigger Barns
Where capitalism is “relatively benign of itself,” as Chilton Williamson, Jr., wrote when commenting on Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ (“Church and State,” Editorials) in the September issue, it is inaccurately named. The word capitalism means that what matters most to capitalists is capital. Capital is wealth used to gain more. That suggests that what...
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Playing the Trump Card
In August, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) published a report documenting a startling increase in immigration over the past year. The study indicated that America’s immigrant population had grown by 1.7 million and that 44 percent of the new immigrants were from Mexico, with illegal immigration increasing during a “protracted period of legal immigration...
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What the Editors Are Reading
Having written the book on Bill Bryson (literally—for Marshall Cavendish’s Today’s Writers & Their Works series, 2010), I have been looking forward to the film version of A Walk in the Woods (1998) since I first read Bryson’s semifictionalized account of hiking the Appalachian Trail. Robert Redford, who produced the movie and stars as a...
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Beautiful Apologetics
Art and literature are powerful mediums to convey timeless truths. In the Introduction to Catholic Literary Giants, Joseph Pearce declares the power of art to evangelize, a defense of the Catholic Faith he terms the “apologetics of beauty.” He cites Dante, Shakespeare, Hopkins, Tolkien, and Waugh as a Catholic’s literary “weapons” to wield against the...