Year: 2021

In the parish church I attend here in Front Royal, Virginia, out-of-town visitors are often surprised by the number of babies, children, and teens at any of the four Sunday services. Wiggling kids fill the pews, somewhere a baby is crying, and at the back of the church is a room reserved specifically for nursing...

On taking the oath of office, Jan. 20, Joe Biden may not have realized it, but history had dealt him a pair of aces. The COVID-19 pandemic had reached its apex, infecting a quarter of a million Americans every day. Yet, due to the discovery and distribution of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the incidence...

Victory in Europe Day is observed each year on May 8, remembering the key contributions of the United States and Britain to Germany’s defeat. The following day, May 9, commemorates the Day of Victory, which focuses on the crucial contribution of the Red Army to the collapse of the Third Reich. As it happens, May 9...

The U.S. military has gone full woke, and proudly so. For years it has opposed citizen efforts to reverse affirmative action while insisting on the eat-your-vegetables slogan of “Diversity is our Greatest Strength.” West Point currently offers workshops on “White Power at West Point” and “Racist Dog Whistles at West Point” to ensure cadets fully recognize America’s foremost...

Upon recounting my bout with COVID to an acquaintance, I was asked if I knew where I might have picked up the virus. When I mentioned my hunch about the source, my acquaintance gasped, then inferred that I and those I caught it from must not have been wearing masks since the virus had spread....

“Experts” predicted 1 million jobs would be created in April. The actual number fell far short, at 266,000. Republicans warned that overly generous COVID-19 relief benefits create a disincentive to work. The day before this disappointing jobs report, Bloomberg wrote: In earnings calls and business surveys, executives often blame stimulus checks and generous unemployment benefits for hampering...

Last week I filed my federal and state taxes. The tax preparation service I use here, mostly for backup purposes in case of an audit, informed me by phone that the forms were ready for my signature and that I would owe the federal government just over $1,000. Expecting to pay much more than that,...

There is a tremendous, unwarranted, unfair, unjust basketball gap that exists between whites and blacks, much to the disadvantage of the former. Simple elementary social justice requires that this divergence be closed as soon as possible; sooner than that if at all feasible. This is a situation that cries out to the heavens for redress....

As COVID restrictions begin to fall there seems to be a new problem emerging, namely, Americans’ inability to ditch the masks. Masks, it seems, have become a type of “security blanket” for many, reporter Karin Brulliard claims in a recent Washington Post article. She explains how David Díaz, a vaccinated 29-year-old, struggles to go for a run...

Within hours of Saturday’s shooting in Times Square where three bystanders, including a 4-year-old girl, were wounded, the two leading candidates to replace Mayor Bill de Blasio were on-site. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a retired captain of the NYPD, and Andrew Yang, who declared:  My fellow New Yorkers … Nothing works in our city...

It’s May, and the chilly dawn here in Virginia brings singing birds, velvet-soft breezes, and the rich perfume of freshly mown grass and damp earth. I take pleasure and joy in the time I spend on my front porch, sometimes singing a few lines from Louis Armstrong’s “It’s a Wonderful World.” After a few minutes,...

The Decline of Nations: Lessons for Strengthening America at Home and in the World, by Joseph F. Johnston, Jr. (Republic; 385 pp., $30.00). How would you know your country is in mortal decline? Joseph Johnston first explains how the Roman Republic and the British Empire rose to greatness and then declined. In light of these...

The Republican Party has been shamelessly embracing blacks on the sole criteria that they embrace capitalism and rehash stale talking points crediting dead Democrats for starting the Ku Klux Klan. Such overtures are acceptable to many, however, because the modern Republican Party rarely articulates a conservative message. The party does excel at something, however, namely,...

“There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money,” is an insight the famed biographer James Boswell attributed to Samuel Johnson. Clients of the late Bernie Madoff, however, might take issue. Over four decades, Madoff, acclaimed as the greatest fraudster of them all, ran a Ponzi scheme...

In case you haven’t heard, billionaire power couple Bill and Melinda Gates are getting divorced. Mourning the end of the Gates’ marriage, The Washington Post proclaimed, “If Bill and Melinda Gates can’t make a marriage work, what hope is there for the rest of us?” Pshaw. If we leave our assessment of marriage to the elites, we...

In a recent conversation with an internist, the good doctor asked me whether I’d gotten a COVID-19 vaccine. When I told him ‘No,” he then asked if I intended to get it at all. “Not unless someone forces it on me,” I said. I then asked him the same question. “I got the first injection,...

Crime is back in the news and hardly a day now passes without headlines about shootings at largely peaceful funerals and all the rest. The obvious question is whether this soaring criminality will render big cities like New York City unlivable—a return to when movie audiences cheered Charles Bronson in Death Wish. Today’s crime is deceptively...

“Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country.” So declared Sen. Tim Scott, a Black Republican, in his televised rebuttal to Joe Biden’s address to Congress. Asked the next day what he thought of Scott’s statement, Biden said he agrees. “No, I don’t think the American people are racist.” Vice President Kamala Harris also...

As recent events have caused the eyes of the nation and the world to focus on Minnesota, a question I’ve wondered about has resurfaced: Why is Minnesota so politically radical? That Minnesota’s politics are radical is seen in a simple survey of the state’s prominent politicians. Both of Minnesota’s two U.S. Senators, Amy Klobuchar and...

Though I’ve practiced several vices in my time, pornography was not one of them. I grew up in a town and a time when I didn’t even know the meaning of that word. At the private school I attended in seventh and eighth grade, 200 miles from home, one kid used to smuggle Playboy magazines into the...

After nearly 100 days in office, President Joe Biden made his first speech to Congress last week, introducing a new program entitled the American Families Plan. For the unsuspecting, Biden’s plan may seem kind and caring. Education, affordable childcare, paid medical leave, and financial benefits all appear to help young couples in their quest to raise the...

Dear Colleagues, A Diverse, Inclusive, and Equitable day to you! The leadership team here at PU’s Diversity/Inclusion/Equity (DIE) Office is pleased that so many of you have adopted the practice of land acknowledgment in your email signatures, as demonstrated by the following model statement from a colleague: In community and solidarity, Dr. Margaret “Marge” N. Alisación, Ph. D....

Joe Biden may not be a radical socialist, but he is doing the best imitation of one this writer has lately seen. After enacting a COVID-19 relief package of $1.9 trillion in March without a single Republican vote in Congress, Biden proposed a jobs and infrastructure program of $2.2 trillion. He has now added an...

There seems to be a new trend that when a new leftist government is elected it attempts to change or undermine its country’s court system to remove it as a barrier to consolidating power. During the U.S. election cycle, there was much talk of how an incoming Democratic administration might reshape the Supreme Court. Thus...

Update: Paragraph 12 has been added to provide more background information on the economic differences between India and China. In the last seven days India has seen more COVID cases than any other country in the world. The official death toll is over 200,000, although the country’s flawed mortality statistics lead experts to believe that the true...

In June 2018, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., publicly exhorted her supporters to harass cabinet members of the Trump administration. At an outdoor rally in Los Angeles, Waters, with microphone in hand and amplifiers nearby, shouted: “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet...

Two mainstream think tanks have published new studies on immigration and race in America that come to the typical, safe conclusions. But a look at the data inside shows something more interesting. A new Cato Institute report defending immigration begins by contending that immigrants are unlikely to negatively affect states’ fiscal health. But within the study’s findings,...

“Gloom, despair, and agony on me, Deep dark depression, excessive misery….” Those were the opening lines to a song based skit from the country music and comedy show “Hee Haw” back in the 1970s. Somehow the words and tune have remained stuck in my mind all these years. Those lines sum up my feelings regarding...

For many conservatives today’s political news may resemble the early days of World War II: endless defeats and little to suggest future victories. Make no mistake, the defeats are real, but the situation is not as bleak as it may appear. The left triumphs in the political realm and this makes its victories public. By...

“How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?” asked President Abraham Lincoln, who answered his own question: “Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” And Congress’ saying that D.C. is a state would equally contradict truth and reality, as our nation’s capital lacks...

I noticed a strange occurrence lately, which started when several articles began to appear asking if we should still wear masks outside. My first reaction to this was, “What do you mean ‘still’?! You don’t need masks outside!” But apparently, officials in states other than my own think you do. Slate, it appears, kicked off this questioning of...

I first became a huge fan of Ernest “Papa” Hemingway back in my twenties. I read his short stories, nearly all his novels, and his memoir, A Moveable Feast, recounting the time in Paris when he was just beginning his adventures in fiction. I also read several biographies about him, including Carlos Baker’s classic Ernest Hemingway: A...

How can America unite again to do great things if we are led by people who believe America suffers from a great sickness of the soul, an original sin that dates back to her birth as a nation?  Consider. After his long night of prayer for “the right verdict” to be pronounced—Derek Chauvin was convicted...

In a message commenting on my article on NATO’s strategic purpose in the post-cold war era and its current use as a tool of United States hegemony in Europe, Chronicles Editor Paul Gottfried raised an intriguing question: “Is it really possible to divorce the striving for continued American hegemony in Europe from the founding of NATO as a ‘defensive pact’?...

“I took a chance on an ‘imperfect’ pregnancy,” the title of a New York Times article recently proclaimed. Intrigued, I read about author Jacquelynn Kerubo’s journey through a fertility clinic where, after initial treatments, she and her husband were told that they had a “mosaic embryo.” A mosaic embryo, Kerubo explains, is one which could result in...

In the brilliant novel “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” author Tom Wolfe describes what he calls the intense media interest in covering “The Great White Defendant.” A review of “Bonfire” explains: The overarching theme of the book is the search for the great white defendant. The vast majority of defendants in New York City are...

Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang continues to lead the way in multiple polls attempting to parse out a packed race for the New York City mayoralty. If elected, Yang will become the first Asian American mayor of New York City, and only the second minority of any description to hold the office, following David Dinkins. Yang’s...

The jury found Derek Chauvin guilty of all the charges. No surprise. Many others are now writing about the intimidation of the court and the jury by the politicians, media, and rioters who have been enforcing their distorted view of justice on the country for at least the last year. The thing that has occupied...

Acts of contrition can never endear the Republican Party to black Americans. Republicans have assumed the opposite for decades, thinking that blacks will reward them with support for their energetic pandering. What Republicans fail to realize is that black people view voting as an expression of group solidarity. This solidarity is crucial to the identity of black...

A new creature has appeared on our political landscape—woke capitalism. It is not the usual, perfectly rational, corporate politicking where businesses hire lobbyists or run PR campaigns to help boost their bottom lines. Here clout is mobilized to advance policies that have absolutely nothing to do with either generating profit or enhancing a company’s “good...

When President Joe Biden announced he would withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11, GOP hawks like Sens. Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham responded predictably. “Grave mistake,” muttered McConnell. “Insane,” said Graham, “dumber than dirt and… dangerous.” Of more interest were the responses of conservative Republicans who commended the president....

A Man For All Seasons is a film for our time. In this classic period drama, Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield), a brilliant writer and intellectual and former Lord Chancellor of England, refuses to approve Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, rejects his decision to break with Rome, and recognize the king as the Supreme Head...