The Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia enjoyed a full 24 hours of resurgent infamy before Gay Day came and took it all away. Screaming and shrieking throughout the process was the puerile, facile, and ultimately Manichaean Weltanschauung of our ruling class, which is best summarized in the phrase, “We are on the...
Author: Aaron D. Wolf (Aaron D. Wolf)
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The LCMS Calls a Post a Post
If the role of religion in America today is to teach the faithful to bend over and kiss the ring of postmodernity and beg for forgiveness for actually believing something, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod just failed spectacularly, flubbed its lines, and fell off the stage. I, for one, am elated. Tuesday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed...
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Planned Parenthood: Hearts and Minds, and Livers
On Tuesday, July 14, the Irvine, California-based Center for Medical Progress released the first of three videos aimed at exposing some of the horrifying practices of Planned Parenthood, including the harvesting of baby organs through elective abortion for sale to biomedical research groups. The hidden camera shows Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Senior Director of...
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After SCOTUS: Welcoming Apocalypse
Here are my initial thoughts on today’s SCOTUS opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges and three other cases, which effectively makes “same-sex marriage” the law of the land. Nothing substantial has changed. The Supreme Court did not suddenly create more homosexuals or instill a new desire in the hearts of sodomites to flout nature. That was...
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The Battle Flag and the New Symbolic Logic
Herewith, some exercises in the New Symbolic Logic, inspired by arguments against symbols of the Confederacy. Sociopath and terrorist Dylann Storm Roof murdered nine Christian black people. Dylann Roof liked the Confederate Battle Flag. Therefore, the Confederate Battle Flag causes people to commit mass murder and become terrorists. And therefore, the Confederate Battle Flag...
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SSM: Yawning at SCOTUS
There are two sides to the same-sex “marriage” debate, as SCOTUS sees it: Decide now for federally mandated pretend marriage, or rule in favor of “wait and see,” which amounts to a declaration that “gay marriage is inevitable.” We don’t need to wait with baited breath for the ruling. Like old milk, the culture has...
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Bruce Jenner’s Tears
Did you hear the one about Bruce Jenner? No? You missed it? Well, then, it’s probably too late. A grown man says he’s a woman, shaves off his Adam’s apple (for starters), and shows a former network anchor his little black dress. You’d think the late-night comedians would have enough material to get them through...
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“Better Than Balkan”: Blood Against the Levelers
“Exsilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant, Atque alio patriam quaerunt sub sole iacentem.” —Virgil, Georgics II.511-12 Honestly, why bother any more? If there is any unifying theme in the scribblings of genuine, bona-fide American conservatives, it is that our country is lost, whether to whoremongers or warmongers—or both. Drum sets in...
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Charlie, Christian, and the Bondage of Freedom
“[R]eligion is apt to provide another loyalty than that claimed by the State . . . ” —T.S. Eliot Two Muslims brutally murdered some French cartoonists for blaspheming their holy man. Have we learned something new from this? Yes, it turns out Muslims—the fundamentalist types, not many, but more than you’d...
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Blowing Up the Base: An Abortion Strategy Revealed
The new Republican Congress already looks like a bunch of incompetent boobs. The legislatively meaningless vote for the perennial “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), which would prohibit abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy, was scheduled for a vote today, on the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade. (I...
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Pre-Born Pain and Political Cowardice
RedState.com is suggesting that the 114th Congress “may be the most pro-life Congress Washington has ever seen.” Exhibit A is the reintroduction of the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” (HR 36). The bill, which has had many incarnations, most recently was passed by the House in the previous Congress, before dying in the Senate Judiciary...
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Reaping the Whirlwind With Charlie Hebdo
A handful of Muslims brutally murdered some French cartoonists for blaspheming their holy man. Have we learned something new from this? Yes, it turns out Muslims (well, the fundamentalist types, not many, but more than you’d think, although not the majority, but a significant number, in no way “all,” but in some sense “all”) don’t...
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Tongues of Fire: America’s Phony Religion of Immigration
One year ago, House Republicans were girding their loins to introduce legislation that would amnesty millions of illegal aliens. The “path to citizenship” was reportedly off the table, as GOP leaders, in an effort to please everyone (meaning no one), prepared to veer off onto the “path to legalization,” kicking the can of citizenship down...
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Tongues of Fire: America’s Phony Immigration Religion
We now add immigration amnesty to the arsenal of styrofoam clubs Republicans use for beating Democrats and driving voters to the polls. “We need immigration reform,” so we hear, “but the President has violated the Constitution!” For most Republicans, the “path to citizenship” is not a question of “if,” but of “when.” They talk of...
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Night Moves: The Law of Burglar-Killing
If a man breaks into your house while you and your family are sleeping, intending to steal your things, and you catch him, you have the right to shoot him dead. Seems simple, no? Everyone but a grasshopper-worshiping Hindu would agree, wouldn’t he? After all, “A man’s home is his castle.” Clearly, that widely accepted...
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Iraqi Christians’ Bloody Summer
Christian women are being raped and murdered, Christian men are being shot execution-style or strangled or crucified. And now we have reports of Christian children—it rends the soul to say—beheaded and set on display in public parks. This is Mosul in the summer of ’14, under the control of ISIS, the Islamic State. A man’s...
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Nouns Have Gender
“Congratulations! It’s a boy!” Does that sound like hate speech to you? No? Well, obviously, you’re a cisgender bigot. That’s how Slate’s C.S. Milloy sees it . . . Wait, you don’t know what a “cis” is? What’s wrong with you? In today’s gender-studies-enriched society, a “cis” is a “you,” or “your wife,” or all...
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Soccer Wars: 2014 Edition
Pace my colleague Eugene Girin, I stand with Ann—and with Tom Piatak and with Aaron D. Wolf, who have fought for American sporting sanity for years. We were country when country wasn’t cool. For years, we have resisted the foreign invasion that is soccer, unmasking the imposition of the “beautiful game” for what it is: an...
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Idling With Dr. Johnson: Capriciousness
Thinking of Obamacare, the Iraq war authorization, Chinese Walmart slaves, the myth of the “invisible hand,” and the “jobs Americans won’t do,” I stumbled upon this, from The Idler: Forms of government are seldom the result of much deliberation; they are framed by chance in popular assemblies, or in conquered countries by despotic authority. Laws...
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NOAH: The Drinking Game
First, a quick summary of all of the positive reviews by Christian thinkers of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, starring Russell Crowe: The movie Noah is a great conversation starter [shot!]. Like all Hollywood biblical epics, including the Mel Gibson one, the film gets a few things wrong [shot!], but it offers us a great opportunity to...
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Hooters Against Misogyny: The Paradox of Femen(ism)
First came the whirlwind Pussy Riot American tour. And now the Boobish Invasion continues, with the Eastern European “topless sextremists” known as Femen threatening to descend on the United States like a Satanic Swedish Bikini Team. The picture that accompanies this article in Tina Brown’s Daily Beast is a little “NSFW,” and the interview that...
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Sochi, Putin, and Vlad the Drag Queen
In the Dead West, our heroes are no longer cowboys but those creepy weirdos who slink around the alleyways of red-light districts. One such warrior for righteousness is described by the Associated Press as “Vladimir Luxuria, a former Communist lawmaker in the Italian parliament who has become a prominent transgender rights crusader and television personality.”...
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Robertson Repulsion
Duck Commander Phil Robertson is the American Establishment’s worst nightmare, and allowing him simply to exist was not an acceptable option for those who wish to form our opinions and exterminate Christianity from our society. Most everyone has by now heard of the controversy surrounding Robertson’s comments as quoted by a snarky and patronizing article...
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Turkey and Trannies
I don’t blame you for not being up on the very latest from Broadway, that gayest of entertainment venues. And I’ll admit that I’m not about to enrich your cultural life by bringing you up to speed. Unfortunately, however, this has broader implications. I write of Kinky Boots, the current Tony-winning Broadway smash about a...
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Conservatism at Midwinter Spring
[What follows is a meditation on T.S. Eliot’s poem “Little Gidding.” All indented quotations, with apologies to their author, are taken from Eliot.] What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from . . . The first step,...
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Nidal Hasan’s Rivival
When Nidal Hasan arrived at the Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas after receiving his death sentence on August 28, he was wearing an Islamic beard. The Koran is sketchy on the exact requirements for facial hair, but many imams, past and present, have argued that shaving the face is haram. (Whereas trimming the mustache...
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Navy Yard: “Regardless” of the Truth
The dust had barely settled at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday when a barrage of lies began to fly from the usual suspects on the left. For once, the religion of the crazed shooter, Aaron Alexis, was not buried or ignored completely, since he was publicly connected not to Islam but to Buddhism....
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Learning to Hate George Zimmerman
The 2013 Summer of Race has come to a close, and thanks to endless badgering from the media, America remains sharply divided. We’re told that on one side are those who care deeply about the plight of blacks in America and, on the other, are racists of varying degrees who are glad that George Zimmerman...
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Sweeping Away the Unwanted Babies
The left-wing media painted the legislation restricting abortions in Texas with the broadest brush. “Sweeping” was the most common adjective. As in “’It is a very happy, celebratory day,’” Perry said before signing the sweeping antiabortion measure” (Salon); “Gov. Rick Perry signs sweeping abortion bill” (ABC News); or “Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed sweeping new...
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Nazi Russians and “Basic Morality”
A burbling controversy of Olympic proportions has found its way to Moscow via Lausanne. On one side the forces of evil are arrayed behind the stallion-riding Vladimir Putin and his “anti-gay” law (which sailed through the Duma in June). On the other are the forces of absolute equality, led by the bribe-swilling International Olympic...
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Staring at Hiroshima From Babel
August 6 marks the 68th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima. One goal, many claimed, was to “weaken the resolve” of the Japanese to fight by inspiring terror (what we now call “shock and awe”) in the hearts of our enemies, combatant and civilian. Said Gen. George Marshall, “It’s no good to warn...
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Liberals, Liturgy, and Lattes
Making the rounds in the paste-a-link world is an editorial by a young religion blogger, Rachel Held Evans: “Why Millennials Are Leaving the Church.” The reason for its frequent pasting is that she mentions how unimpressed the Millennials (those born from roughly the 1980’s into the 2000’s) are with the trappings of today’s hip...
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Pleasure-Marrying: The Next Human Right
In my recent piece “Hell-Bent,” one of my overarching themes was that the rush to approve same-sex marriage was really about self-identified “heterosexuals” seeking approval for themselves. Legally sanctioned “gay marriage” is a kind of public proclamation that the constraints of traditional morality do not apply. As if to prove my point, Time‘s new cover story is...
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Hell-Bent: Why Gay Marriage Was Inevitable
Like it or not, gay marriage is here to stay. The Supreme Court ruling matters little. That was the case well before oral arguments were heard, and not for legal reasons. Yes, the fact that some states had already recognized it played a part, but the real reason gay marriage is now a permanent part...
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Toilet Equality
Right before our eyes, we’ve witnessed a profound change in the way that American society treats the institution of marriage. Forget about the law—state or federal. This is a cultural shift, and we need to be aware of the way that the shift occurred. We can forget about the law, because one way or another,...
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Sexualizing Children: NBA Edition
The national celebration of sodomy continues thanks to Sports Illustrated’s new cover story featuring the first “major sport” athlete to come out of the closet while still an active player. Jason Collins, a seven-foot-tall black man, writes his own “coming out” story in the current number of SI, along with several other pieces by writers who see...
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Immigration Deform
I suppose there’s no point in writing in advance about “comprehensive immigration reform,” since by the time this magazine reaches your hands the point may be moot. The Gang of Eight may well have tossed Congress the perfect bipartisan plan, and President Obama may have run down Pennsylvania Avenue, pen in hand and surrounded by...
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Neocon 101: Art of the Pooh-Pooh
That stalwart set at National Review known as “The Editors” has done what it always does to a genuinely conservative display in the halls of power. Far from a radical denunciation, which may invite a more thoughtful reading of events and sentences, they’ve taken to light pooh-poohing. Rand Paul is providing “great entertainment,” and “We salute his...
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Adam Lanza’s America
Newtown has now joined the ranks of Columbine, Aurora, and Virginia Tech as ominous names that evoke memories of tragic violence. This one stings especially because 20 children, ages six and seven, were among the 26 murdered at the hitherto tranquil Sandy Hook Elementary School by a punk named Adam Lanza. Celebrities and news anchors...
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Handgun Culture
Bob Costas fired off a lecture during prime-time NBC coverage of the NFL that outraged some political commentators and fans. The speech was in response to a murder-suicide committed by Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher, 25, who killed Kasandra Perkins, 22, the mother of his infant daughter, before kneeling, making the sign of the...
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The ACLU and the WNBA
Getting some play today is a news story from Cranston, Rhode Island, about a ridiculous decision by the Cranston school board banning father-daughter dances. It’s the old pattern. A girl felt left out because she had no one to take her to the father-daughter dance. Mom called the ACLU. The ACLU, which couldn’t care...
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Breaking: Some Yahoo Wrote a Paper
If you’ve got a Facebook or Twitter feed (or a friend who mass-emails) you’ve probably heard that, according to the New York Times and Harvard, Jesus Christ had a wife. Proof came recently in the form of a tiny scrap of papyrus, written in Coptic and dated to the Fourth Century of the Common Era. (I’m still not...
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Chronicles Unbound on Facebook
Click here to see the Facebook page for Chronicles Unbound, the weekly live radio show and podcast of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Today, Srdja Trifkovic joins us live from Belgrade to talk about the surge of anti-Americanism in the Middle East and the killing of an American diplomat.
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Game of Chicken
Dan Cathy, the CEO of the successful chain restaurant Chick-fil-A and a devout Baptist, has made the mistake of insisting that a spade is in fact a spade, and that can mean only one thing: He and his delicious chicken have to go. If only he had played by the rules of the Game! Here...
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GOP: Adios, WASP!
I’d be the last one to suggest that the Republican National Convention should be a bastion of Christian orthodoxy, and I’m sure no one goes there for the liturgy. But still. The schedule ought to tell us something about the “values” of the GOP, don’t you think? I mean priorities, what sort of face you want to...
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Paesano, Go Home
The intro to Justice Scalia’s partial dissent in Arizona v. United States is a perfect demonstration of today’s self-contradictory “conservatism.” It takes with one hand, then pretends to give back with the other (emphasis mine): “The United States is an indivisible ‘Union of sovereign States.’ Hinderlider v. La Plata River & Cherry Creek Ditch Co., 304 U. S. 92, 104 (1938). Today’s opinion,...
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SCOTUS hateus
There are some real stunners in today’s convoluted ruling from the Supremes regarding Arizona v. United States. Here are some of my favorites: “As a general rule, it is not a crime for a removable alien to remain in the United States.” “Federal governance is extensive and complex.” “Removal is a civil matter, . . . ” . ....
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Arab Spring in Red-Hot Rockford Summer
You’da thought Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was Barack Obama, the way Rockford’s local news media fawned over him on Sunday. Yes, Captain Hijab made a super-secret stop in Chronicles‘ hometown early Sunday morning, on his way to the G20 Summit in Cabo. Said Rockford Airport Director Mike Dunn, “The entire delegation were just very very friendly...
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Freedom or the Church?
Check out Chris Check’s review of For Greater Glory, at the Crisis website. Was the Cristeros War about religious liberty, or preserving the Catholic Faith? Find out from someone who knows a thing or two about the conflict.
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Re: Fraud Upon Fraud, Jobs We Won’t Do
Allen Wilson writes in a comment that “We should give them a week’s worth of food and transportation to the orchards and farms of those states where there are complaints that new immigration laws are scaring off Mexican workers.” This really cuts to the heart of things. The very existence of food-stamp programs and...