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
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Month: October 2020
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A Conciliar Critique, Etc.
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
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Fourth Generation War Comes to a Theater Near You
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
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Our Recessional Culture
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
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Rebranding the Right
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
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Here’s Looking at You, Beirut
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
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Biden’s Would-Be Globalist Foreign Policy
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
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The Poor Man’s Sam Francis
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
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When Is Enough Pandering Really Enough?
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
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Was Poland’s Notorious Communist Dictator Actually a Conservative?
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
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What the Editors Are Reading
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
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Remembering Russell Kirk
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
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The Sensual and the Savage
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
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U.S. Politics Gives Brits a Bad Trip
“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.
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Secession Becomes Thinkable
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,
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In This Number: October 2020
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
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Books in Brief: October 2020
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
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