“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul,” wrote Emily Dickinson. “And sore must be the storm / That could abash the little Bird / That kept so many warm.” Staring ahead on New Year’s Eve, at what appear to be the coming storms of 2022, this once-hopeful country is going...
The GOP launched a seemingly coordinated campaign to celebrate Kwanzaa this year. “Wishing you a happy and prosperous Kwanza!” tweeted the official account of the College Republicans. It was a theme echoed by numerous other official GOP channels. In wishing his followers a happy Kwanzaa from the balmy state of Florida, Republican Rep. Byron Donalds was simply following...
It seems that National Review Editor Rich Lowry never tires of carrying water for the sponsors of his magazine, whether it’s the high-tech giants who help pay his gargantuan salary, or his neoconservative donors, whom he also faithfully serves. Most recently he honored his patrons with a dutiful denunciation of Russian President Vladmir Putin entitled...
As 1991 turned into 1992, America appeared to have arrived at the apogee of its national power and world prestige. President George H.W. Bush had just sent an army of half a million men to expel, in a 100-hour campaign, Saddam Hussein’s invading army from Kuwait. The world, including Russia, China, and Iran, had supported...
Here we are on the eve of Christmas, that day of joy set aside for celebrating the birth of Christ who came down to earth 2,000 years ago to show mankind the way to eternal salvation. Yet, the present mood of America at Christmas 2021 seems better captured by Jimmy Carter in his “malaise speech”...
Thousands of user accounts vanished from Twitter shortly after new Chief Executive Parag Agrawal took the reins in November from the outgoing CEO, Jack Dorsey. The tech giant claimed that the purges focused on eliminating bots and propaganda accounts, mostly from China. In reality, however, Twitter’s digital street sweepers cast a much broader net, purging...
“Get off our front porch. Get out of our front yard. And stay out of our backyard.” This might stand as a crude summary of two draft security pacts Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei A. Ryabkov delivered last week as Russia’s price for resolving the crisis created by those 100,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s borders. Ryabkov’s...
What makes a prince? Machiavelli had some ideas. “Above all he should do as some excellent man has done in the past who found someone to imitate who had been praised and glorified before him,” he wrote. “[One] whose exploits and actions he always kept beside himself, as they say Alexander the Great imitated Achilles;...
As President Joe Biden’s poll numbers sank this fall, and the presidentially ambitious in his party began to stir, the White House put out the word. Forget all that 2020 campaign chatter about Biden being a “transitional president.” He intends to run and win a second term. Well, perhaps. Yet, skepticism abounds. First, if Biden...
When did the political systems of 193 nations become the business of the government of the United States? And who elected us Americans to write the moral code for the regimes that rule other lands? Consider: On taking office, President Joe Biden pledged to center his foreign policy “on the defense of democracy and the...
The European version of wokedom is unfolding under the watchful eye of Germany’s new foreign minister Annalena Baerbock. As discussed in a previous article, Baerbock looks like she will be the most interventionist-minded, Russophobic, and Euro-federalist German foreign minister ever, one who promotes a nebulous concept of European strategic sovereignty. Europe’s leftists are positively elated...
The European version of wokedom is unfolding under the watchful eye of Germany’s new foreign minister Annalena Baerbock. As discussed in a previous article, Baerbock looks like she will be the most interventionist-minded, Russophobic, and Euro-federalist German foreign minister ever, one who promotes a nebulous concept of European strategic sovereignty. Europe’s leftists are positively elated...
When did the political systems of 193 nations become the business of the government of the United States? And who elected us Americans to write the moral code for the regimes that rule other lands? Consider: On taking office, President Joe Biden pledged to center his foreign policy “on the defense of democracy and the...
Angela Merkel’s unprecedented 16 years in power came to an end on Dec. 8 when Olaf Scholz was sworn in as the new German chancellor, symbolically breaking with tradition by omitting “so help me God” from the oath. Scholz steered his Social Democratic Party (SPD) to the dominant position in last September’s general election by presenting...
Angela Merkel’s unprecedented 16 years in power came to an end on Dec. 8 when Olaf Scholz was sworn in as the new German chancellor, symbolically breaking with tradition by omitting “so help me God” from the oath. Scholz steered his Social Democratic Party (SPD) to the dominant position in last September’s general election by presenting...
After the Civil War, former North Carolina governor Zeb Vance became a U.S. senator. His Northern colleagues enjoyed his affable nature and sense of humor, and some of them invited him to Massachusetts during a break in government business. While there, Vance attended a party, and eventually required a visit to the outhouse, where his...
One day after warning Russian President Vladimir Putin he would face “severe” economic sanctions, “like ones he’s never seen,” should Russia invade Ukraine, President Joe Biden assured Americans that sending U.S. combat troops to Ukraine is “not on the table.” America is not going to fight Russia over Ukraine. “The idea that the United States...
Queen Victoria’s corpse had hardly cooled before modernism in the United Kingdom rebelled against Victorian styles, attitudes, and mores. The ideas of arguably the four most important thinkers of the modern era—Darwin, Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud—were written during Queen Victoria’s lifetime but only gained influence after her death. So too did the literary high...
One day after warning Russian President Vladimir Putin he would face “severe” economic sanctions, “like ones he’s never seen,” should Russia invade Ukraine, President Joe Biden assured Americans that sending U.S. combat troops to Ukraine is “not on the table.” America is not going to fight Russia over Ukraine. “The idea that the United States...
After the Civil War, former North Carolina governor Zeb Vance became a U.S. senator. His Northern colleagues enjoyed his affable nature and sense of humor, and some of them invited him to Massachusetts during a break in government business. While there, Vance attended a party, and eventually required a visit to the outhouse, where his...
Authoring a book comes with its usual praise and criticism and my latest book, Antifascism: Course of a Crusade, is no exception. One of my critics is the Canadian journalist and columnist at The Nation, Jeet Heer. His review leaves me wondering whether he has actually read my work, which charts the historical roots of the modern antifascist movement....
Authoring a book comes with its usual praise and criticism and my latest book, Antifascism: Course of a Crusade, is no exception. One of my critics is the Canadian journalist and columnist at The Nation, Jeet Heer. His review leaves me wondering whether he has actually read my work, which charts the historical roots of the modern antifascist movement....
Either the U.S. and NATO provide us with “legal guarantees” that Ukraine will never join NATO or become a base for weapons that can threaten Russia—or we will go in and guarantee it ourselves. This is the message Russian President Vladimir Putin is sending, backed by the 100,000 troops Russia has amassed on Ukraine’s borders. ...
Either the U.S. and NATO provide us with “legal guarantees” that Ukraine will never join NATO or become a base for weapons that can threaten Russia—or we will go in and guarantee it ourselves. This is the message Russian President Vladimir Putin is sending, backed by the 100,000 troops Russia has amassed on Ukraine’s borders. ...
With the drowning deaths of 27 migrants crossing the Channel from France to England, illegal migration from the Third World is front and center anew in European politics. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has proposed that France take back to its shores all migrants who cross the Channel illegally and come ashore in Britain. In the...
With the drowning deaths of 27 migrants crossing the Channel from France to England, illegal migration from the Third World is front and center anew in European politics. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has proposed that France take back to its shores all migrants who cross the Channel illegally and come ashore in Britain. In the...
The Biden administration has allowed tens of thousands of Afghan refugees to enter the United States without any meaningful vetting, blatantly disregarding its previous assurances and formally stated policy guidelines. Such reckless endangerment of national security is scandalous, but it has proceeded virtually unreported by the regime-friendly media machine. At the tail end of the Afghan...
I was recently delighted with receiving a gift for my 80th birthday in the form of vindication, when my iron law of Conservative Inc. behavior was fully confirmed. This happened when Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg decided to dissociate themselves from Fox News because of the network’s association with Tucker Carlson, who has maintained—with ample...
A cowboy is scalped and cannibalized by Indians. A villain’s head is stomped from his shoulders into the squat hole of an ancient, grim prison. A beautiful woman is executed with a machine gun blast to the face. Not everyone has the stomach for the violence that abounds in the movies of dissident director S....
That Soviet agents successfully infiltrated the Roosevelt administration is a matter of historical fact. Among others, United States counterintelligence efforts identified Alger Hiss in the State Department and Harry Dexter White at Treasury. As I showed in my book, Stalin’s War (2021), their presence partly explains the administration’s bias toward Soviet interests in Europe and...
Although Hollywood is now considered a monolithic bastion of leftist, “woke” political and cultural sentiment with almost no dissent tolerated, it was not always that way. Though Tinseltown was never a haven for conservative and traditionalist cinema, actors, and screenwriters, 60 years ago a person could still be on the right and have a career...
Milk cartons carry expiration dates. But, for obvious reasons, they don’t need them. History books don’t carry expiration dates. But, for less obvious reasons, they do need them. History books expire when archival discoveries supplant earlier narratives or when new interpretive theories emerge. Lucky for historical posterity, decades more will have to pass before Matt...
Back in August, as the Biden administration prepared to dump 82,000-plus Afghan refugees onto U.S. soil, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security assured Americans that it was “working around the clock to conduct the security screening and vetting of vulnerable Afghans before they are permitted entry into the United States” and taking “multiple steps to...
Jon Gruden, an NFL coach with a $100 million contract from the Las Vegas Raiders, was recently forced to resign after making what The New York Times called racist, homophobic, and misogynistic remarks in emails over the last 12 years. Shock! Horror! Pro footballers making misogynistic remarks—why, I never heard of such a thing! It’s definitely...
A stunning new film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s science fiction epic, Dune, recently graced America’s silver screens. The talented Quebecois director Denis Villeneuve has fully utilized modern cinematic technology to bring to life Herbert’s bizarre story of a far-flung neofeudal humanity existing some 20,000 years in the future. Villeneuve’s adaptation of these best-selling science fiction...
Donald Trump made headlines when he warned of illegal-immigrant drug runners and rapists pouring across the U.S.-Mexico border. But he wasn’t the first to do so. Ohio Rep. James Traficant, Jr., was well-known for voicing similar comments on any given morning from the floor of the House. Before there was Trump, there was Jim Traficant—the...
Western elites recently heaped scorn on the Hungarian government for passing child-protection legislation. The Land of the Magyars outlawed the portrayal of homosexuality and “sex reassignment” surgeries in school education material and television programs aimed at minors. Hungarians view the law as protecting children from radical ideologies about sex and gender, while European Commission President...
OLD HENRY (2021) Written and Directed by Potsy Ponciroli ◆ Produced by Michael Hagerty and Shannon Houchins ◆ Distributed by Shout! Studios The weight of the past so often looms large in the Western film genre. In classic films like The Gunfighter (1950), High Noon (1952), Ride the High Country (1962), or Unforgiven (1992), the plots...
Things Worth Dying For: Thoughts on a Life Worth Living by Charles J. Chaput Henry Holt and Co. 272 pp., $25.99 “Death is common to us all,” goes the old adage. The subject of mortality is certainly pertinent, given the current “great plague,” against which safety is dispensed by way of the great fear. It...
Bringing history to the big screen is a contentious matter. To reflect the dominant historical narrative of our time—the “march of progress”—filmmakers must ensure that their script and their casting choices reflect current-year values. Where, then, can viewers turn to find historical cinema that promotes traditional values, not the libertine cosmopolitanism of Hollywood? The closest...
I had the good fortune to talk regularly about movies with my good friend and conservative thinker Sam Francis. With intellectual heft, he generously shared what he had learned from his own moviegoing. What follows is offered in the same spirit: a list of 10 movies I have repeatedly enjoyed and unhesitatingly recommend. The Searchers (1956):...
Today’s commentariat is prone to ignore history, or to simplify past events to make them fit their current ideological preferences. The discourse of regime-approved conservative intellectuals and their mass media cohorts—such as Victor Davis Hanson and the tedious George Will—remains liberally optimistic and upwardly linear. The notion that our civilization is on a downward course...
There was a very odd occurrence in the “Cradle of the Confederacy” in July 1987: Presidential aspirant and civil rights activist Jesse Jackson paid a visit to the Montgomery, Alabama, home of George Corley Wallace. It had been 126 years since Jefferson Davis stood on the steps of the Alabama capitol and been sworn in...
Our new issue of Chronicles contains several essays that assess films that can be classified in some sense as “conservative,” or at least dealing with themes of interest to the political right. Several of those who participated in making these movies and whom we discuss in this issue, such as Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov, American...
The Soul of Politics: Harry V. Jaffa and the Fight for America by Glenn Ellmers Encounter Books 408 pp., $31.99 Glenn Ellmers, a former student of Harry V. Jaffa associated with the conservative Claremont school of thought, has produced an exhaustive study of his mentor. Ellmers has pored over Jaffa’s available writings, including a dozen...
Guillaume Faye: Truths and Tributes by Pierre Krebs, Robert Steuckers, and Pierre-Émile Blairon Arktos Media 210 pp., $27.50 La puissance et la foi: Essais de théologie politique by Alain de Benoist PG de Roux 336 pp., EUR$39.00 I stumbled upon the writing of Alain de Benoist more than a quarter century ago as a graduate...
Enemies Among Us: The Relocation, Internment, and Repatriation of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans During the Second World War, by John E. Schmitz (University of Nebraska Press; 430 pp., $65.00). How can we possibly avoid history’s repetition when we don’t learn anything from it in the first place? For 50 years after World War II,...
Gerald Russello, an author and editor often associated with Russell Kirk’s life and work, passed away on Nov. 7, 2021. He was 50 years old. Russello’s death took me by surprise, as I wasn’t aware until recently that he was fatally ill and being treated for brain cancer. Since he was around the same age...
According to Gallup, on the issue of crime, President Joe Biden is 18 points underwater. While 57 percent of Americans disapprove of how he is handling crime, only 39 percent approve. Biden’s dismal rating was recorded before the verdict came in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial—not guilty on all five counts—a verdict Biden declared had made...