The field of Democrats aspiring to be their party’s presidential nominee resembles what the Republican field of four years ago would have been, had Donald Trump not entered the race. With more than 20 contenders, Democrats have had to break up their first two presidential debates into two sets of ten candidates, each airing on...
Month: September 2019
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Trump’s China Strategy
Many years ago, Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson was challenged by a mathematician to name a single proposition in all social science that was both true and nontrivial. Samuelson proposed the principle of comparative advantage, first developed by economist David Ricardo in 1817. It was true, Samuelson argued, as a matter of mathematical deduction, and yet its...
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Greek Honor and Squad Shame
Sailing in Homer’s wine-dark Aegean Sea, and traipsing all over the Acropolis and the marvels of antiquity, is the best antidote I know to the brouhaha over “The Squad.” It makes these four publicity-seeking, opportunistic mental dwarfs seem even pettier than they are. Mind you, these petulant females wouldn’t know the difference between Corinthian and...
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The Crucible of Innovation
It is an inconvenient fact—and one studiously neglected by proponents of unrestricted global migration—that the main military participants in the politically incorrect and toxically masculine medieval Crusades were migrants. Nubian infantry, Egyptian cavalry, Armenian Turcopoles, European knights, and Turkic horsemen from the Eurasian steppes all migrated to the Levant during the High Middle Age period...
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Spying on the American Remnant
As a boy, your author lived in a working-class neighborhood just outside Houston’s city limits. My parents were the children of rural people who had come to Houston looking for work during the Great Depression. They lived in frame houses sitting on cinder blocks in Houston’s West End, a community of people Larry McMurtry called...
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What the Editors Are Reading
During Russell Kirk’s fruitful lifetime I regularly took his sage advice concerning books I ought to read. Dr. Kirk had seemingly perused everything worth perusing. Thus, on his say-so in 1968, I read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested T. S. Eliot’s The Idea of a Christian Society (1939). I hate to tell you, but many...
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Letter from a Legend
Chronicles’ editors should be commended for publishing several hard-hitting articles on the left’s pernicious censorship and particularly for providing an interview with a young friend of mine, Michael Millerman, who has been victimized by academic bigots (“Interview with a Condemned Academic,” Chronicles, August 2019). Like Michael, I have written on Leo Strauss and Martin Heidegger...
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Silicon Valley Insider
The three articles about the destructive character of Silicon Valley (Chronicles, August 2019) were right on the mark and reminded me of how the area has changed over the years. I first visited Santa Clara Valley nearly 70 years ago while temporarily serving as a young officer at a nearby naval base. It was beautiful...
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Noble Savages
Allensworth and Frye do a wonderful job dispelling human ignorance concerning the walls that have protected civilizations from barbarians (“Against the Barbarians,” Chronicles, July 2019). But, one thing mentioned bothers me: “Endless warfare, savagery, and sudden, violent death.” The prevailing wisdom concerning Hunter-Gatherers, completely betrays common sense. Our Stone Age ancestors, who had no sophisticated...
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The British Invasion of the Ozarks
Chronicles readers may recall my “Old Route 66” (September 2013) and “Keep the Water on Your Right” (February 2015) motorcycle travelogues, in which I rode through small towns and rural areas to reconnect with the land and people of America. A road trip can do this like no other kind of journey, and doing one...
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The Broken Promise of American Cities
It was my penultimate summer in California when two friends from Germany crossed the pond to visit. They rented a room in San Diego not far from the beach, nestled in a palm-tree lined suburb. At some point between setting their bags on the curb and checking in to their summer digs, a man was...
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Emperor of Imagination
Charles the Great looms out of the swirling obscurity of post-Roman Europe like the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria, signaling simultaneously radical renewal and an alteration of everything that came before. As Janet Nelson illuminates in her new book, it is impossible to imagine the West without Charlemagne as figurative and literal progenitor. The King of...
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Boris Derangement Syndrome
Boris Derangement Syndrome has broken out in Britain. It is similar to the more widely documented American affliction, Trump Derangement Syndrome. BDS and TDS epidemics spread when the media and political classes are confronted with an empowered leader they cannot stand. Boris Johnson, the new Prime Minister, makes his critics so angry they become demented....
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Hazardous Do-Overs
Seconds (1966) Produced by Joel Productions; Directed by John Frankenheimer; Screenplay by Lewis John Carlino, adapted from a novel by David Ely; Distributed by Paramount Pictures The Art of Self-Defense Produced by Andrew Kortschak; Directed and written by Riley Stearns; Distributed by Bleecker Street After Life Produced, written, and directed by Ricky Gervais; Distributed by...
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Perot, the Proto-Trump
One evening in the fall of 2015, with the unlikely Donald J. Trump already dominating the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, I ran into Ross Perot, Jr., at an exclusive charity event in Dallas. Perot is a billionaire real estate developer and the only son of H. Ross Perot, who campaigned for president...
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Ride On, Proud Boys!
Canada has not done much to assure the world it is anything other than a dog in search of a lap. Americans declared independence from England in 1776, but Canadians still haven’t mustered the gumption to cut ties with the mother island 522 years after John Cabot planted the flag on Newfoundland for Henry VII....
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California Apocalypse Now
Just about everybody I know, especially Republicans, is planning an exit strategy from California. A Los Angeles County firefighter I met at a party said all those guys, too, are planning to leave, despite their high salaries and pensions. Many grousers no doubt will stay, in particular those whose children remain. But the calamities hitting...
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In Fair Verona, a Fight for Family
My husband and I touched down in Venice in late March, rented a Fiat 500, and drove through a rolling Italian countryside spotted with vineyards. Our destination was the medieval town of Verona. Verona has become something of a political flashpoint lately. It is the symbolic home of the Lega Nord, the now-leading conservative half...
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Resurrecting the Old Right
For those who may have noticed, I’ve been absent from this venerable magazine for more than 12 years. Upon returning, I feel obliged to give an account of what I’ve learned in the intervening time. Aside from visiting my family and doing research for several monographs, I’ve been pondering the vicissitudes of the American right....
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