This scrupulously objective book may be considered a gift to conservatives who have long despaired about the possibility of principled legal tenets regularly prevailing in Supreme Court opinions. For decades this long-suffering group has watched Republican Supreme Court appointees concur in various left-wing crackpot decisions that have become the law of the land. Thankfully, such...
Month: August 2019
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Remembering Slavery
The topic of slavery and reparations has been much in the news of late and might feature prominently in next year’s presidential elections. Slave ownership taints the reputations of historical figures, to the point of provoking campaigns against their commemoration. Modern dismay over slavery is quite justified, but a couple of reality checks might be...
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The Old West’s Deadly Doctor
Most Americans know of Doc Holliday only as Wyatt Earp’s sidekick. He was much more than that. He was not only one of the most colorful characters in the Old West but also one of the most feared. He acquired the nickname “Doc” honestly, earning a degree in dentistry and practicing in several towns. However,...
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Trump’s Last Chance
As President Donald Trump starts his reelection campaign in earnest, a major segment of his 2020 platform remains ambiguous. In the field of foreign and security policy, the next five or six months present Trump with the last opportunity to become his former self: to reverse some of his many surrenders to the neoconservative agenda,...
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Rethinking Big Tech’s Legal Immunity
Should Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram or other purveyors of internet content be liable for damages if they fail to ensure that what they disseminate is not inaccurate, libelous, or otherwise dangerous and pernicious? There is a bit of law on this, but we are only now beginning seriously to consider this question. And only...
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Wasted Youth
A wise man recently said: Our youth love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for their elders, and no longer rise when a lady enters the room. They chatter instead of exercising, gobble up their food, and tyrannize their teachers. That was Socrates, 2000 years ago, which I suppose qualifies...
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Silicon Valley Is Dumbing Down Kids
When I caught a seventh student in the classroom trying to bury his Chromebook in his crotch, clumsily angling the screen below the desk to hide the networked game he was playing, I wondered whether there’s any evidence that Chromebooks actually help educate schoolchildren. As it turns out, there is none. No longitudinal studies have...
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A Tale of Two Borders
One clear winner of the recent European Parliament elections was Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, whose party won roughly a third of the votes, finishing well ahead of any other party. Salvini’s party, the Lega, began as a regional party in Lombardy, but won numerous votes in southern Italy, including carrying many municipalities and several...
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Wake-Up Call to the Scared Bunnies
A MarketWatch story this summer let us in on why millennials stash so little cash in 401(k) accounts. Like, given climate change, what’s the point? “The weather systems are already off,” a woman named Lori Rodriguez told a MarketWatch reporter, “and I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to be a little apocalyptic.” A few days later,...
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Five Modest Swamp-Draining Proposals
How many times will naive voters fall for the old “when elected I will shrink the federal government” lie? If our Solipsist-in-Chief can’t “drain the swamp,” you can bet your last VHS Jazzercise tape that myriad new laws, middle-class tax cuts, and feeble protests will never stem the federal Leviathan’s metastasis. With that reality in...
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Cold War Comfort
To say I was a difficult child is something of an understatement: I was a wild child. In retrospect, I can only feel sorry for my poor parents, who had no idea what to do with me. I was simply unmanageable. Unwilling to sit still in class, or to obey the simplest instructions, I did...
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Cop in the SPLC’s Crosshairs
Schoolchildren all across America are taught they live in the Land of the Free and that freedom of speech is a bedrock right. This is patently untrue, especially if one falls into any of these unfortunate demographic categories: Christian, white, Southern, or male. God help you if, like me, you fall into all four. Aside...
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Whither Chronicles?
I have been a subscriber to Chronicles for roughly twenty-five years. I love the print magazine, which I intend to take until I pass on to my reward, its publication ceases, or its “voice” becomes indistinct from that of National Review, whichever comes first. But it seems to me that, beginning about the time of...
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That Culture Thing
We have been long-time subscribers and readers. Chronicles is one of many periodicals, newspapers, journals, magazines, books we read expressing thoughts that span the political idea spectrum. You state that you are a magazine of American culture. I do not know how you define that and would like your definition. I find your articles perplexing....
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How Online Censorship Works
The first level of online censorship happens without the victims even knowing it’s happening. Tweets, posts, articles, videos, comments, and websites of political content are all uploaded without resistance. But they aren’t seen, aren’t suggested, and are swiftly buried under a pile of competing content. After the 2016 election delivered a result that shocked Silicon...
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Justin Raimondo: Anti-War Crusader
Justin Raimondo, long-time Chronicles columnist, vociferous anti-war activist, and a leading member of the paleolibertarian political movement, died June 27 at age 67 after a long battle with lung cancer. An influential champion of anti-interventionist foreign policy within the Libertarian and Republican political parties, Raimondo lobbed broadsides at warmongers left, right, and center from his...
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The Naked and The Veiled
Never Look Away Produced by Pergamon Film Directed and written by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics Chernobyl Produced and distributed by HBO and Sky Television Directed by Johan Renck ? Screenplay by Craig Mazin High Life Produced by Alcatraz Films Directed and written by Claire Denis Distributed by A24 German director...
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What the Editors Are Reading
Dostoevsky’s great 1866 novel Crime and Punishment reads like a frenetic vision. A compulsive gambler and one-time political radical who was condemned to Siberia and forced labor, Dostoevsky created the novel’s Rodion Raskolnikov, a half-mad dreamer who expressed the radical, nihilistic ideas of the time. Drawing on his own struggles and experiences, Dostoevsky used Raskolnikov...
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Let Us Now Praise Famous G-Men
Over the past few years, the United States federal government attempted a coup d’état against its own chief executive. Working from “opposition research” paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, the Deep State and its partners in the media came within a hair’s breadth of taking down a sitting president. This was the...
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Interview With a Condemned Academic
Michael Millerman was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto when he got into trouble. The trouble wasn’t drugs or alcohol, debt, or academic improprieties. Nor was he troubled by poor academic performance. The trouble was that he was reading, examining, and translating the works of controversial political thinkers influenced by Martin Heidegger. His...
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