It is reported that a machete-wielding Somali has attacked an Asian in a restaurant owned by an Israeli. In Ohio. All but a few of the baker’s dozen contenders for the Republican presidential nomination advocate warlike measures against Russia, Syria, and Iran. Consequences are not discussed. Most of them want to fight terrorism by increased...
Year: 2016
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Leave the Scalia Chair Vacant
It is a measure of the stature and the significance of Justice Antonin Scalia that, upon the news of his death at a hunting lodge in Texas, Washington was instantly caught up in an unseemly quarrel over who would succeed him. But no one can replace Justice Scalia. He was a giant among jurists. For...
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R.I.P. Antonin Scalia
The case called Planned Parenthood v. Casey was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992. At the time there was some thought that it might be the vehicle for overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that made abortion a constitutional right. But Casey only made things worse: it reaffirmed Roe, and added an...
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The Duce Takes New Hampshire
National Review hasn’t been this fun to read since it used to try to be funny—and succeed—decades ago. Each day brings a new hysterical reaction to the political success of Donald Trump, which NR writers variously predict will lead to the end of conservatism, or democracy, or America, or perhaps even the universe, with the...
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The Wolf Week in Review: Race to the 90’s
Another week has come and gone, and here are some highlights and cultural trends. Republicans Want to Draft Your Daughter Whether your daughter ought to be compelled to sign up for spilling her guts in a regime-change adventure that will ultimately bring to power another Islamic regime is a question that has gone mainstream. And...
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“Trifkovic on Europe’s crisis and the threat of migration” – Nya Tider
On February 9 Sweden’s right-leaning newspaper Nya Tider (“New Times”) published an interview with Srdja Trifkovic which focused on the deepening crisis within the European Union and the ongoing migrant invasion of Europe. Here is the English translation. NT: How do you assess the problems of Europe and the impact of the migrant crisis, terrorism,...
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What is “Conservatism”?
Donald Trump isn’t a “conservative” as defined by the Beltway Right. Thank Heaven for that. So what are the defining elements of right-liberal “conservatism” these days? It appears that lining the oligarchs’ pockets (“free enterprise”), unrestrained financial speculation (“limited government”), amnesty/unlimited immigration (so “hardworking” people can “come out of the shadows”), and perpetual war (“protecting...
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How Republics Perish
If you believed America’s longest war, in Afghanistan, was coming to an end, be advised: It is not. Departing U.S. commander Gen. John Campbell says there will need to be U.S. boots on the ground “for years to come.” Making good on President Obama’s commitment to remove all U.S. forces by next January, said Campbell,...
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Bloomberg vs. Trump?
The morning of the New Hampshire primary, Donald Trump, being interviewed on “Morning Joe,” said that he would welcome his “friend” Michael Bloomberg into the presidential race. Which is probably the understatement of 2016. The three-term mayor of New York and media mogul whose fortune is estimated at $39 billion, making him one of the...
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From Nation to Market
Back in August, The New Yorker ran a less than flattering article about Donald Trump. In it, the author recounted why two middle-aged New Hampshire residents, Nancy and Charlie Merz, were supporting Trump. Both had lost jobs: Nancy, when the furniture industry “went down the tubes,” and Charlie, whose job building household electricity meters was...
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Questions For The Pentagon About Drafting Women
Apropos of my blog post yesterday, which noted that the nation’s top soldier and Marine think women must be subject to the draft given their coming role as combatants, a few questions for them: Will pregnancy and/or motherhood be disqualifying conditions that enable a woman to avoid registration for the draft? If so, and given...
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The Remainderman
Donald Trump won more votes in the Iowa caucuses than any Republican candidate in history. Impressive, except Ted Cruz set the new all-time record. And Marco Rubio exceeded all expectations by taking 23 percent. Cruz won Tea Party types, Evangelicals, and the hard right. Trump won the populists and nationalists who want the borders secure,...
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Obama’s Mosque Visit: Wrong Message, Wrong Venue
President Barack Obama’s Wednesday speech at the Islamic Society mosque in Baltimore, a venue tainted by a long history of preacing radicalism, summarizes his thinking about Islam and national security. That address has troubling implications and deserves detailed scrutiny. OBAMA: “[I]f we’re serious about freedom of religion—and I’m speaking now to my fellow Christians who...
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They’re Coming For Our Daughters
The exemption of women from the military draft is soon to end. Top generals told the Senate the other day that women must be drafted: Women should be required to register for the draft if all combat jobs are going to be open to them, the top generals of the Marines and Army said Tuesday....
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Is a New Era Upon Us?
Whoever wins the nominations, the most successful campaigns of 2016 provide us with a clear picture of where the center of gravity is today in both parties and, hence, where America is going. Bernie Sanders, with his mammoth crowds and mass support among the young, represents, as did George McGovern in 1972, despite his defeat,...
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It’s the Debt, Stupid
A distinguished and liberal economic historian, Prof. Michael Hudson has laid bare the secret of the present American dilemma—why we suffer a declining and artificial economy and a widening chasm between the rich and the rest. The interest-collecting rich absorb ever more of the national income. “Instead of creating a mutually beneficial symbiosis with the...
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A VP For Trump?
If Trump should actually get the Republican presidential nomination, then the question arises of his Vice-President-to-be. Of course, we should not count our chips before the last hand. The Republican Establishment is sure of its divine right to rule, has money out the kazoo, employs plenty of talent expert at manipulating elections, and has a...
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The Agony of Nations in the West
European history since the fall of the Roman Empire may be regarded as the slow forging, as if by a hidden hand as well as by human passions, of these particular forms of human collectivities called nations. After several failed attempts to reconstitute the Roman Empire, Europe emerged out of the Middle Ages as a...
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Islamic Mindset: Akin to Bolshevism
On January 23 Freedom and Prosperity Radio, Virginia’s only syndicated political talk radio show, broadcast an interview with Srdja Trifkovic on the subject of Islam and the ongoing Muslim invasion of Europe. Here is the full transcript of the interview. (Audio) FPR: Your book The Sword of the Prophet was published back in 2002, yet...
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Panic on the Left
It is no exaggeration to describe the Western left as living in a state of panic in these days of the mass invasion of Europe from the Islamic Middle East, jihadist violence on the Old Continent and now the New one, the nationalist risorgimenti in the member countries of the European Union, and the enthusiasm...
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Radical in Chief
American politicians and media people have been making much of what they perceive as a profound distinction between “radicalization” and “self-radicalization.” While they consider both to be Bad Things, the perception seems to be that, as a rule, “radicalization” is the badder of the two, as it implies that foreign jihadists are able to exert...
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What the Editors Are Reading
“Why, I pray, do you accuse me of a weak character? It is an accusation to which all enlightened men are exposed, because they see the two, or better say, the thousand sides of things, and it is impossible for them to make up their minds upon them, with the result that they stumble sometimes...
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White Like Me
I have never seen Ireland, but, anchored decades ago aboard R.M.S. Saxonia in a foggy night redolent with the odor of burning peat off Cobh while the tender came and went between the ship and the dockside several miles portside, I have scented her. Queen Mary 2 does not call at Cobh, and so on...
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A Christian Humanist
Having access to personal correspondence and other private papers is every biographer’s dream, a potential difference between a decent biography and a great biography. In the case of Russell Kirk, the advantage was huge. Kirk maintained a “massive—in some ways, beyond comprehension—correspondence” over the course of a prolific life in letters. For example, Bradley Birzer,...
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Dropping the Ball on Us
The New Year is in full swing, and with it new laws and regulations carefully designed to enrich the lives of Americans who are insane. Because the essence of our approach to life together in our degenerate age is that, for every problem humanoids may encounter, there is a potential law that could solve it,...
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Incidentally White
“[T]o speak in general terms of the prototypical Southern conservative we would say first of all that he was not an alienated man.” —M.E. Bradford, “Where We Were Born and Raised” White nationalism has long existed on the borderlands of disaffected conservatism. Among its several denominations is the movement known as identitarianism, which combines the...
Issue
February 2016
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Lee Marvin, Marine
I first met Lee Marvin in 1964. I had seen him around town for several years. He lived on Latimer Road in Rustic Canyon, a part of our then small, quaint hamlet of Pacific Palisades. He had four children, but his marriage was on the rocks, and he was spending many an evening drinking at...
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Against the Community Organizers
San Antonio, Texas, America’s seventh-largest city, has always owed its troubles, as well as its glory, to its geographical situation within the state, and not just because it is the nearest large city to Mexico. The city sits on the Balcones Escarpment, the line separating the hot, semiarid lowlands to its south from the beautiful,...
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With Friends Like These
The elegantly titled Iron Wall is a perfect example of how a necessary book on an important topic can be rendered inadequate by the author’s all-consuming bias. In the Preface to this immense volume, Avi Shlaim, a retired professor at Oxford and a fellow of the British Academy, describes his well-connected family as Iraqi “Arab”...
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Taking Up the Pen
I have been a Chronicles subscriber for two or three years now, and I have never before contacted your office in response to a piece in your magazine. I have just finished reading “The Seven Stairs and AIDS” by Jeff Minick (Correspondence, December). In a publication that puts out many well-written articles, I think this...
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A Plane by Any Other Name
I enjoyed George McCartney’s review of Bridge of Spies in the December issue of Chronicles (“A Snow Job on Rodeo Drive,” In the Dark). However, Steven Spielberg was not “scrupulous” with the “physical details of time and place.” Gary Powers was shot down in a U-2A, yet in the movie we see a contemporary U-2S. ...
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Excluding Muslims: Facts and Fictions
Donald Trump’s call for a moratorium on Muslim immigration has drawn fire from the establishment right. “It’s a violation of our Constitution, but it also undermines the character of our nation,” Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina told the Des Moines Register. National Review’s Jim Geraghty opined that Trump’s plan created a forbidden “religious test for...
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Singing Our Song
In the summer of 2014, a “surge” was on at the southern border, particularly in my home state of Texas, stimulated by the Obama administration’s signals that it was planning a mass amnesty and had no intention of enforcing immigration laws. It became painfully obvious that the border crisis—the near total collapse of any controls...
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The Nationalist Moment
Ever since the end of the Cold War, the standard of respectability in politics has been clear. Respectable politicians are those who believe in international trade agreements, sing the praises of mass immigration, and insist that military force should be used to advance some abstract notion like democracy—whether under the auspices of the United Nations...
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A Visit to Ali Pasha, Part 2
The main attraction in Ioannina is still the Kastro, the Turkish fortress that served as the Ottoman capital of the territory of Epirus, ruled for 30 years by Ali Pasha, a dashing Albanian warlord who accidentally helped to spark the Greek Revolution. The one thing most Americans think they know about the Ottoman Empire is...
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Rhodes to Hell
Here’s some more good stuff from the “academy” to get 2016 rolling. It concerns Cecil Rhodes, the empire builder who left an Oxford college more than 50 million big ones in today’s money, with the following stipulation: “No student should be qualified or disqualified for election to a scholarship on account of his race or...
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SCOTUS: What to Watch in 2016
Hope, as they say, springs eternal. Lately, those of us who believe in the rule of law and an objective interpretation of the Constitution according to the original understanding of those who framed it (and the people’s representatives who ratified it) have been dealt some cruel blows. The two most prominent are the Supreme Court’s...
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Europe Under Siege
The massive, overwhelmingly Muslim migrant onslaught on Europe is the most important event of 2015. Its proportions are staggering. The Babylonian captivity affected at most 75,000 Jews, and the Völkerwanderung of the late-Roman era numbered in the hundreds of thousands. It is greater, in numbers within the time frame, than the Moorish, Mongol, or Turkish...
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Keep Your Powder Dry
President Obama’s latest executive order, announced as we send this issue to press, is hardly surprising. Having failed to convince Congress three years ago to pass new gun-control laws requiring background checks on all gun purchases, the President had used every mass shooting since—including the jihadist attack in San Bernardino—to rail against the current state...
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The Cheap Trick of Whiteness
A half-truth, as John Lukacs is fond of saying, is more dangerous than a lie, because the element of truth in it, speaking to our hearts and minds, can mask the accompanying falsehood. We see this in the current embrace of multiculturalism, which propagates the dangerous lie that a civilized human society can exist—whether at...
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Neocons in a Lather
With Donald Trump continuing to rise in the polls, the neoconservatives are in a lather. Bill Kristol, who initially declared he was “anti-anti-Trump”—in the same sense that his departed father declared he was “anti-anti-McCarthy” (Joe, that is, not Eugene)—recently tweeted, “Crowd-sourcing: Name of the new party we’ll have to start if Trump wins the GOP...
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Kidnapped
This book was first published in England as The Adventures of Sir Thomas Browne in the 21st Century. Neither title describes the book very accurately. It is really an extended meditation on Browne’s life and interests as they strike a 21st-century science writer who likes to ride a bicycle and who, like Browne, lives in...
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Not So Far Away, Not So Long Ago
Brooklyn Produced by Wildgaze Films and The Irish Film Board Directed by John Crowley Written by Nick Hornby from the novel by Colm Toibin Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures Star Wars: The Force Awakens Produced by Lucasfilm Ltd. Directed by J.J. Abrams Written by J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Brooklyn...
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Who Defines America?
A country is a land and a people. A people, in turn, are constituted by interlocking networks of common ways, memories, and understandings, together with symbols that serve as rallying points, all of which enable them to carry on life together and look forward to a common future. So who are the American people? The...
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First Hearings
Some years ago a fellow told me that I should put my money in CDs, and I did, to my regret in one sense. I thought he meant Compact Discs. Silly me! But maybe not altogether. Since those days, things have changed, but even so, some things never change. I mean that acquisitions have a...
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The Civil War of the Right
The conservative movement is starting to look a lot like Syria. Baited, taunted, mocked by Fox News, Donald Trump told Roger Ailes what he could do with his Iowa debate, and marched off to host a Thursday night rally for veterans at the same time in Des Moines. Message: I speak for the silent majority,...
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Dogmatism Masquerading As Science
So far, the presidential campaign has not gone as the experts had predicted. One of the reasons for this is that many Americans are anxious about the economy, an anxiety that those ensconced in the recession-free DC bubble have a hard time understanding. And one of the reasons for this economic anxiety is the damage...
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Letter from Spain: Post-Election Imbroglio
This year my winter retreat in Gran Canaria coincides with an unprecedented political crisis in Spain which may herald some trouble for the Brussels-based superstate. More than a month has passed since the inconclusive general election on December 20. It has marked the end of the decades-long duopoly enjoyed by the center-right People’s Party (Partido...
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The Rejection Election
With the Iowa caucuses a week away, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, who leads in all the polls, is Donald Trump. The consensus candidate of the Democratic Party elite, Hillary Clinton, has been thrown onto the defensive by a Socialist from Vermont who seems to want to burn down Wall Street. Not so long...