“Standin’ at the crossroad I tried to flag a ride Didn’t nobody seem to know me everybody pass me by” —Robert Johnson I went to Charlotte in search of the New South and found it in a museum, the Levine Museum of the New South on 7th Street in Uptown Charlotte. Like most historical museums,...
Year: 2016
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The Gunfighter: Myth or Reality?
The reality of the Old West does not sit well with many in academe, who take pride in thinking they are debunking what they call cherished myths of the American people. I think this is especially the case when talking about gunfighters. There is clearly an impulse to attempt to destroy what most of us...
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Ruminations Amidst the Ruins
In the winter of 1987-88, Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana decided that he wanted the VP spot on the Republican ticket as the most “conservative” candidate. He started his quiet campaign by running the idea by my boss, Sen. Jesse Helms. After all, if Jesse wouldn’t support him, it would have been pointless to go...
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Rise of the Trumps
Come November, Donald Trump may go down in flames. Or he might continue to surprise and astonish us. But the Trump children, regardless of whether their father is ever again allowed in GOP polite company, are another matter. The display of warm affection for their father during the Republican National Convention was not merely for...
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Trump Right on Trade Predators
Is America still a serious nation? Consider. While U.S. elites were denouncing Donald Trump as unfit to serve for having compared Miss Universe 1996 to “Miss Piggy” of “The Muppets,” the World Trade Organization was validating the principal plank of his platform. America’s allies are cheating and robbing her blind on trade. According to the...
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Is Charlotte Our Future?
Celebrating the racial diversity of the Charlotte protesters last week, William Barber II, chairman of the North Carolina NAACP, proudly proclaimed, “This is what democracy looks like.” Well, if Barber is right, so, too, was John Adams, who warned us that “democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was...
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The First Debate: Advantage, Clinton
The debate was not a hands-down victory for Hillary Clinton, as the media pack predictably claims, but on Monday night Donald Trump missed a great opportunity to damage her credibility and question her record. For that reason she has grounds to feel pleased with the outcome. Clinton was the first to mention Wall Street, but...
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Cal Thomas Is Getting It
In his latest nationally syndicated column, “Another Terror Attack: More Terror, More Denials,” Cal Thomas notes that many people are afraid to say what should be said about the link between Islam and terrorism for fear of being labeled an “Islamophobe.” He warns that “those who deny the threat of Islamic extremism in this country...
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How Trump Wins the Debate
On one of my first trips to New Hampshire in 1991, to challenge President George H. W. Bush, I ran into Sen. Eugene McCarthy. He was returning to the scene of his ’68 triumph, when he had inflicted the first crippling wound on Lyndon Johnson. “Pat, you don’t have to win up here, you know,”...
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The Oligarchy is Losing Its Grip, But Its Death Throes May Prove Fatal – to Us
“How American Media Serves as a Transmission Belt for Wars of Choice” Several weeks ago the mainstream media (MSM) gave saturation coverage to a picture of a little boy pulled from the rubble of Aleppo after his home and family were crushed in what was dubiously reported as a Russian airstrike. Promptly dubbed “Aleppo Boy,”...
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Trump & the Press—A Death Struggle
Alerting the press that he would deal with the birther issue at the opening of his new hotel, the Donald, after treating them to an hour of tributes to himself from Medal of Honor recipients, delivered. “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. . . . President Barack...
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Strategic Lessons of Clinton’s Health Crisis
According to Hillary Clinton’s campaign talking points, she wanted to “power through” her pneumonia; but after that “overheating episode” on September 11 it “seemed like the smart thing to do” to take some downtime. According to Politico.com, which obtained the document, “those phrases, projecting strength, prudence, and vigor, were among the six bullet-pointed talking points...
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Could Stay-at-Home Moms Help Put Trump Over the Top?
Donald Trump caught a lot of people off guard with his proposal, spearheaded by daughter Ivanka, on child-care benefits. This is not familiar Republican territory. Of course, Hillary Clinton’s plan is more “generous,” promising 12 weeks of paid leave to Trump’s six. But there’s one, big fat difference that has been underreported: Hillary’s plan only...
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Finito
The Fates are even-handed. Eight years ago, John McCain slipped on his way to the podium, and his tongue protruded involuntarily. The cameras caught the moment, and he looked like an old man. That finished his candidacy. He is still going strong, but that moment froze into a general perception. And now Hillary Clinton, for...
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Last Chance for the ‘Deplorables’
Speaking to 1,000 of the overprivileged at an LGBT fundraiser, where the chairs ponied up $250,000 each and Barbra Streisand sang, Hillary Clinton gave New York’s social liberals what they came to hear. “You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” smirked Clinton to cheers and laughter....
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The NBC Commander-in-Chief Forum: Advantage Trump
On Wednesday night Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump spoke at the same prime-time television event for the first time. The “forum” was not a debate; the candidates appeared back-to-back, answering Matt Lauer’s questions about their qualities and qualifications to be commander-in-chief. He let Clinton—who appeared first—speak without disruption, but repeatedly interrupted Trump. On the other...
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Is Tide Going Out on Hillary?
Were the election held today, Hillary Clinton would probably win a clear majority of the Electoral College. Her problem: The election is two months off. Sixty days out, one senses she has lost momentum—the “Big Mo” of which George H. W. Bush boasted following his Iowa triumph in 1980—and her campaign is in a rut,...
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A Choice, Not An Echo, Again
Monday brought the sad news that Phyllis Schlafly had died, at the age of 92. Schlafly was a tireless advocate for conservative causes for over half a century, from the publication of A Choice, Not an Echo in support of Barry Goldwater in 1964, to the successful campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment in the...
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Trump & the Hillarycons
In 1964, Phyllis Schlafly of Alton, Illinois, mother of six, wrote and published a slim volume entitled A Choice Not an Echo. Backing the candidacy of Sen. Barry Goldwater, the book was a polemic against the stranglehold the eastern liberal establishment had held on the Republican nomination for decades. A Choice sold 3 million copies....
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Regime Change
Speculation is mounting that Theresa May, emulating Richard Nixon’s epoch-making visit to China, may be planning a visit to Washington with a view to laying the foundations for a trade deal between the UK and US. She has already been to China for the G20 meeting in Hangzhou, where Xi Linping has told her that...
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A Few Modest Suggestions for the Trump Administration
Order withdrawal of troops and materiel from Afghanistan and Iraq. (Without bringing the indigenous population with you.) Perhaps a small CIA presence might be maintained just for intelligence-gathering, which is what they are supposed to be doing anyway. Join with Russia to destroy ISIS in preparation for a withdrawal from Syria. This will allow the...
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Conquistador Trump
In accepting the invitation of President Enrique Pena Nieto to fly to Mexico City, the Donald was taking a major risk. Yet it was a bold and decisive move, and it paid off in what was the best day of Donald Trump’s campaign. Standing beside Nieto, graciously complimenting him and speaking warmly of Mexico and...
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Hillary’s World
Hillary Clinton’s speech at the American Legion National Convention on August 31 was an exultant restatement of the two-decades-old doctrine of “benevolent global hegemony” justified by the dogma of American exceptionalism. She provided the blueprint for never-ending wars and crises wholly unrelated to any rational understanding of this country’s national interest. “The United States is...
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On Terrorism in the West Today
Every time a bomb explodes in the West it is a boon for journalists. They photograph weeping people, tell us how implacable the government will be, and, without breaking stride, warn us that more is likely to come. But so far I have never come across any serious reflection on the rationale for the bombings,...
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Dallas in the Dock
The whole world appears to have gone nuts again—for about the ten millionth time in human history—but Dallas, unaccountably, you might say, has reaped enormous respect for keeping its cool and staying sane. You know—as sane as can be expected of any nest of right-wing, gun-toting, big-haired, president-killing yahoos. I know such news is hard...
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Donald Trump and Conservatism
Donald Trump has shattered the false consensus of the Republican Party, the hitherto unrecognized tautology that GOP is conservative because conservative is GOP, and vice versa. In the process, we’ve been confronted by an embarrassing reality: We really have no idea what we mean by the word conservative. There can be little doubt that Hillary...
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Bleep You, Liberals!
Political correctness has, since the 1990’s, been a tool the left has used to silence the proponents of traditional morality, society, and culture. Under the banner of “sensitivity,” which has the veneer of a Higher Morality, p.c. has infected the university, the high school, the grade school, the media, business, public office, and public discourse. ...
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Liberalism in the Headlights
The murder of five white police officers in Dallas, immediately following the fatal shootings of a black man in Louisiana and another in Minnesota, gave President Obama the opportunity to engage in still another of the flights of soaring clichés and wafting banalities for which his admirers celebrate him; Hillary Clinton the chance to demonstrate...
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Books in Brief
John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit, by James Traub (New York: Basic Books, 620 pp., $45.00). This well-written and highly readable biography, addressed to the general reader rather than to the academic historian, is nevertheless a substantial as well as a highly accessible work by a professor of foreign policy at New York University. Traub’s presentation...
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Making Poetry Great Again
Please let this note serve as a belated acknowledgement that Dr. Allen Frederick Stein’s poem “Ralph Waldo Emerson Meets John Brown,” which appeared in the January issue, served as an enlightening study tool for 65 of my students at Warren Hills Regional High School in northern New Jersey during the recently concluded school year. Several...
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In Another Country
A vast, under-populated Western country. A densely populated neighboring one and member of the quasi-Third World immediately south of the border. Human labor in demand in the north, an overabundance of it in the south. A lazy, somewhat dissipated and decadent, aging northern population facing an energetic, youthful, and entrepreneurial one southward across a riverine...
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Brexit: What Now?
It’s been quite a summer in the United Kingdom. On June 23, we the British people surprised everyone—including, perhaps most of all, ourselves—by voting to leave the European Union. That wasn’t meant to happen. All year, the E.U. referendum polls had shown a consistent advantage for the pro-E.U. “Remain” side. Celebrities and important people spent...
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The “Punishment” of Women
Questions concerning the relationship between morality and law were reignited when, during the Republican primary campaign, Donald Trump commented on the matter of abortion and (implicitly) women’s rights. When pressed by a journalist, Trump stated that, yes, women should be “punished” if their behavior is illegal or contrary to prevailing community standards. Though abortion is...
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Merely a Pretext
Liberals say they believe in democracy, meaning government that represents and listens to the people whose instrument it is supposed to be. Yet democratic governments today clearly do not listen to the people, if “listening” means trying to understand what they have to say. The most obvious current example of Western politicians’ willful deafness to,...
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What I Saw at Yasukuni
By now, we should all be familiar with the antitraditionalist left’s attempt to erase all traces of opposition to the liberal world order. Over the past decade or so, for example, the antitraditionalists have succeeded brilliantly in demolishing the understanding of marriage that has persisted in every civilized society since the dawn of recorded history. ...
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Holy Among Fools
In his latest novel, Derek Turner, author of Sea Changes and Displacement, takes his readers on a seriocomic journey with a latter-day Holy Fool. Along the way, Turner takes aim at the insanity of political correctness, celebrity culture in the Age of Twitter, and the spiritual wasteland that results from a denial of truth. A...
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Adventures in Education
Sir Thomas More: Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine teacher; perhaps a great one. Richard Rich: If I was, who would know it? Sir Thomas More: You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that. —Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons Last spring, students at Chelsea Academy performed...
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A Question of Identity
Most people have multiple identities, and contemporary America is tolerant of almost all of them, including men who think they are women and women who think they are men. There is one notable exception, though, to this general tolerance: people who attach any importance to the fact that they are white. The left, of course,...
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Confronting Jihad
Paris (twice in ten months), San Bernardino, Brussels, Orlando, Nice, Ansbach, Munich, Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray: Hundreds of people blown up, pulverized, shot, knifed. Who is next? That such attacks will continue is certain. That the political class has no strategic blueprint for dealing with the scourge of jihad terrorism is obvious. That all Western security services have...
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Soldier Girls and the Stakes of War
President Obama is keeping his promise of “fundamentally transforming” the nation, especially when it comes to the military. Women have been voluntarily serving in the Army officially since 1901, but today, with new policies being introduced at a rapid pace, the modern major generals in the Pentagon are changing the nature of combat units. To...
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The Empire Strikes Back
This is a brilliant and disturbing book. Its opening sentence is “Europe is doomed.” If you think that this is simply colorful rhetoric, read on. Hasta la Vista Europe is not alarmist; it is alarming, making its case in great detail ranging over many issues and countries. The pseudonymous author represents a number of researchers...
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Midwife Crisis
A few things can be said with certainty of the BBC’s Call the Midwife: None of those babies are swaddled tightly enough. Car births aren’t the greatest, but I’ve seen worse than the one in Season Four. And if Sister Evangelina doesn’t know why Sister Monica Joan paired the ass and the angel in her...
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The Donald’s Not For Turning
A week or so ago, the Never Trump crowd at National Review was chortling that Trump was softening on immigration. The chortling wasn’t prompted by any genuine concern over immigration. After all, NR was a stalwart defender of George W. Bush and had no trouble supporting John McCain as the Republican nominee. Instead, the grandees...
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Of Sam and Siddiqui
“You know,” he said, “I wouldn’t have let your family in, either.” Standing in a conference room at the Congress Hotel in downtown Chicago, Sam held my gaze in that sideways glance of his, waiting to gauge my reaction. “I understand,” I said. “And I agree. You shouldn’t have. But I’m here now, so let’s...
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Not Nice
The Negresco is a beautiful rococo, belle époque hotel built around the turn of the last century on La Promenade des Anglais in Nice, in the south of France. Even under today’s plebeian standards, when backpacking and sandal-wearing tourists invade its elegant quarters, it stands as a monument to a world that no longer exists. ...
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Twilight of the Gods
Robert Gordon occupies the Stanley G. Harris Chair of Social Sciences at Northwestern University and is the author of a number of works on economic growth, productivity, and unemployment. His present book has been eagerly awaited, owing to the publication of two “working papers” in 2010 and 2012 by the National Board of Economic Growth—papers...
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Turkey Purge
Democracy isn’t freedom—and in today’s Turkey some people realize that, as amazing as that may seem. Not ordinary folks, but the mid-level officers of the Turkish army, who have been watching with a jaundiced eye the steady Islamization of their country by an elected leader. The recent history of the Turks is rife with intrigues,...
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Dupe or No
Chronicles falls short of its usual high standards by giving so much space to “Faulkner in Japan: The ‘American Century’” in the August issue (Society & Culture). As far as I can tell amidst all the unanchored theorizing, the author wants to make America’s greatest writer out to be a clueless dupe of postwar “American...
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Taking Care of Business
Starting January 1, every abortion clinic in Illinois will be required to refer those who come seeking its services to one of the many nonprofit pregnancy-care centers in the state, established to help pregnant women understand that there are alternatives to abortion, and to provide those alternatives. Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner signed the bill into...
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Another Touch of the Bubbly
Well, after 50 years and more in New York, I have heard the fat lady sing, and I know what that means. There have been some issues as the decades have zipped by, I must say; and I have dealt with the problems seriatim—riots, street crime, altercations, the murder of an elderly benefactor, and other...