The death of George Floyd and the reaction that followed have seen an explosion of hysterical accusations, breast-beating, and lying that is extreme even by the standards of the last half-century. It is no exaggeration to say that reason and common sense have largely fled the scene, and there has been an incredibly weak reaction to...
The New Class War: Saving Democracy From the Managerial Elite; by Michael Lind; Portfolio; 224 pp., $25.00 A mostly white, cosmopolitan “overclass” rules America with a technocratic fist through the union of public and private spheres after pulling off a “revolution from above,” Michael Lind argues in his latest book. As Lind sees it, the country’s political institutions...
People are policy and Joe Biden has 2,000 of them. That is, according to reporting in Foreign Policy magazine that his team of foreign policy and national security advisors has swelled to more than that number. A contingent of that size could be expected to produce a torrent of interesting ideas and fresh proposals, from the fundamentals of...
Exactly 50 years ago last month I was lolling by the pool of the Saint Georges Hotel in Beirut, surrounded by bikini-clad women of uncertain virtue, spooks, pimps, journalists, and rotund Lebanese playboys. The scene was straight out of the movie Casablanca, except we all wore swimming trunks and there was no Rick to run the show....
American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition; Edited by Andrew J. Bacevich; Library of America; 663 pp., $29.95 A couple years after Russell Kirk’s death, I made a pilgrimage to his ancestral home in Mecosta, Michigan. My buddy and I looked at a map and plotted our course. We didn’t have an address but we didn’t...
I was born in 1964, in a country that most people, inside America and out, regarded as the greatest on the planet. Indeed, many felt that America in the early 1960s was the greatest country there had ever been. There was little reason at the time to question this consensus. Americans enjoyed a standard of living...
The mythical nation dedicated to a proposition is dying, and rioters, looters, and social justice warriors are playing Dr. Kevorkian. Because the United States has not reached their construct of the purest Platonic form of equality, it must be euthanized to make room for a new empire to rise in its place. It’s fitting that activists,...
Mobs loot, burn, and vandalize while politicians advocate defunding the police. A commune was established in Seattle and turned into Lord of the Flies while government did nothing. Blacks demand equal treatment from police despite a violent crime rate many times greater than that of whites, and mainstream media will not report honestly the differences in crime rates....
It is significant but not surprising that Ross Douthat in his book The Decadent Society and reviewer John M. DeJak (“A Decadent Diagnosis,” August 2020 Chronicles) both overlooked the pivotal impact of Vatican II and Catholic social doctrine. These two liberal landmarks changed the religious and cultural focus from duty to freedom; from truth to inclusiveness; from repentance to...
Having forced myself to listen to most of the Republican National Convention (RNC) orations in late August, I was struck by what my daughter, who had done such work professionally, characterized as the program’s “underlying marketing strategy.” The GOP’s advisers seem to have pitched their message at the demographics among whom Trump has had the least...
Calling a dictator and military officer of a Communist regime, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, “conservative” will come as a surprise to many a Western reader. After all, can such an icon of loyalty to his Soviet overlords be truly considered conservative in any sense other than a nefarious dedication to conserving a highly destructive political order? History...
The New York Times recently spoke ex cathedra on the American founding through its “1619 Project.” You probably learned in grade school a cartoonish story about white guys in powdered wigs declaring America’s independence in 1776. The Sulzberger family’s College of Cardinals have declared the nation’s birth year was actually 1619, when the first hapless African slaves landed on...
Retroculture: Taking America Back, by William S. Lind (Arktos Media; 212 pp., $18.95). One of the editors of this publication practically laughed in my face when I recently proclaimed myself a “city girl.” “You’re not a city girl,” he snorted, “you are Little House on the Prairie all the way!” Had he read Bill Lind’s latest,...
Despite an entire world of libertarian activists and theorists operating energetically for more than half a century, the idea of a sustainable libertarian movement never shone brightly until the end of George W. Bush’s presidency, which was marked by a severe financial catastrophe and popular frustration with America’s perpetual wars. For the rising generation faced with...
Last month we wrapped up the first Chronicles reader survey conducted in quite some time. Overall, the survey reinforced what we sensed about you, our loyal readers, and the direction you’d like to see the magazine go. Thank you to everyone who took the time to complete and return the survey; the quantity of responses we received exceeded...
American Secession: The Looming Threat of a National Breakup; by F. H. Buckley; Encounter Books; 184 pp., $23.99 When asked whether a state can constitutionally secede from the United States, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia brushed the question aside, saying the matter was settled by the Civil War. He was wrong. A Zogby poll in 2018 found that...
“Covering American politics is like crack,” a veteran British journalist told me last year. “Once you’ve had a taste nothing else gives the same high.” I now think I know what he meant—though LSD might be a more apt comparison. In the age of Trump, it’s hard to watch American politics without wondering if you are...
Yes, God, Yes Directed and written by Karen Maine ◆ Produced by Maiden Voyage and RT Features ◆ Distributed by Vertical Entertainment Waiting for the Barbarians Directed by Ciro Guerra ◆ Screenplay and novel by J. M. Coetzee ◆ Produced by Iervolino Entertainment and Ithaca Pictures ◆ Distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Films Zulu (1964) Directed...
Historians of the American right agree that Russell Kirk (1918-1994) was one of the key figures in the birth of the postwar conservative movement. Indeed, Kirk more than anyone was responsible for reintroducing the term “conservative” into American political conversation after its long domination by various strands of liberalism. The centenary of his birth in 2018...
Where then shall Hope and Fear their Objects find? Must dull Suspence corrupt the stagnant Mind? —Samuel Johnson, “The Vanity of Human Wishes” At the time of writing in late August, the coming U.S. election is hard to call, so that dull Suspence must indeed prevail for a few more weeks. One need not let...
