“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” Yogi Berra reminded us. But on “The McLaughlin Group,” the TV talk show on which this writer has appeared for four decades, predictions are as mandated as was taking Latin in Jesuit high schools in the 1950s. Looking to 2020, this writer predicted that Donald Trump’s...
On December 12 the U.S. Senate passed a resolution formally recognizing the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey during the Great War and in its aftermath as genocide, a move Ankara has long opposed. The resolution states that “it is the policy of the United States to commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and...
“Surprised by joy” was Wordsworth’s line, taken up by C.S. Lewis for his spiritual autobiography. It’s a fair reflection of the public mood since the glorious moment when the exit poll revealed all. The Goyaesque monsters conjured up by the Corbynista threat have retreated, mopping and mowing, into the darkened wings of history. They were...
As of Dec. 26, Kim Jong Un’s “Christmas gift” to President Donald Trump had not arrived. Most foreign policy analysts predict it will be a missile test more impressive than any Pyongyang has yet carried off. What is Kim’s game? What does Kim want? He cannot want war with the United States, as this could...
Prague is one of the grand capitals of Europe. It is painfully beautiful in these misty mornings, with the Castle catching the first sun rays while a hundred spires below remain dormant. With just over a million residents, it is a city big enough to offer an embarrassment of cultural, visual and gastronomic riches while...
“We’re gonna impeach the (expletive deleted).” Thus did the member from Michigan, Rashida Tlaib, declare last January to be the goal of the 2019 House Democratic Caucus. Wednesday night, Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered the goods. The House impeached President Donald Trump on a straight party-line vote. Not one Republican signed on to the most partisan...
The Fuseli nightmare is over. Day breaks to a dawn chorus, an ovation for Boris Johnson’s epochal achievement, while Jeremy Corbyn, who would be admirably cast as Scrooge, has no vision of Christmas future and will be dismissed from all further conduct of the Opposition’s affairs. The LibDem leader has been voted into private life....
[This review first appeared in the November 1994 issue of Chronicles.] “Wisdom is neither inheritance nor legacy.” —Thomas Fuller In his keynote speech to a meeting of the John Randolph Club, Murray N. Rothbard exhorted his colleagues to take up the task he sees as central to the success of their movement: nothing less than...
[above: statue of Horace] “Quid pro quo” was the accusatory Latin phrase most often used to describe President Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call asking for a “favor” from the president of Ukraine. New Year’s prediction: The Roman poet Horace’s Latin depiction: “Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus“—”The mountains went into labor, and brought forth a...
[This review first appeared in the October 1990 issue of Chronicles.] Walter Scott, in 1820, wrote that Fielding is “father of the English Novel.” Yet James Russell Lowell, in 1881, remarked to an English audience that “We really know almost as little of Fielding’s life as of Shakespeare’s.” Lives of Fielding, or important essays about...
“Jaw-jaw is better than war-war,” is attributed, wrongly, say some historians, to Winston Churchill. Still, the words lately came to mind. While last week ended with a hopeful U.S.-Iranian prisoner exchange that was hailed by President Donald Trump—”Thank you to Iran for a very fair negotiation. See, we can make a deal together”—a few days...
[above: David Frum] This week brought the unsurprising news that our war in Afghanistan has long been supported by optimistic claims that were false and known to be false. It is, of course, too late to save the thousands of Americans who have died in Afghanistan or to recover the hundreds of billions—some say trillions—of...
[above: Fishmongers’ Hall across London Bridge] Let “Dover Beach,” Matthew Arnold’s finest poem, be the epigraph for today. Many migrants come on shore there in tiny and dangerous boats, often escorted in by border patrols. They will mostly be allowed to stay in England. Many are not intercepted and fade without trace into the mainland....
The “Our diversity is our strength!” Party is starting to look rather monochromatic in its upper echelons these days. The four leading candidates for its presidential nomination—Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg—are all white. The six candidates who have qualified for the Dec. 19 debate—the front four, plus Amy Klobuchar and Tom...
[This article first appeared in the July 1996 issue of Chronicles.] A great many scholars have dealt in considerable detail with Edmund Burke’s party politics and political philosophy, and a few have examined his thoughts on economics. But Francis Canavan’s latest book is the first thorough and systematic study of the interrelationship of that great...
The Anglican Church of Canada clutches its throat at the prospect of—Lord have mercy—shutting down its ministries and works 20 years from now. You know—putting up the “Closed” sign, the public demand for said ministries dwindling more with every passing year. So sharply have Anglican membership rolls declined since 2000 that, according to an internal...
At first glance, it would appear that five months of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong had produced a stunning triumph. By September, the proposal of city leader Carrie Lam that ignited the protests—to allow criminal suspects to be extradited to China for trial—had been withdrawn. And though the protesters’ demands escalated along with their tactics,...
The British election campaign has been conducted with all the duplicity that characterizes the higher echelons of the State. The Establishment aim is to install Boris as leader of the Conservative Party with a Commons majority but with a much reduced capacity to achieve Brexit. A true Brexit is anathema to them. Hence the fatal...
Louisiana being the jazz capital of the United States (and the world, for that matter), one easily forgets the other contributions she has made to American culture. Then one remembers Louisiana is Walker Percy’s adopted home and the setting of his most famous novel, The Moviegoer. Perhaps the writers Ernest J. Gaines and Shirley Ann...
When did Americans become the stormtroopers of irrational simplification? Not a moment passes when a tweet, Facebook post, or Instagram picture doesn’t rip through our amber waves of grain and drive a social justice warrior to attack the nearest deplorable. Take this recent example from The New York Times of a mentally deranged reductionist. In...
WWI veteran George O’Brien became a star in Hollywood with his breakout performance in John Ford’s silent film epic, The Iron Horse. Handsome and built like the top athlete he was, O’Brien appeared in 11 more Ford movies and 85 films altogether, a successful career punctuated by voluntary and selfless distinction in two more wars,...
Murray Rothbard, the principal founder of post-World War II American libertarianism, died 24 years ago. Lew Rockwell, one of Rothbard’s closest friends and the founder of the Mises Institute and LewRockwell.com, offers this description of his core ideas: If you want to understand Murray Rothbard, you need to keep one principle in mind…Murray believed in a...
The featured theme of this month’s magazine is focused on a particular task, namely retrieving conservativism and conservative thinkers from the past and explaining their continued relevance to the present. The current conservative movement, as a form of media entertainment and as a partisan PR machine, has undergone sweeping change in just about every respect...
I have heard the following remark, or something similar, made about country music on numerous occasions in my life: “You know, it’s kind of hard to take a guy seriously when he sings about loving Jesus one minute and drinking and cheating the next.” It is always uttered by someone who is not a big...
As we approach the last year of this century’s second decade, the United States is still the most powerful state in the world, safe from direct threats by foreign state actors. Two oceans separate America from actual or potential hot spots on other continents, while its neighbors to the north and south are harmless and...
In 2002 the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalize euthanasia, formalizing what had been tolerated by the government for several decades prior. Today, however, the Dutch practice of euthanasia is arguably less settled legally than ever before. In September, a doctor was found not guilty of breaking the law after administering...
The following was recently but ecstatically pronounced by the malignant, anti-white, anti-Christian, and anti-male New York Times: “Perhaps for the first time since the United States was established, a majority of young adults here do not identify as Christian.” Yes, you read it right: the Sulzberger gang that owns the paper celebrates this sorry state...
I teach theology courses at a non-denominational, evangelical Christian high school outside of Fort Worth, Texas. We study the history of the Christian faith, work our way chapter and verse through at least 15 books of the Bible over the span of our high school courses, examine all the major topics of systematic theology and...
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Directed and written by Quentin Tarantino ? Produced and distributed by Columbia Pictures The Lighthouse Directed and produced by Robert Eggers ? Co-written by Robert and Max Eggers ? Distributed by A24 Sullivan’s Travels (1941) Directed and written by Preston Sturges ? Produced by Paul Jones ? Distributed by...
In a recent Townhall commentary, the young author Michael Malarkey marvels over “the resurgence of refined paleoconservatism.” Supposedly Donald Trump has absorbed quintessential paleoconservative positions and is now putting them into practice. This now triumphant creed is “a political stance that posits the importance of strong borders, economic protectionism, and vehement anti-interventionism.” According to Malarkey,...
Anyone who met M. E. Bradford was unlikely to forget him. There was his imposing bulk and his Stetson cowboy hat, but that was just the trimming. This Oklahoman, long a fixture at the University of Dallas, radiated vast erudition, lightly worn and easily shared, often in colloquial language. He emitted goodwill and sparkling humor,...
The Canadian federal election in October confirmed a long-term, leftward trend in Canadian politics. Despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s blackface scandal, the Liberals retained power, winning a plurality of 157 out of 338 seats and 33.1 percent of the popular vote. Conservatives won 121 seats (34.4 percent of the vote), gaining truly overwhelming support from...
It is saddening to see so distinguished an authority as Professor Stephen Presser misquote important words from the Constitution as he does in his November article on impeachment. He writes that treason is “clearly defined” in the Constitution as “making war on the United States or giving aid or comfort to her enemies.” Here is...
Even in the beginnings of winter, Georgia’s capitol Tbilisi emits a warmth. One should expect this from a city known for its many hot springs, but the warmth experienced goes much beyond the sulfur baths popular with tourists and locals alike. Tbilisi, with its 1.4 million residents, is inviting in a way that few cities...
In late October, Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder Charlie Kirk took the stage at Ohio State University prepared to “own the libs,” as he and other establishment conservative speakers had been doing profitably on college campuses for the last two years, offering to debate all comers among the university’s typically leftist student population. Sitting in...
The 2016 election planted a nationalistic, populist battle standard reminiscent of the one that the pitchfork-wielding legions of the Old Right had once marched beneath. Now it appears at risk of being diluted and neutralized, as populist right-wing movements have been in the past. Consider the fate of Michelle Malkin. Malkin, a conservative columnist and...
Most newspaper and magazine articles are forgotten not long after they appear. Does anyone read the 25-year-old columns of Norman Podhoretz, William F. Buckley, or Richard John Neuhaus for insight into current events? It therefore tells us something when First Things prints a 20-page essay about a political journalist who has been dead for almost...
Few subjects arouse such atavistic emotions as migration—whether the arrivals come as conquerors or as kin, fleeing ordeals or seeking opportunities. For incomers, migration can represent a dream, a rational choice, an urgent necessity, or a last hope. For recipient countries, it can be an infusion of energy, a reunion, a social challenge, or an...
Robert Lewis Dabney was an American theologian and seminary professor. He was also a philosopher who wrote extensively on cultural and political issues of the second half of the 19th century. In our own day, when there is much confusion over what defines conservative political theory, we would do well to look to the writings...
One vocal U.S. political tribe argues vociferously that capitalism is the source of all economic problems. Another tends to ignore that the current economy is not working for all Americans. French economist Thomas Philippon’s work should interest those who aren’t satisfied with either the complaints of the left or the indifference of the right. Philippon...
The fall of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, is index to the strength of the monarchy. He has now been ordered by the Queen to step back from public life “for the foreseeable future.” His continued friendship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein was the immediate cause, and it was followed by the Duke’s ill-judged...
Roger Stone was recently convicted in federal court on seven felony charges, stemming from the since-closed Russian collusion investigation. Stone’s main crime was lying to Congress about who he had, or had not, spoken to about Russia. By the time Stone’s trial began in Washington, nobody was talking about WikiLeaks anymore. Nobody cared. Yet prosecutors...
[Above: Kurt Volker, Volodymyr Zelensky, Rick Perry, and Gordon Sondland at the 20 May 2019 inauguration of Volodymyr Zelensky] Was there linkage between the withholding of U.S. military aid and the U.S. demand for a Ukrainian state investigation of the Bidens? “Was there a quid pro quo?” This question has bedeviled this city for months now....
“The Westminster bubble” refers to politicians, civil servants and journalists who work in and near the Palace of Westminster. They dwell in a world that is largely divorced from the concerns of the public beyond the M25 (or “beltway”) and is regarded as alienated from the electorate. It is also, as recent events show, alienated...
Seemingly out of nowhere, suddenly and rapidly, an obscure and evidently troubled Swedish teenager became a global celebrity. The phenomenon of Greta Thunberg was the theme of Srdja Trifkovic’s presentation at the Media Forum on Modern Journalism in Prague on November 20. Greta Thunberg soared from an apparently lonely girl protesting climate change with...
When the wildfires of California broke out across the Golden State, many were the causes given. Negligence by campers. Falling power lines. Arson. A dried-out land. Climate change. Failure to manage forests, prune trees, and clear debris, leaving fuel for blazes ignited. Abnormally high winds spreading the flames. Too many fires for first responders to...
“Scarecrow,” an aged overcoat that saw its best days and owners generations ago, over which is thrown a hat of no known provenance but suggestive of a head underneath, the ensemble being draped over a stick. The idea is to frighten off the crows, but the smarter crows are not taken in and pillage the...
From the December 1997 issue of Chronicles. The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.” —Theodore Roosevelt Hailed by the New York Times for showing that Colonel Robert McCormick, the legendary publisher of...
Upon his return from a week-long stay in Budapest, Srdja Trifkovic provides an assessment of Hungary’s current political scene in his weekly roundup of world affairs for Serbia’s top-rated Happy TV network. He also looks at the central European country’s role in EU politics, which occasionally may appear disproportionate to its modest size and resources....