When NBC’s Lester Holt asked President Joe Biden what might prompt him to send U.S. troops to rescue Americans fleeing Ukraine, Biden replied: “There’s not. That’s a world war when Americans and Russia start shooting at one another.” “It’s not like we’re dealing with a terrorist organization. We’re dealing with one of the largest...
The furor over contentious symbols is rising again, the latest case occurring in connection with Canadian truckers protesting vaccine mandates in Ottawa. The frightening hate symbols found among the truckers were described thus by Al Jazeera: The convoy was organised by known far-right figures, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network has reported in detail. Confederate flags and...
Whenever America is polarized, as it is today, people go back in memory and history to recall other times their nation was so divided. The Civil War of the 1860s and the social revolution that tore us apart in the 1960s come instantly to mind. In that latter time, there was no figure more central...
Because America entered both world wars of the 20th century last, while all the other great powers bled one another, and because we outlasted the Soviet Empire in the Cold War, America emerged, in the term of President George H.W. Bush, as “the last superpower.” We had it all. We were the “indispensable nation.” We...
The Pentagon affirmed its commitment to critical race theory on Wednesday, pointing to a talk delivered by Bishop Garrison, senior advisor to the secretary of defense for human capital and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Garrison joined a panel at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), which has received funding from every major defense contractor, Wall...
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has pushed neoconservative party lines on foreign policy for decades; the last time I read a dissenting view on that subject in the Journal was when I wrote an editorial for it in 1989. Although my caustic remarks on a global democratic foreign policy were published on the editorial...
When the Union was fighting to preserve itself in the Civil War, the France of Napoleon III moved troops into Mexico, overthrew the regime of Benito Juarez, set up a monarchy and put Austrian Archduke Maximilian von Habsburg on the throne as Emperor of Mexico—one month before Gettysburg. Preoccupied, the Union did nothing. At war’s...
Former President Trump is growing more vocal in his criticism of former Vice President Mike Pence for certifying the 2020 Presidential election. At a Texas rally on Jan. 29, Trump said that Pence could have sent electoral votes from disputed states back to their state legislatures, thereby overturning the 2020 presidential election results. Trump followed...
Water rights are at the heart of a growing geopolitical conflict between Egypt and its neighbors, as I discussed in my missive last week during my annual trip to the region. In the center of this conflict is the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) under construction in Ethiopia since 2011, and which Egypt is concerned...
Speaking in Conroe, Texas, last weekend, former President Donald Trump accused his successor of allowing millions of migrants to enter the country illegally across our Southern border. “The most important border … for us is not Ukraine’s border but America’s border,” thundered Trump. “Before Joe Biden sends any troops to defend a border in Europe,...
My annual Middle Eastern tour this winter is limited to Egypt, mainly due to the less rigid Corona-related restrictions there than elsewhere in the region. An additional motive is the fact that this country of over a hundred million souls faces an unprecedented geopolitical crisis that is not sufficiently known in the outside world yet...
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It would not surprise George Santayana (1863-1952) that his most famous aphorism is all he is remembered for, nor that it has become almost a cliché, nor that the Americans, whom he knew so well, would consider that they had heeded his lesson by...
Is the territorial integrity of Ukraine a cause worth America’s fighting a war with Russia? No, it is not. And this is why President Joe Biden has declared that the U.S. will not become militarily involved should Russia invade Ukraine. Biden is saying that, no matter our sentiments, our vital interests dictate staying out of...
There seems to be a widespread belief that Joe Biden has exceeded the mandate for which he was elected. It seems we’re supposed to believe that those who voted for the Biden-Harris ticket craved moderation after Trump’s troubled and unsettling presidency. Writer and commentator Scott Jennings repeats this familiar narrative in a recent interview with...
Professor Levine writes knowledgeably about Burnham’s abilities to analyze America during the Cold War and his predications about the American future. Burnham has remained fashionable within the independent American right. The part of Burnham’s oeuvre valued by this segment of the right are his analysis of managerialism as an historical phenomenon and his clear-headed look...
“Rule One, on page one of the book of war, is: ‘Do not march on Moscow,’” Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery told the House of Lords in 1962. “Various people have tried it, Napoleon and Hitler, and it is no good.” The victor of El Alamein made an understatement. Napoleon’s invasion in June 1812 took...
Christianity and Social Justice, by Jon Harris (Reformation Zion Publishing; 160 pp., $14.99). In this slim discussion of social justice and its relationship, or non-relationship, to Christianity, Jon Harris, a Protestant theologian and Baptist minister, addresses the topic long after he observed the “incursion made by the social justice movement” into the Baptist seminary where he...
The Economist contemptuously called him France’s “wannabe Donald Trump.” He’s been accused by The Atlantic of using the “Trump playbook.” Not to be outdone, Britain’s New Statesman dubbed him a “TV-friendly fascist.” French anti-racism and rights groups, including SOS Racisme, have filed complaints against him. Already thrice convicted of inciting racial hatred, he is due...
The philosopher and commentator James Burnham (1905-1987) was one of National Review’s founders and senior editors. Having broken with Trotskyism, he became one of those thinkers in the tradition of Edmund Burke and James Fitzjames Stephen, who, if not enthusiastic about modern democracy, were classic defenders of free institutions. He attained fame for his 1941...
British author Douglas Murray recently wrote what he calls a “bit of self-criticism” about the American right in the online magazine UnHerd. Murray builds his argument around what he considers a very serious problem: “Bill Maher, Bari Weiss and a slew of other liberals who have fallen out with their own tribe have chosen not to...
A Most Interesting Problem: What Darwin’s Descent of Man Got Right and Wrong about Human Evolution Ed. Jeremy DeSilva Princeton Universtiy Press 288 pp., $27.95 The complex debate about the place of Darwinian theory in discussions about humankind’s nature has been further complicated by an academic left that has taken up trashing Darwin—who is, after...
Professor Zbigniew Janowski, in his essay “Equality’s Third Wave,” (January 2022 Chronicles) has hit the nail on the head. Equality isn’t good enough, but equity and diversity should prevail. Quality and merit are gone; second-rate is now good enough. We have watered down our core values to the lowest common denominator! —Lynn Paskow Savits Aventura,...
Catholics have figured prominently among American conservatives, from Russell Kirk to William F. Buckley, Jr., to Antonin Scalia. Though they differed in many ways, Kirk, Buckley, and Scalia all emphasized the importance of tradition in ordering any decent society and the consistency of America’s constitutional order with Catholic doctrine and tradition. The neoconservative shattering of...
Pope Francis addressed concerns about his controversial Traditionis custodes (Guardians of the Tradition)—an apostolic letter issued in July 2021 that placed severe new restrictions on the practice of the Latin Mass in the Roman Catholic Church—in a Responsa ad dubia dated Dec. 4. Both documents make it clear that the traditional Tridentine liturgy (Missale Romanum,...
I played on the European tennis circuit during the late 1950s, ranking number three in Greece. But don’t be too impressed. Unlike today—when Greek players rank fourth internationally in men’s tennis and sixth in women’s—Greece was hardly a tennis power, and I was ranked among the lowest in Europe. In 1957, the American player...
The political hostility of the United States today is directed at no one more than America’s European-descended whites—the group whose ancestors are largely responsible for settling, building, and defending this country. That is not to say others contributed nothing, but that the largest contributions and, indeed, the central elements of America’s political and cultural institutions...
It has always been the practice of the state to try to undermine or eliminate other bodies and associations that rival it for affection and obedience, primarily the parish, guild, community, and family. The modern unified and ever-present state has developed this power to such an extent that in some cases, we are learning now,...
At first blush, the 1989 film Driving Miss Daisy seems innocuous. Its plot centers around the relationship of an aging Jewish matron, Daisy Werthan (Jessica Tandy), and her black chauffeur Hoke Colburn (Morgan Freeman). Yet a recent rewatch caused me to notice irksome elements of the plot I missed the first time around. This has...
“I am merely a genius, not a god,” mystery writer Rex Stout’s fictional detective Nero Wolfe said. “A genius may discover the hidden secrets and display them; only a god can create new ones.” Such a genius was French composer Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns, who was born in Paris in 1835 and died at age 86 in...
The Madman’s Library: The Strangest Books, Manuscripts and Other Literary Curiosities From History by Edward Brooke-Hitching Chronicle Books 256 pp., $29.95 Books are the “emblem of civilization,” Edward Brooke-Hitching writes in a new book that explores the strange history of the medium. The earliest books were used to establish and uphold administrative, legal, and taxation...
What makes a great novelist? Genius—the ability to see connections hidden from most of us—obviously helps, but if great novels are great commentaries on the human condition, then living in a rich, stimulating, and challenging environment may also be essential. A.N. Wilson’s brilliantly unorthodox literary biography of Iris Murdoch—perhaps the greatest novelist writing in...
Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell by Jason L. Riley Basic Books 304 pp., $30 It is hardly surprising that an economist and historian of ideas who spent a long career arguing against the conventional wisdom of politicians and policy wonks would have a biography about him titled Maverick. It is much more surprising...
Two Texas National Guardsmen sat in a “non-tactical” vehicle near the Mexican border and south of Laredo, Texas on the morning of Jan. 18. The Army Times reported that the men got out to assist Border Patrol in stopping a Chrysler 300 after it was seen picking up six migrants. As they approached, the driver, a suspected smuggler,...
Former President Donald Trump questions the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. For half the country, this makes him a “sore loser” who promotes “conspiracy theories” and pushes “The Big Lie.” But when President Joe Biden in his recent press conference preemptively questions the legitimacy of the 2022 midterm elections, nine months before they even...
Before he appeared at his first solo news conference of 2022, President Joe Biden knew he had a communications problem he had to deal with. Namely, how to get off the defensive. How to avoid spending his time with the White House press corps defending his decisions and explaining his actions as allegations of failure,...
Amid the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, multiple U.S. and defense officials have told the press that the Biden administration is in the final stages of selecting military units for deployment to Eastern Europe. The U.S. accuses Russia of planning to invade Ukraine, despite threats of heavy reprisals, while Moscow insists on guarantees that there would be...
Two years ago, Gracy Olmstead, a journalist who writes on farming and farming communities, partnered with Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) to compose a list of those whom she and the Institute view as “conservatives.” Of the now deceased figures who appear on Olmstead’s list, very few of them have any connection to anything identifiably conservative....
If the left believed that draping the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, around the neck of former President Donald Trump and the party that refused to repudiate him would sink the GOP, it appears to have miscalculated. For, as the left painted the Capitol riot as an “armed insurrection,” “domestic terrorism,” “attempted coup,” and...
In 2014, when Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to a U.S.-backed coup that ousted a pro-Russian regime in Kyiv by occupying Crimea, President Barack Obama did nothing. When Putin aided secessionists in the Donbass in seizing Luhansk and Donetsk, once again, Obama did nothing. Why did we not come to the military assistance of Ukraine?...
After he left the Church of Scientology, Hollywood screenwriter Paul Haggis recalled a discussion he had had with his fellow Scientologists. If great leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. can err, Haggis suggested to his zealous peers, so too can the cult’s leader, David Miscavige. “How dare you compare a great man like David Miscavige...
“The next few days … will mark a turning point in this nation’s history,” said President Joe Biden in his Atlanta speech to reframe the debate in Congress on voting rights legislation and the filibuster. He went on: “Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadows, justice over injustice? … I know where I...
“Although I deal with the Italian attempt to build a fascist state,” Chronicles editor Paul Gottfried wrote in response to an obtuse critic of his latest book, Antifascism: Course of a Crusade, “I am also quite critical of Mussolini’s career, especially his involvement with Hitler’s Third Reich and the unfortunate anti-Semitic laws that Il Duce...
Chronicles Associate Editor Pedro Gonzalez was accused of being an anti-Semite by The Spectator Associate Editor Douglas Murray on Wednesday of last week. In an article entitled “When the Right Plays With Jew-Hate” in the Substack newsletter of former New York Times op-ed editor Bari Weiss, Murray wrote that Gonzalez “unmasked himself boringly and yet still wretchedly, as an antisemite.”...
After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, the breakup of the USSR began. But the dissolution did not stop with the 14 Soviet “republics” declaring their independence of Moscow. Decomposition had only just begun. Transnistria broke away from Moldova. South Ossetia and Abkhazia seceded from Georgia. Chechnya broke free of...
“Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now.” That was the headline over the editorial of 1,000 words in The New York Times of Sunday last. On first read, I thought the Times was conceding its obsession and describing its mission. For the editorial began by bewailing yet anew the “horrifying” event, “the very real bloodshed of...
While all facts are true, not all facts are relevant. And what are the relevant facts in this crisis where 100,000 Russian troops are now stationed along the Ukrainian border? Fact one: There is not now and never has been a vital U.S. interest in Ukraine to justify risking a war with Russia. History tells...
Science Under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America by Andrew Jewett Harvard University Press 368 pp., $41.00 I came of age intellectually during the academic science wars of the 1990s. I was just beginning my dissertation when physicist Alan Sokal created a scandal for leftist postmodernist enemies of science by getting his...
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. First, America was far more homogenous before the 1965 Immigration Act and the “New Left” political and social revolution of...
Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us by Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro Princeton University Press 336 pp., $29.95 Fundamentalism has long been considered a religious phenomenon, a narrowmindedness that only afflicts Bible-thumping extremists. Yet fundamentalist thinking is everywhere today, and leads naturally to the authoritarian mind and the one-party state....