“Exsilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant, Atque alio patriam quaerunt sub sole iacentem.” —Virgil, Georgics II.511-12 Honestly, why bother any more? If there is any unifying theme in the scribblings of genuine, bona-fide American conservatives, it is that our country is lost, whether to whoremongers or warmongers—or both. Drum sets in...
Had Freddie Gray been robbed, beaten and left to die in the streets of his Baltimore neighborhood, no one would be mourning him today. No one would be marching for Freddie. No one would be using Freddie as the new poster child of “Black Lives Matter!” No one would care, three weeks later, but his...
Everyone in Moscow knew that the massive demonstration planned for March 1 was in some way meant to be dangerous. The mood harked back to the events that caused the 1917 Revolution, or the troubles on the streets that paved the way for Boris Yeltsin to seize power. The regime had already staged its Anti-Maidan,...
When a former colleague sent me a snippet from The New Yorker of September 22, 2014—a piece called “As Big As the Ritz,” by Adam Gopnik—the attention therein given to two recent books on F. Scott Fitzgerald caught my eye, not only because I had already acquired one of them, but because I was repelled...
One of the few parts of the U.S. Constitution that is still followed by the government concerns the granting of copyrights and patents. Article I, Section 8, reads, “Congress shall have the power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the...
A Most Violent Year Produced by Before The Door Pictures and Washington Square Films Directed and written by J.C. Candor Distributed by A24 I went to J.C. Chandor’s new film A Most Violent Year with high expectations. His first, Margin Call, was simply the best cinematic examination of the 2008 banking crisis we’ve had to...
In “1865: The True American Revolution” (Views, April) Claude Polin asserts that Calvinism somehow led to the division between North and South. Such an assertion is unsupportable. The main flaw lies in his defining Calvinism as built upon self-confidence that leads men “to rely exclusively on themselves to steer their lives.” The key tenet of...
In March, France was given a good spanking by the European Committee on Social Rights (ECSR). The issue under litigation was France’s brutishness in allowing the corporal punishment of children. The mission of the ECSR is to judge whether the signatories to the European Social Charter are in conformity with all of the charter’s provisions. ...
Michelle Parker, a young mother of two, disappeared from her Florida home in 2011 and has never been seen again. The only suspect in her disappearance is her husband, who has left the state with the two children. Michelle’s mother, who has not seen her grandchildren since 2011, has repeatedly petitioned the Florida legislature to...
“There is no more potent instrument of fate in 19th-century fiction than the legacy.” So writes a female columnist in Britain’s best newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, before going on to say some rude things about trust-fund babies. According to the lady, a will stands as a symbol of the “baleful power of crabbed old age...
Latin America has repeatedly failed to achieve the kind of settled distribution of property that could support a middle-class society. This is a disjunction of subtle but increasing cultural importance as the United States becomes more of a Latin country. With Jeb Bush running for the 2016 Republican nomination based in part on his ties...
In the aftermath of Benjamin Netanyahu’s electoral victory last March, the “two-state solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict is off the table for the foreseeable future. Netanyahu’s public disavowal of the two-state formula (despite his subsequent denials) was not a last-minute campaign ploy. It reflected his deeply held belief that Israel can survive and prosper by...
A dozen years ago (give or take), I tried to commission a piece for Chronicles on how Big Business was increasingly pushing a leftist social and cultural agenda. For years, the conservative orthodoxy in the United States had been that capitalist institutions, from mom-and-pop shops up to the largest corporations, were essentially conservative. (In the...
I want to apologize to my readers, although I can only hope for forgiveness. I certainly don’t deserve it. OK, Justin—I can hear you now—what have you done this time? The sin of which I am guilty is optimism of the most fatuous sort—or, rather, projecting an inauthentic optimism onto a most unworthy object. The...
In a May 21, 2014, Washington Post column, Kathleen Parker alerted readers to a phenomenon in higher education termed “trigger warnings.” These are instructional caveats offered about class assignments that may contain language, situations, or expressed political, religious, or personal philosophy that might be “upsetting” to students, thereby giving them the choice to opt out...
No one could accuse M. Stanton Evans, who lost his battle with pancreatic cancer at age 80 on March 3, of becoming a professional conservative. He was a trailblazing conservative, having been there, for instance, when William F. Buckley, Jr., launched Young Americans for Freedom at his estate in Sharon. Indeed, Stan was more than...
In the life of politicians, single moments stand out when a decision to act or not to act defines their character and shapes their future success. Calvin Coolidge’s stand against the Boston police strike of 1919 and Ronald Reagan’s firing in 1981 of striking air-traffic controllers defined who they were. Gov. Scott Walker’s stand in...
A galloglass was a professional warrior hired by an Irish chief. The practice of employing such men became common in the decades following the Norman invasion, when it became obvious that heavily armed and mail-clad fighters were needed to contest the battlefield. One Irish contemporary described how the Gaels of Ireland had gone into battle...
There’s a young lad who has been called the Barack Obama of Britain, and this may be indictment enough for many of my enlightened readers, but it is his actual name, rather than what he has been called, that fascinates me. As my readers may remember, I’m obsessed with onomatomancy; of the 163 known forms...
Srdja Trifkovic’s latest live interview on Sputnik Radio International PRESENTER: Dr. Trifkovic, what do you think of the latest poll suggesting that most West Europeans think that the U.S. contributed more to the defeat of Nazism during World War II than the Soviet Army? ST: The current generation of Europeans, especially those under 50, is...
The desert kingdom fundamentally depends on continued theocratic oppression at home – kept manageable by carefully crafted redistributive schemes – and on U.S. support abroad. Its survival is helped by the deep divide between different would-be heirs to the kleptocratic regime. To put it succinctly, there are some Islamists opposed to the royal thieves in...
Almost all of the declared and undeclared Republican candidates for 2016 could be found this weekend at one of two events, or both. The first was organized by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, and held in Point of Grace Church in Waukee. Dominated by Evangelical Christians, who were 60 percent of Republican caucus-goers in...
Well. I really can’t believe I am saying this. The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to tell us what marriage means. Not speculate; not explain. Tell: as in, “Wipe that smile off your face and listen to what I’m telling you.” We are at a remarkable moment in human affairs: one we would hardly have...
Item 1: According to U.S. News, a survey found less than 8 percent of America’s “major” universities required English majors to take a Shakespeare course. He’s a DWM (Dead White Male) and all. Given how P.C. those courses are, that’s a blessing. It also allows me to use a line of Moe Howard from one...
For a month now, the Saudi air force has been bombing Yemen to reverse a takeover of that nation of 25 million by Houthi rebels, and reinstall a president who fled his country and is residing in Riyadh. The Saudis have hit airfields, armor and arms depots, and caused a humanitarian catastrophe. Nearly 1,000 dead,...
The Saudi military intervention in Yemen was launched, according to Riyadh, to “restore the legitimate government” and protect the “Yemeni constitution and elections.” This sudden desire to fight for constitutions and elections sounds odd, coming from an absolute monarchy which is consistently combating efforts at democratization at home or in its neighborhood. As Ali Alahmed,...
A tooth I had been neglecting lashed out at me last week like a woman scorned, and through clenched teeth I can report that only renal colic hath more fury. I remembered the time they gave me morphine in a London hospital, after an evening’s attempt at drinking two cases of champagne in the company...
Andrew Jackson was sort of a rough-and-tumble president, undoubtedly, but the United States, in the 1820s and ’30s, was sort of a rough-and-tumble country. Notice how refined and civilized we’ve gotten since then, to the point that a coalition of lady activists is ready to pull President Jackson’s mug off the $20 bill, substituting—well, that’s...
Saudi Arabia has been dominating the Middle Eastern news recently. Its bombing of the Shia Houthis in Yemen, supported by Washington, and its ambivalent stand on ISIS, concealed in Washington, should raise questions about the nature and long-term ambitions of the desert kingdom. On those key issues there is an apparent conspiracy of silence in...
The GOP swept to victory in November by declaring that this imperial presidency must be brought to heel, and President Obama’s illicit seizures of Congressional power must end. That was then. Now is now. This week, Congress takes up legislation to cede His Majesty full authority to negotiate the largest trade deal in history, the...
Today brings the news that 15 Moslem migrants seeking to enter Europe illegally are under arrest by Italian police for throwing 12 Christian migrants to their deaths in the Mediterranean. No doubt this incident will be downplayed or ignored by those who want Europe to welcome any illegal immigrant who can make it across the...
When she announced her fourth candidacy for president, I signed up for Hillary’s mailing list. (In case you forgot, she won two terms as co-president with Bill, in 1992 and 1996, before losing her co-president race in 2008.) “Friend – ,” she writes. Hill and I are on such close terms. “I was raised with...
“Could a U.S. response to Russia’s action in Ukraine provoke a confrontation that leads to a U.S.-Russia War?” This jolting question is raised by Graham Allison and Dimitri Simes in the cover article of The National Interest. The answer the authors give, in Countdown to War: The Coming U.S. Russia Conflict, is that the odds...
With less than a month before Britain’s general election, a squib on the subject is apposite. As a sometime betting man, I can share the news that the Conservatives are presently at 4/9 and Labour is on 13/8, with the bookmaker Betfair putting the chances of a Conservative coalition government, such as their present arrangement...
At the Summit of the Americas where he met with Raul Castro, the 83-year-old younger brother of Fidel, President Obama provided an insight into where he is taking us, and why: “The United States will not be imprisoned by the past—we’re looking to the future. I’m not interested in having battles that frankly started before...
I’m. Just. So. Excited. That. Hillary. Clinton. Is. Ready. To. Be. My. Champion. I mean, she says she’s ready, what with “the deck . . . still stacked in favor of those at the top.” Oh, ma’am, we “everyday Americans,” I can tell you, have had it up to here with the “top” people running...
It is idle to pretend: Hillary R. Clinton will be the next president. A nation capable of electing, and then re-electing, Barack Hussein Obama is perfectly ready to make the most influential woman in the world the most powerful person on this planet. The math is on her side (and let us not imagine that...
Indiana’s shameful surrender to the Gay Mafia, Big Business, the Left, and the Commentariat on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act came as no surprise. Indeed, Pat Buchanan’s most recent column on the whole sorry debacle contains words that must be memorized by every traditionalist: First comes a call for tolerance for those who believe and...
Late last week, I saw a small piece from AFP reporting that, on a visit to South Africa, Zimbabwe’s de facto dictator Robert Mugabe said, “I don’t want to see a white man.” Of course, if a European leader had commented, “I don’t want to see a black man,” the international outcry would still be...
The Republican rout in the Battle of Indianapolis provides us with a snapshot of the correlation of forces in the culture wars. Faced with a corporate-secularist firestorm, Gov. Mike Pence said Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act would not protect Christian bakers or florists who refuse their services to same-sex weddings. And the white flag went...
On a recent trip to Germany I took a day off to visit Sigmaringen, on the upper Danube some 20 miles north of Lake Constance. This town of ten thousand with a massive castle towering over it – or, more precisely, this castle with a town attached – interested me as the site of a...
Last week’s furor over the version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act approved in Indiana and awaiting only the governor’s signature in Arkansas was illuminating. Once again, the contemporary left demonstrated that it values conformity, not tolerance. Indeed, the left is now committed to using the full power of the state and the culture to...
My two score years in the West have led me to conclude that, of all the factors impeding the political thinking of its elites, few are more pernicious than the set of prejudices amalgamated with the notion of “conspiracy theory.” Last week in this space the estimable Tom Piatak wrote that, in American politics, “being...
“Pat, sometimes it seems like our friends want me to go over the cliff with flags flying,” President Reagan once told me. Today, it is “Bibi” Netanyahu and the neocons howling “kill the deal” and “bomb Iran” who are shoving the Republican Party toward the cliff. The question, which may decide 2016, may be framed...
The day Sen. Ted Cruz launched his Presidential campaign with a speech at Liberty University, media critics used the phrase “Goldwater Cycle” to portray the dilemma of the GOP as it faces the Presidential election of 2016. While in college, I worked on both the 1960 Nixon and the 1964 Goldwater campaigns and have some...
A voracious and eclectic reader, President Nixon instructed me to send him every few weeks 10 articles he would not normally see that were on interesting or important issues. In 1971, I sent him an essay from The Atlantic, with reviews by Time and Newsweek, by Dr. Richard Herrnstein. My summary read: “Basically, (Herrnstein) demonstrates...
Republicans have not been too happy lately looking over the long row of their Presidential wannabes. It is almost embarrassing—so many outstanding candidates. They all have much to be said for them, but each one seem to have something lacking, to be just not quite right. They are just not “Presidential” enough. But relax Republicans,...
Back in the innocent days of 1967-70, I attended Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in the Wayne-Westland Community School District in Michigan. District motto: “Absolutely, entirely, completely dedicated to mediocrity.” Like most junior high schools, grades 7-9, it mysteriously has been transformed into a middle school, grades 6-8. In 1967-68, Franklin had a simple dress...
Eleven years ago I wrote a column for the print edition of Chronicles under this title. Tom Piatak’s grim reminder of the continued destructive presence of this cabal in what passes for the commentariat in today’s America has prompted me to dig into my old files and recap for our readers the historical and ideological...
One of the many unfortunate trends in today’s American politics is that being wrong on significant matters seems to carry little penalty, while being right on significant matters seems to carry little reward. Consider those who told us that the invasion of Iraq was going to be a “cakewalk,” with American troops being greeted as...