Democracy is under attack, we now hear regularly. While Donald Trump, the GOP, and (if you ask Rachel Maddow) the weather have all been identified of late as “threats” to our democracy, the Great Satan is, of course, Russia, pop. 144,498,215. Vlad Putin directs, or winks and nods at, a Red Army of hackers who,...
Month: August 2017
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Corporate Responsibility: An Indecent Proposal
This past semester a group of bored yet curious students at my university invited faculty to participate in a lunch-hour debate. When the organizers first contacted me they referenced several of my former students who praised my heretical outspokenness as key to my selection. They hoped I might provoke their classmates into actions more meaningful...
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A Long Way Behind
Yale’s Little Histories represent an admirable project, whereby true experts perform the exceedingly difficult task of summarizing a large field of knowledge in a short space, and in an accessible manner. Ideally, the resulting book offers a good introduction for the novice, while even the most knowledgeable reader will gain some new insight. Even within...
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The British War for Independence
The anti-Brexit hysteria never went away. “How Brexit damaged Britain’s democracy” was the headline of the regular political columnist “Bagehot” in The Economist (March 30). One can hold different views on the value of Brexit—but a referendum is a “threat to democracy”? All subsequent events have pointed to ever-growing economic success. George Osborne’s doom-laden forecasts...
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The Real McCoy
In the early 1950’s when my family got our first TV set—it had a whopping 12″ screen with a green tint—we kids tuned in to The Tim McCoy Show, which aired early Saturday evenings on a local Los Angeles station, KTLA, Channel 5. McCoy told stories about the Old West, gave lessons in Indian sign...
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Man Up
Mike Madigan (so the rumor goes) will never leave the Illinois House of Representatives, or even risk vacating the speaker’s chair, because doing so would almost certainly set him on the path trodden by four of the last eight governors of Illinois. As long as Speaker Madigan stays in a position where he can leverage...
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Travel Ban, and Beyond
The Supreme Court decided on June 26 to allow key parts of the Trump administration’s “travel ban” to go into effect temporarily. This was an unexpected victory for the President—and for common sense. Until the Court hears the full case in October, the administration will be able to bar travelers from six majority-Muslim countries who...
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Liberals With Money to Burn
Once upon a time the American Establishment enjoyed business paragons such as David Rockefeller, Daniel Ludwig, William S. Paley, Henry Ford II, not to mention Thomas Watson and his son Thomas Watson, Jr. Toward the end of the 20th century, that old power elite had gone with the wind, replaced by people that Hilaire Belloc...
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The Inevitability of National Politics
Many conservatives have become disenchanted with national politics. This disenchantment is understandable. Strong support for Republicans seeking the White House and seats in Congress has done little to conserve the type of society most of those voting Republican wanted to conserve. By almost any measure, American society has moved steadily leftward in recent decades. Social...
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Splendid Dishonesty
Stephen B. Presser, Chronicles’ legal-affairs editor, identifies a crisis in American legal education. In his book Law Professors, he shows us why a newly minted graduate of an elite American law school has no clue how to handle a case or provide useful legal services. This is not a matter of just being young or...
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Humane But Not Tame
Aaron D. Wolf’s portrayal of the rabble in New Orleans jeering at General Lee’s dishonored image (“The Discarded Image,” Heresies, July) conjures a scene from C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: A mob of repulsive scum, all manner of beasties and boggles, heap inane insults on the bound Lion, whose nobility they...
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Immeasurable Loss
My thanks to Aaron D. Wolf for his article “The Discarded Image.” It reminded me of G.K. Chesterton’s “The Age of America,” published in The Illustrated London News, December 14, 1929 (The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. 35). Chesterton saw the Civil War as a real clash of civilizations, with good and great men...
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Ivy League Press
I have just finished reading Illiberal Reformers, by Thomas C. Leonard, motivated by Carl E. Olson’s interest-piquing review “A Faith Misplaced” (Reviews, June). I heartily concur with Mr. Olson’s enthusiasm for a fine, concise, and accessible account of the 19th- and early-20th-century Progressives’ infatuations with German economics, evolution, racial stereotyping, and paternalism toward women and...
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If It Leads, It Bleeds
Kathy Griffin, “comedienne,” posts a photo of herself holding up the bloodied head of President Trump, gore dripping down his face. A Central Park production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar features an assassinated Caesar as Trump: The audience roars its approval as Brutus & Co. plunge their knives into him. Meanwhile, the background music broadcast by...
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The End of Something
Chronicles’ readers probably know James Kirchick better as the author of articles on Ron Paul’s newsletters than as an expert on European politics. The up and coming neoconservative journalist published his exposés of Ron Paul in The New Republic in 2008 and revisited the issue in the pages of The Weekly Standard in 2011. Friends...
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States’ Rights and the Left’s Agenda
These days, it’s the left that’s pushing states’ rights. And for that we can thank President Trump. As is often the case with America, California is leading the way. First came Calexit, a movement eager to establish a California Utopia, although that was postponed when its organizer, Louis Marinelli, decamped to Russia, his wife’s home. ...
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Brazen
“In Europe and America There’s a growing feeling of hysteria.” —Sting, “Russians” (1985) Are the Russians guilty of trying to undermine American democracy? The answer may surprise you. But first the “news.” As I write, Business Insider is neatly summarizing the current state of mainstream reportage and opinion: “Evidence is mounting that Russia took 4...
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Managerial Suicide
In The Spectator (June 24, 2016) Charles Moore, the Grand Old Man of British journalism despite his relatively young age, writes, “How much longer can it go on? Deaths caused by terrorism are always followed now by candlelit vigils, a minute’s silence, victims’ families/government ministers/emergency services/clergy/imams all clustered together, walls of messages, flags at half-mast. ...
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Books in Brief
This is an excellent and very readable book about the life and work of a man with whose name every educated person is familiar, but about whom (and which) few people in America today know very much, though his 100th birthday in 1869, only a decade after his death, was spectacularly celebrated across the United...
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Snuffed Candle
Proclaimed political “dynasties” in American history have never persisted beyond two generations. The Adams family produced two presidents in two generations, followed by an author of significant accomplishments who disdained democracy and never ran for political office. The Roosevelts, Theodore and Franklin D., came from two branches of the family and later produced several public...
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Managerial Suicide
In The Spectator (June 24, 2016) Charles Moore, the Grand Old Man of British journalism despite his relatively young age, writes, “How much longer can it go on? Deaths caused by terrorism are always followed now by candlelit vigils, a minute’s silence, victims’ families/government ministers/emergency services/clergy/imams all clustered together, walls of messages, flags at half-mast. Instinctively I...
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The Meaning of Donald Trump
Nearly half a year into the new administration in Washington, it remains too early to tell how many of President Trump’s unquestioned pratfalls and errors in judgment, most of them resulting from emotional indiscipline, stubbornness, and political inexperience as well as the necessary thicker skin experience would have given him, are attributable to the President...
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What the Editors Are Reading
A casual mention by a friend of The Magnificent Ambersons, the novel by the Midwestern American novelist and playwright Booth Tarking ton (1869-1946) translated to the silver screen by Orson Welles, sent me to my library to renew my acquaintance with a book I read many years ago. Instead of Ambersons, however, the book I...
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The Cottingley Fairies, and Fatima
Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote that the idea of an acceptable form of public entertainment underwent a rude shock in the years around World War I. By then in his mid-50’s, he had abandoned any pretense of sympathy for modern culture. In particular, Conan Doyle shrank from the more proscriptive plays of Henrik Ibsen, as...
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Losers Double Down
The party of Hillary Clinton has not stopped losing since last November. This fact is easily overlooked amid all of President Trump’s bad press, but Democrats have reliably come up short in special elections from Montana to Kansas to suburban Atlanta. Jon Ossoff, the Democrat running in Georgia’s Sixth District, raised over $23 million by...
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Success in “Defeat”
What do you do when people favor your ideas but your party is shut out of government? That’s the dilemma faced by the far right in the Netherlands. The Party for Freedom (PVV), led by Geert Wilders, settled for second place in the national election held in March. Forum for Democracy (FVD), a new far-right...
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Wonders
Wonder Woman Produced by D.C. Entertainment Directed by Patty Jenkins Screenplay by Allen Heinberg Distributed by Warner Brothers Silence Produced by Cappa Defina Productions Directed by Martin Scorsese Screenplay by Martin Scorsese and Jay Cocks, from the novel by Shusaku Endo Distributed by Paramount Pictures Wonder Woman is the first installment of what threatens to...
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The Reminiscences of Earl Wild
I was thinking recently about Earl Wild for several reasons: his achievement as a pianist; his substantial and extended contribution to the “Romantic Revival” through his performances and recordings; and my own memories of exchanges with him after three of his appearances in New York City. When I beheld him backstage, standing far away from...
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