How many “final” books can one man write? For most men, the answer is one. John Lukacs is not most men, however. In early 2013, ISI Books released History and the Human Condition, a collection of previously published (though revised) material that the press declared to be “perhaps John Lukacs’s final word on the great...
Women’s sports lurch upon a troubled foundation. To throw like a girl is to fail on the grounds of athleticism, and not to throw like a girl is to fail on the grounds of girlism. Worse, the quest for equality cannot reconcile its dogmatic ideal with how its professed adherents live out their faith. If...
Nowadays, the federal government is the closest thing many Americans have to a religion, with those employed by it regarding themselves as a priesthood. Blind faith, if not dependency, tends to take over from observation. But there are other likenesses: sanctimonious cardinals and government functionaries, grandiose department-cathedrals that suck up money from believer and infidel...
Near the end of Shakespeare’s King Lear, when all seems lost, Lear comforts his daughter Cordelia—like him, soon to die—by telling her that in prison they will contemplate “the mystery of things.” Both in this sense, and in another sense, the word mystery leads the reader into the heart of Dana Gioia’s poetry. In the...
Like most Western children, I was reared partly on fairy tales. Presented in beautifully illustrated Ladybird books, these were as much a part of my early childhood as the house decor, encouraging me to read and arousing inchoate ideas of an ur-Europe of forlorn beauties, wandering princes, vindictive stepmothers, dangerous fruits, fabulous treasures, ravening beasts,...
Loving Produced by Raindog Films Directed and written by Jeff Nichols Distributed by Focus Features Hacksaw Ridge Produced by Cross Creek Pictures Directed by Mel Gibson Screenplay by Robert Schenkkan and Andrew Knight Distributed by Summit Entertainment I first learned about miscegenation in 1958. A student in my high-school religion class asked our teacher, Father...
“If we were to use traditional measures for understanding leaders, which involve the defense of borders and national flourishing, Putin would count as the preeminent statesman of our time. “On the world stage, who could vie with him?” So asks Chris Caldwell of the Weekly Standard in a remarkable essay in Hillsdale College’s March issue...
As the House of Representatives slithered toward its vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement last November, the regiments of lobbyists who were peddling the pact set up their tents in what the New York Times described as “a stately conference room on the first floor of the Capitol, barely an elevator ride away...
Letter from Pergamum-on-the-Potomac As the Stupid Party licks its wounds after the not-too-surprising disintegration of its bid to repeal and replace Obamacare, talk is again turning to abolishing the Senate filibuster with a “nuclear options” that would allow legislation to clear the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body (WGDB) with a simple majority of 51 votes (or...
Did the Freedom Caucus just pull the Republican Party back off the ledge, before it jumped to its death? A case can be made for that. Before the American Health Care Act, aka “Ryancare,” was pulled off the House floor Friday, it enjoyed the support—of 17 percent of Americans. Had it passed, it faced an...
For many years, it has been a common lament that the official Conservative Movement, centered in Washington, has not succeeded in conserving anything. There is much truth to this lament. After all, American society has moved steadily leftward since the 1960s, and the institutions surrounding a movement founded to stand athwart history shouting “Stop” have...
Devin Nunes just set the cat down among the pigeons. Two days after FBI Director James Comey assured us there was no truth to President Trump’s tweet about being wiretapped by Barack Obama, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Trump may have had more than just a small point. The U.S. intelligence community,...
The revolt against globalism is itself a worldwide phenomenon. Reporting for Chronicles from the United Kingdom is Freddy Gray, who also serves as the deputy editor of The Spectator, Britain’s premier political magazine. As an observer who has worked in the United States and has family connections to France as well, Freddy is attentive not...
By way of explaining his eight failed marriages, the American bandleader Artie Shaw once remarked, “I am an incurable optimist.” In reality, Artie was an incurable narcissist. Utterly devoid of self-awareness, he never looked back, only forward. So, too, with the incurable optimists who manage present-day American wars. What matters is not past mistakes but future...
A guide to the Neil Gorsuch nomination uproar: If you want the federal government to exercise greater and greater power over daily life in America, with minimum backtalk from us, the people, you deplore the prospective elevation of Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. If, by contrast, you regard the expansion or contraction...
The big losers of the Russian hacking scandal may yet be those who invested all their capital in a script that turned out to based on a fairy tale. In Monday’s Intelligence Committee hearings, James Comey did confirm that his FBI has found nothing to support President Trump’s tweet that President Obama ordered him wiretapped....
St. Petersburg is coldly beautiful even on overcast late-winter days. There’s still ice on the Neva and the canals, with the wind-chill factor dropping to the lower 20’s in the evening—a reminder that Russia’s imperial capital is a mere 7° south of the Arctic Circle. Its façades look fresher than when I was here last...
Working for the United Press in the 40’s To enter the job market in the middle of World War II was a heady experience. In the year or two following Pearl Harbor nearly ten million young men had donned uniforms, and employers were crying for help. The only large reservoir left to be tapped was...
“The senator from Kentucky,” said John McCain, speaking of his colleague Rand Paul, “is working for Vladimir Putin . . . and I do not say that lightly.” What did Sen. Paul do to deserve being called a hireling of Vladimir Putin? He declined to support McCain’s call for a unanimous Senate vote to bring...
Every month, Chronicles features the foreign-policy analysis and domestic political insights of Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com. Justin has been a contributor to the magazine for over two decades, during which time he has also written two vital works on the history of the anti-statist, anti-interventionist Old Right: Reclaiming the American Right—whose latest edition,...
Sometime during the last decade, the Philip K. Dick cult came out from underground. Those of us who spent the 1980’s trying to explain our affection for this pulp writer no one else had heard of, this author of surreal science fictions and bleak realistic novels, have watched both pop culture and the academy discover...
Not long ago, a democratizing Turkey, with the second-largest army in NATO, appeared on track to join the European Union. That’s not likely now, or perhaps ever. Last week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan compared Angela Merkel’s Germany to Hitler’s, said the Netherlands was full of “Nazi remnants” and “fascists,” and suggested the Dutch ambassador go...
Nat Hentoff’s death at the age of 91 took from us an eloquent voice for American freedom, as well as a noted jazz critic. He described himself as a “troublemaker” and refused to follow any party line, whether of left or right. His embrace of free speech took him on an interesting journey, from opposing...
To back up Defense Secretary “Mad Dog” Mattis’ warning last month, that the U.S. “remains steadfast in its commitment” to its allies, President Donald Trump is sending B-1 and B-52 bombers to Korea. Some 300,000 South Korean and 15,000 U.S. troops have begun their annual Foal Eagle joint war exercises that run through April. “The...
President Donald Trump has a habit of commenting (or tweeting) on topics that “trigger” globalism’s minions in the main stream media. In knee jerk fashion, the MSM will throw a hissy fit over a Trumpian remark, claiming the president is making baseless claims, that he “cites no evidence” (a habit they should be familiar with)...
At Mar-a-Lago this weekend President Donald Trump was filled “with fury” says the Washington Post, “mad—steaming, raging, mad.” Early Saturday the fuming president exploded with this tweet: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” The president has reason to be...
On March 2, standing on board the USS Gerald R. Ford—the most expensive warship ever built—President Donald Trump touted his $54 billion military spending increase. A disproportionate part of that immense sum (more than the total defence budget of Russia at $45 billion, or India at $53 billion) would go to the Navy, eventually increasing...
Before the largest audience of his political career, save perhaps his inaugural, Donald Trump delivered the speech of his life. And though Tuesday’s address may be called moderate, even inclusive, Trump’s total mastery of his party was on full display. Congressional Republicans who once professed “free-trade” as dogmatic truth rose again and again to cheer...
Aaron D. Wolf has written the best summary I have seen of the moral confusion of the Millennials (“Rise of the Alt-Left: After This, the Deluge,” View, January): “Their morality is . . . entirely relativistic and personal. They are the world.” Wolf asks, “Who will teach them otherwise?” Yes, a very difficult reeducation problem...
Stalin’s Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring, by Andrew Lownie (New York: St. Martin’s Press; 433 pp., $29.99). This book, the first full biography of the most important of the Cambridge spies, is also a first-rate work of social and intellectual history and a highly successful character study of a...
Courtesy of our Westminster correspondent, Freddy Gray, who kindly sent me the book from London as an unexpected present, I’m nearly through Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family, by Alexander Waugh, the son of the late journalist Auberon Waugh, grandson of Evelyn, and himself a classical-music critic (ironic, as Evelyn Waugh loathed music...
Donald Trump exploded upon the political scene as a strongly charged individual, not as the head of a faction of the Republican Party or of a movement of his own. The great question, from the moment he announced his candidacy for the presidency, has been what effect he might have on the party whose candidate...
At last, the Tacoma Public Schools’ board has recognized the obvious educational potential of the Prince of Darkness. For years, this hopelessly hidebound and reactionary institution has restricted itself to providing what it calls “a welcoming, nurturing environment [to] . . . provide the knowledge and skills for students to become respectful, responsible life-long learners...
When historians someday study Anglo-American relations in the early 21st century, they will find a useful allegory in the saga of the Winston Churchill bust. This is the tale of a smallish sculpture by Jacob Epstein that has come to be a simulacra of the so-called Special Relationship. Tony Blair’s government presented the bust to...
La La Land Produced by Summit Entertainment Written and directed by Damien Chazelle Distributed by Liongate The Founder Produced and distributed by The Weinstein Company Directed by John Lee Hancock Screenplay by Robert D. Siegel In last month’s issue, no less a cinematic authority than Taki pronounced La La Land delightful (“Beyond the Idiot Box,”...
“If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that,” President Obama declared in 2012. But chances are you bought that, especially if you are a Midwestern entrepreneur and the product is Renaissance art. The coastal stereotype of the Midwest as a cultural backwater is dispelled by museums in industrial towns like Detroit, Toledo, and Dayton. Here,...
Historians of our day have long debated whether ideas or interests are the prime drivers of human decisions. The Hegelian school, which includes neoconservatives and neoliberals, believes the answer is ideas—freedom, democracy, and equality. Marxists say material interests alone. We may dismiss both groups as crude simplifiers. What’s more, the debate ignores what from a...
When they are so easily available for free, the opportunities on YouTube don’t leave much excuse for not taking advantage of them, even though in one particular case at least, the musical presentation is puzzling or unidiomatic or off-putting. But even there, gradually, the realization sets in—the realization that one hears the distillation of a...
The title of Joseph Pearce’s profound piece “Fighting the Dragon With Solzhenitsyn” (Society & Culture, January) hit me like a punch to the solar plexus, for Solzhenitsyn frequently directed its first three words to me in the form of a question—“Yeshche boryoutsya s drakonamy?”—as a sort of general “How goes it?” As a callow Harvard...
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. —T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” Precious memories, unseen angels Sent from somewhere to my soul How they linger, ever near me, As the sacred past unfolds I...
Hollywood is in a snit. Hollywood is very angry. Hollywood is having a nervous breakdown. The Donald is in the White House, and Hollywood types cannot take it any more. Ditto for the New York Times and the TV networks, except for FOX. Madonna, that aging show-off whose vocabulary consists mainly of the F-word, said...
A country’s rising economic strength tends to be reflected in her geopolitical clout. In the late 1880’s the United States overtook Great Britain as the world’s largest economy; a decade later, having defeated Spain, America took over the remnants of her empire. During the same period Germany’s massive economic growth enabled her to establish colonies...
The pro-life movement has made great strides in recent years, though many people who consider themselves active pro-lifers may not realize it. That’s because the good news has all happened at the state and local levels. State laws combining health-code restrictions on abortuaries with reasonable waiting periods and required ultrasounds have given local pregnancy-care centers,...
Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future’s sakes. Long-time readers of Chronicles may recall that this column bore a different rubric when it first appeared in the January 2001 issue. The initial mission of the Letter...
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has over 15 million members. With over 46,000 churches, they are present in all 50 states (as well as several foreign countries). It is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Nonetheless, for nine straight years, the SBC has reported a net loss of membership. Last summer, the SBC...
It was a clarion call to his supporters and a hard slap in the face to his adversaries—the latter being gathered just a few feet behind him as he delivered his Inaugural Address. Donald J. Trump never minces words, and on January 20 he showed that he isn’t about to start, now that he’s President...
We are living in a racially charged climate. Problems associated with the relations between the races seem endemic to all areas of our sad and beleaguered culture. Discussions of law enforcement are dominated by the alleged racism of police officers and whether “black lives matter.” The ongoing debate on immigration seems centered on the alleged...
One symptom of decline and confusion at the end of an age is the prevalent misuse of terms, of designations that have been losing their meanings and are thus no longer real. One such term is public opinion. Used still by political thinkers, newspapers, articles, institutes, research centers, college and university courses and their professors,...
Abortion politics has consumed my adult life, starting in 1972 when, at 17, I helped defeat the abortion-legalization Measure B on Michigan’s ballot. A few weeks later, on January 22, 1973—like December 7, 1941, a date that will live in infamy—the U.S. Supreme Court dive-bombed the country by erasing all state abortion laws—including in those...
“Breathitt County in east Kentucky is the only county in the United States not to have had selective service enforced during the Second World War. That was because there were so many volunteers.” —Gordon McKinney Since I have long been convinced that the Appalachian South embodies a grounded yet radical alternative to the American mainstream,...