Easter 2019 was a vivid reminder that Good Friday still precedes Easter Sunday. The global news machine brought us horrific images of Christians massacred in their churches by Islamic terrorists in Sri Lanka. And an older, more personal means of communication spread the sad, shocking news that Chronicles’ Aaron Wolf, beloved by all who knew...
Year: 2019
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Not ‘Woke’ and Not Sorry
“Woke” is the concept that everything must be inclusive and inoffensive. Oh dear! Being hyperaware of everyone’s sensitivities makes one a hell of a bore. I recently flew down to Charlottesville, Virginia, where I had gone to university, to speak at a memorial service for my friend Willy von Raab. The other speaker was P.J....
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Bibi’s Reelection Nixes Peace Plan
Early legislative elections in Israel on April 9 have not changed the country’s political landscape. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been reelected for an unprecedented fourth consecutive term and will soon exceed the late David Ben-Gurion’s record of 13 years and four months in office. His Likud with 35 seats will be supported by several...
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Getting Real About Reparations
The call for slavery reparations is reverberating throughout the land once again. It will be entertaining to watch the Democratic presidential candidates for 2020 position themselves on this topic. They must know the very idea is irrational and entirely impractical, but at the same time they will worry that one candidate or another will endorse...
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The Death of Comedy
The left hates comedy. It subverts and challenges the dicta of the liberal hegemony, and is closed down whenever possible. The Left has had notable successes, especially in Britain, where I can point precisely to the roughly two decades in which the free comic spirit operated on TV before the cultural commissars took control. This...
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Missing the Main Story
In 1946, the U.S. intelligence community published a series of studies on the current and future dangers threatening global peace, and among these was a surprisingly detailed essay entitled, “Islam: A Threat to World Stability.” Those remarks obviously carry a special weight in light of subsequent decades. I am not the first person to discuss...
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College Admissions and Other Rites of Fragility
Think of the angst the recent college admissions scandal has caused in wealthy households from Greenwich to La Jolla, and nowhere in between, except maybe Winnetka. After speaking with friends navigating the modern-day rite of passage that applying to college has become, I imagine dinnertime conversations like this: “Sequoia? Sequoia, can you put down your...
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The Art of the No-Deal
Trump’s decision to walk away from the Hanoi Summit in February and reject the terms of a possible deal—ending all sanctions in return for a partial denuclearization—was a disappointment for his supporters. But it is only the beginning of a protracted peace process that must accompany this historic opportunity. In any case, Trump wasn’t buying...
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Covington Catholic and the Hour of Decision
Nicholas Sandmann, a young teenager unwittingly made the centerpiece of the Covington Catholic media attack, will never have the chance to restore his online presence, despite his innocence. The internet’s permanence—negative, false and defamatory articles and headlines never ceasing to appear upon a Google search of the word “Sandmann”—will function as a perpetual thorn in...
Issue
June 2019
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What a Hash Mueller Made of It
What is it about special counsel Robert Mueller that he cannot say clearly and concisely what he means? His nine-minute summary of the findings of his office, after two years of investigation, was a mess. It guarantees that the internecine warfare that has poisoned our politics continues into 2020. If it was the intention of...
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The Present Age and the State of Community
From the June 1988 issue of Chronicles. The Present Age begins with the First World War, the Great War as it is deservedly still known. No war ever began more jubilantly, among all classes and generations, the last including the young generation that had to fight it. It is said that when Viscount Grey, British...
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EU Elections: No Sovereignist Upsurge
The trouble with last week’s elections for the European Parliament is that its results offer grounds for widely different interpretations of their meaning. Too many glasses are half-full or half-empty. One thing is certain: the upsurge of Euroskeptic, sovereignist-identitarian parties – feared by some, hoped for by others – has not materialized. The EU is...
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Britain’s Leadership Void
“Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting.” The verdict on Theresa May is the same as that on Belshazzar. The Book of Daniel records other similarities: Belshazzar’s Feast uncannily foreshadows the Buckingham Palace banquet in which President Trump will be entertained, along with the still-in-office Prime Minister who steps down as Leader...
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Theresa May Resigns
“Pass me the can, lad; there’s an end of May.” A.E. Housman, in a different key, has the right words for a nation celebrating the exit of Theresa May. The impossible dream has come to pass, and the worst Prime Minister in living memory—the competition is stiff, including Edward Heath and John Major—has at last...
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Are We on the Ramp to Impeachment Road?
After a stroke felled Woodrow Wilson during his national tour to save his League of Nations, an old rival, Sen. Albert Fall, went to the White House to tell the president, “I have been praying for you, Sir.” To which Wilson is said to have replied, “Which way, Senator?” Historians are in dispute as to...
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Rise of the Brexit Party
“Regardless of their doom, / The little victims play.” All eyes are on the impending fall of Theresa May, whose tragedy is hyperbolically termed “Shakespearean” by scribes who are yet to acquaint themselves with more than his titles. We are not looking at a Lear, or Othello, or Coriolanus. The failure of May is on...
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The Hour of Boris is at Hand
The hour of Boris is at hand. He has been in backbench exile since last July, when he resigned as Foreign Secretary. He could not take Theresa May’s preposterous Chequers Agreement, and gave up the glories of Chevening. (How many of us could bear to part with a fine country house, said to be designed...
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Has the Day of the Nationalists Come?
A week from today, Europeans may be able to gauge how high the tide of populism and nationalism has risen within their countries and on their continent. For all the returns will be in from three days of elections in the 28 nations represented in the European Parliament. Expectation: Nationalists and populists will turn in...
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Bolton Must Go
Donald Trump won in November 2016 in part because he had promised to turn a new leaf in America’s global engagements. Three years ago he spoke against his opponent’s imperial delusions, voiced doubt about the utility of NATO, expressed certainty that he’d find a common language with Putin (declaring Crimea none of our business), promised...
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Arms and the Man: Clint Eastwood as Hero and Filmmaker
From the August 1989 issue of Chronicles. A nation lives by its myths and heroes. Many societies have survived defeat and invasion, even political and economic collapse. None has survived the corruption of the picture it has of itself. High art and popular art are not in competition here. Both may and do help citizens...
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Who Wants This War with Iran?
Speaking on state TV of the prospect of a war in the Gulf, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei seemed to dismiss the idea. “There won’t be any war. . . . We don’t seek a war, and (the Americans) don’t either. They know it’s not in their interests.” The ayatollah’s analysis—a war is in neither...
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Religion as a Social System
From the December 1992 issue of Chronicles. To study any vital religion is to address, as a matter of hypothesis, a striking example of how people explain to themselves who they are as a social entity. Religion as a powerful force in human culture is realized in society, not only or even mainly in theology....
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Tariffs: The Taxes That Made America Great
As his limo carried him to work at the White House Monday, Larry Kudlow could not have been pleased with the headline in the Washington Post: “Kudlow Contradicts Trump on Tariffs.” The story began: “National Economic Council Director Lawrence Kudlow acknowledged Sunday that American consumers end up paying for the administration’s tariffs on Chinese imports,...
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John Lukacs, R.I.P.
When long-time Chronicles contributor John Lukacs died on May 6, the country lost one of its finest adopted sons, who was also one of its finest writers and historians. The scope and extent of his work defies summary—he published over three dozen books between 1953 and 2017 on a wide-ranging list of subjects, including: the...
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The Eagle and the Dragon: Destined for Rivalry
A new round in the U.S.-China trade dispute has started in earnest. Last Sunday (May 5) President Donald Trump tweeted that he would raise the current 10 percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports to 25 percent. The President doubled down on his trade war threats with China early today (May 10), just hours after last...
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Are All the World’s Problems Ours?
In 2003, George W. Bush took us to war to liberate Iraq from the despotism of Saddam Hussein and convert that nation into a beacon of freedom and prosperity in the Middle East. Tuesday, Mike Pompeo flew clandestinely into Baghdad, met with the prime minister and flew out in four hours. The visit was kept...
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Letters From Tocqueville
From the September 1986 issue of Chronicles. “I am rich in letters. . . . “ —Horace Walpole Alexis de Tocqueville was an immensely prolific writer. His friend Gustave de Beaumont wrote that “for one volume he published he wrote ten; and the notes he cast aside as intended only for himself would have served...
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Is Bolton Steering Trump Into War with Iran?
Last week, it was Venezuela in America’s gun sights. “While a peaceful solution is desirable, military action is possible,” thundered Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “If that’s what is required, that’s what the United States will do.” John Bolton tutored Vladimir Putin on the meaning of the Monroe Doctrine: “This is our hemisphere. It’s not...
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Ignoble Savages—Aaron Wolf Against the Anti-Missionaries
Over the first three issues of this year Chronicles presented an illuminating series of essays by executive editor Aaron Wolf. Titled “Ignoble Savages,” this three-part work took as its starting point the venomous, even celebratory reaction of much of the secular West to the slaughter of a Christian missionary who had sailed to North Sentinel...
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Let Venezuela Decide Its Own Destiny
“Who would be free themselves must strike the blow… “By their right arms the conquest must be wrought.” So wrote Lord Byron of Greece’s war of independence against the Turks, though the famed British poet would ignore his own counsel and die just days after arriving in Greece to join the struggle. Yet Byron’s advice...
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Liar From the Beginning
Aaron D. Wolf is absolutely right to argue that, from a Christian perspective, J.J. Rousseau is the fountainhead of political evil in our day (“Ignoble Savages,” January-March, Heresies). Indeed, the Prince of this World has been rejoicing in Christianity’s shameless pandering to the courtesan Mlle Égalité, ever since the catastrophe of the First Republic. Rousseau...
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Opera Managed and Mismanaged
Heidi Waleson’s Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America (2018) is a challenging and enlightening work—one which dares much and succeeds remarkably well. We must concede that we do not often find a work of expository prose to be as appealing as...
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The Left: A History of Violence
The sight of American leftists getting on their moral high horses to attribute blame to conservatives for the growth of political violence in America is exasperating, to say the least. The dispatch of mail bombs to critics of Donald Trump and the shootings at a synagogue in Pittsburgh were like manna from heaven for these...
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An Understandable Curiosity
This is a massive biography of an economic historian whose popular fame rests on his having been made one of 65 Companions of Honour by the Queen while remaining a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. It suffers from many of the difficulties encountered by biographers of men of thought. Like William Howard...
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Monarchs and Pretenders
Mary, Queen of Scots Produced and distributed by Focus Features Directed by Josie Rourke Screenplay by Beau Willimon The Favourite Screenplay by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara Distributed by Universal Pictures Stan & Ollie Produced and distributed by Sony Pictures Classics Directed by Jon Baird Screenplay by Jeff Pope Can You Ever Forgive Me? Produced...
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Stuck in the Middle With May
I’m quite moved these days when I meet Americans and they ask me, ever so delicately, “How’s Brexit?” Or: “How’s that Brexit thing going?” Or, “Are you guys going to be OK with the Brexit?” Perhaps it’s politesse, a passing interest in a small country’s affairs. They often wear this anxious look, though, the expression...
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Faithful Son
Boyd Cathey is an 11th generation Carolina Tar Heel who was mentored by and worked with Russell Kirk. The Land We Love: The South and Its Heritage is written reverentially, just as one might reflect on the memory of one’s mother. For the South is not just any region of the United States, like the...
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We’ll Get Him Next Time
After two years and tens of millions of dollars, the Mueller investigation ended in a shattering anticlimax for Democrats. On March 22, Special Counsel Robert Mueller sent Attorney General William Barr his report, and Barr promptly informed Congress that Mueller found no collusion between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. Mueller recommended no prosecutions—though Barr’s...
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Protectionism as a Path to Piety
Frédéric Bastiat’s Candlestick Makers’ Petition, an open letter to the French Parliament written in 1845, gets trotted out by free-trade fundamentalists every time anyone says the word tariff. Bastiat’s goal was to take the protectionist’s position to its logical extreme in order to mock protectionism via satire. He distinguishes between free-traders who seek low prices...
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Rough Men, Rough Language
“You can’t run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn’t fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag.” —George Patton My father is an Army veteran, a former auto-body worker, and a retired policeman who for many years worked undercover in vice and narcotics. Needless...
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The End of Politics
Politics are over in America. Political maneuvering will go on, of course, but the old civics-class view of American political life was based on a set of assumptions that are no longer operative. America was once far more homogenous than she is today. But the passing of the 1965 Immigration Act and the political and...
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Deplorable Duke
In 1979, as John Wayne was dying, his friend and costar in five movies, Maureen O’Hara, went to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to issue a medal honoring Wayne. She told Congress that, “To the people of the world, John Wayne is not just an actor—and a very fine actor—John Wayne is the United States...
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Unplug Your P.C.
OK, sport fans, get your wallets out and start giving. That’s the latest brainstorm from a New York Times columnist who makes an unconvincing case for reparations to black people. For slavery, that is. And that means you, whitey, or brownie, and I guess that goes for yellow ones also. He wants these reparations to...
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Christchurch: The Sharia Enabling Act
Violent incidents, perpetrated by the opponents of a tyrannical regime, tend to enable such regimes to become openly terrorist. They may have been on a brutal trajectory all along, but their enemies’ acts of desperate defiance (or plain insanity) often facilitate their transition to the level of oppression which had been desired all along. Charlotte...
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Venezuela: A Textbook Case of Imperial Pathology
The crisis in Venezuela, instigated and stage-managed by the mighty interventionist clique within the Trump Administration, presents in a distilled form the neoconservative global repertoire. Its key traits are mendacity, arrogance, contempt for all legal and moral norms, bloodlust, avarice, and disregard for any rationally based understanding of the American interest. On Tuesday morning Venezuelan...
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Sufficient to the Day
I take a lot of pictures. I am old enough to have spent thousands of dollars on film and photo developing over three decades, from my late single digits up until about the age of 35. While I was an early adopter of the iPhone in June 2007, my film photos trailed off almost four...
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The Little Guy and the Right
To judge from what is going on in Italy, the only major European country where populists are in power, right-wing populism works, but left-wing populism does not. Populism, they tell us, is a meaningless word. What else, after all, can populism mean but what is popular? And so, so what? Nevertheless, populism does exist. Here...
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Healthcare in a Humane Society
The night had started off great. A few weeks earlier I had agreed to speak at the New York premiere of the American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks’s forthcoming documentary The Pursuit. The invitation came from the think tank Conscious Capitalism, which was founded by Whole Foods founder John Mackey. Although I knew little about...
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Not Like the Other
We often hear opponents of U.S. action abroad denounced as “anti-American.” On the other hand, these alleged anti-Americans present themselves as anti-interventionists—opponents of the policy and not the country. So how to tell the difference? One sign of anti-Americanism is the surrounding rhetoric used by the opponents of intervention in question: Are they screaming about...