Author: Miscellaneous Authors (Miscellaneous Authors)

Home Miscellaneous Authors
Post

On NATO and Europe

The British Conservative Party’s defense policy remains frozen in a time warp as we head toward a general election in the United Kingdom this spring. The party is opposed to the European Reaction Force on the grounds that it undermines NATO and the alliance with America. For a party that has been in opposition, it...

Post

On John Locke

To argue, as Paul Gottfried did in “Distrusting John Locke” (Views, January), that the writings of John Locke were not instrumental to the founding of this country is to suppose that the authors of the Federalist did not know what they were about. In philosophy, John Locke was sometimes an extremist, and he was wrong...

Post

On Federal Power

William J. Watkins’ comment on states being forced to adopt the .08 blood-alcohol standard for drunken driving (Cultural Revolutions, January) is a narrow objection to federal power. The feds are not threatening to jail the entire population of any state which does not adopt the standard; they are only threatening not to return some of...

Post

On Paleoconservatism

Although I agree with most of the ideas expressed in your round table “What Is Paleoconservatism?” (Views, January), I believe it is a serious mistake to call this persuasion by such a name. The liberals must love you for so hobbling yourselves. To the average person, the name brings one of two things to mind:...

Post

On England’s Joy

Christie Davies’ enraged tirade against the Scots (“The English Rejoice at Scotland’s Coming Independence,” Correspondence, December 2000) was unusually bitter, even for the often bitter pages of Chronicles. There really is no point in dwelling on Davies’ hysterical eruptions (which I am clipping out and saving as examples of undiluted, distilled nationalist venom), except to...

Post

On Enlightenment

I have been subscribing to Chronicles for over three years, and I look forward to the enlightenment offered by each issue. I wish I had begun partaking of this wisdom long, long ago, but I suppose we have to be ready for something before we can reap the benefits of it. Every issue offers a...

Post

On Misrepresented Monsters

I enjoyed reading George McCartney’s review of Monsters From the Id in the November 2000 issue of Chronicles (“Frankenstein’s Children,” Opinions). However, it contains some misrepresentations of what I had to say on the relationship between sex and horror. To begin with, the Ford Foundation never funded Alfred Kinsey’s sex surveys; it is the Rockefeller...

Post

On Reparations

Philip Jenkins is certainly right about the rising trajectory of demands for reparations for slavery (“For What We Have Done, and What We Have Failed to Do,” Vital Signs, November 2000). I hope, but am doubtful, that he is also right about the potential of this gambit for exposing the root absurdity of liberal social...

Post

On Quebec Separatism

I appreciate the extraordinarily well-informed commentary by Sean Scallon on the current political scene in Canada (“CRAP Happens,” Correspondence, October 2000). As I learned 20 years ago when I visited Quebec and met my French-Canadian wife, Anglo-Canadians are fond of pulling the wool over the eyes of Americans on the actual situation in Quebec. The...

Post

On the American Empire

While I agree with much of what Justin Raimondo wrote in his review of Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (“An Empire, If You Can Bear It,” Opinions, September), I must take issue with some of his “facts.” First, the “American military machine” has not become autonomous; it is, rather, completely...

Post

On Capitalism and Culture

As both a capitalist and an Old Rightist, I was ambivalent about Sam Francis’s article declaring capitalism the enemy (Principalities & Powers, August). There is much truth to his analysis, but his blanket condemnation goes too far. Small-scale capitalism provides much of die freedom that remains in this country. The entrepreneurial boom of the last...

Post

On Episcopalianism

While William Murchison (Cultural Revolutions, June) is correct that the United States, and, in particular, almost all of its nominally Christian bodies, should be seen as a missionary field, his prescribed cure will only make the patient more gravely ill. Protestant faith is being eaten alive by a monster with three heads: heresy, Anglo-Catholicism, and...

Post

On The Culture of Critique

I thank Paul Gottfried for a generally accurate and positive review of my book, The Culture of Critique (“A Race Apart,” Opinions, June). Nevertheless, there are a few issues that bear discussion, the most important of which is the role of Jewish organizations and intellectuals with strong Jewish identifications as agents of change in the...

Post

On Hispanics and the GOP

Samuel Francis (Principalities & Powers, April 2000) is correct in much of his analysis of the weaknesses of Gov. George W. Bush’s political strategy for attracting Hispanic votes. He is also correct in debunking the endlessly repeated canard that Bush won 49 percent (rather than 39 percent) of the Texas Hispanic vote in his successful...

Post

On the Return of Jim Crow

William Murchison’s “Color Me Kweisi” (Views, May 2000) brings to mind an aspect of the so-called “civil rights” movement which has played an active part in undermining this country. While the left has failed to achieve total collectivization through the democratic process, it has introduced a caste system that can circumvent both referenda and ethics...

Post

On Elian

Thomas Fleming is wrong when he writes (Cultural Revolutions, April) that, by Cuban law, Elian Gonzalez belongs to his next-of-kin, his father. According to Cuban law (specifically the Codigo de Familia Ley, No. 1289), parental authority is subordinated to “inculcating” the “internationalist spirit and socialist morality.” According to Article 95, section three, of this so-called...

Post

On the Futility of Politics

I look forward to reading Sam Francis in each issue of Chronicles and rarely have a major quibble with his analysis of politics and public policy. However, in his otherwise thorough and accurate critique of the Buchanan campaign (“Revolt of the 300-Pound Beefy Guys,” Principalities & Powers, February), he includes a sentence that could be...

Post

On Chronicles and Race

It is with sadness that I must inform you that I will not be renewing my subscription . . . the next time around. I was severely disappointed in the Thomas Fleming article “X2K: aut Christus aut nihil,” in the December 1999 issue. This is the second major disappointment I have experienced in an article...

Post

On the Council of Conservative

Citizens Clyde Wilson is simply wrong when he writes that “the Council of Conservative Citizens was not responsible for saving our flag” and that the Council’s “efforts, including rallies by tattooed motorcycle thugs and David Duke followers, have been resoundingly counterproductive—just what the media wanted” (“Letter From South Carolina,” Correspondence, January). In the first place,...

Post

On Pat Buchanan

Scott P. Richert’s endorsement of Pat Buchanan’s candidacy (Cultural Revolutions, January) is misplaced. At one time, Buchanan was a figure who could, thankfully, separate the “Old Right” from the “neoconservatives.” Now, Buchanan is the candidate who will further divide the “Old Right” into two camps, “paleoconservative” and “paleolibertarian.” If you think that this has already...

Post

On Quebec Separatism

The “Letter From Montreal: Qui Shall Overcome!” (Correspondence, December) by John O’Neill, who “writes from Detroit,” is so riddled with errors that it makes this reader question the credibility of all your Correspondence. 1. “Jean Baptiste, the patron saint of Quebec.” John the Baptist is the patron saint of French Canadians. Quebec has its quota...

Post

On the Other Lindbergh

I was pleased to see the article in the November Chronicles by Justin Raimondo on Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. Lindbergh stands with William Jennings Bryan and Louis McFadden, who also made control of the money supply by private interests an issue in public debate. Bryan, Lindbergh, and McFadden are all swept under the rug by conventional economists,...

Post

On NAFTA and Detroit

In “Downsizing Detroit: Motown’s Lament” (Views, November), Greg Kaza provides an insight into the bleak future for unskilled workers in one American city. Unskilled workers in many other American cities face that same future. The problems of the inner city, however, can only be worsened by restricting trade or by creating government-sponsored “Renaissance Zones.” Rather...

Post

On “Easter in Palestine”

I wondered, reading the “Letter From Gaza and the West Bank” (Correspondence, October), what the author would recommend as a suitable basis for peace negotiations, now so far advanced, other than dismantling the state of Israel. He takes a position that the Palestine Authority has not adopted. As a Zionist for life, I was saddened...

Post

On the Individual and Protestantism

Donald W. Livingston’s insightful sketch of individualism and its history (“The Strange Career of Individualism,” October) pays scant attention to what is surely the most important part of the story: the Protestant Reformation. For Livingston, the emergence and development of modern individualism has to do primarily with philosophy—Hobbes, Descartes, Paine, Mill—but it was Protestantism’s emphasis...

Post

On Life and Law

Aaron D. Wolf’s condemnation of civil disobedience by pro-life activists (Cultural Revolutions, October) strikes me as a classic case of sloppy thinking, characterized by what Hannah Arendt called the inability to grasp elementary distinctions. Wolf’s sweeping denial that one may break the law even for a good cause is not good law. There exists in...

Post

On Canadian Politics

Greg Kaza’s article on Canadian Red Tory and former prime minister Brian Mulroney (“Bush’s Red Tory,” Vital Signs, August) was well informed and insightful almost throughout. But near the end, Mr. Kaza erroneously stated that Reform Party leader Preston Manning “has no intention of abandoning his conservative base.” In fact, he already has. Except for...

Post

On Military Readiness

I’d like to commend Christopher Check on his great piece “Not Ready, Aim, Misfire” (August). It was superb and right on the mark. I subscribe to the Marine Corps Times, which is mainly aimed at active-duty Marines. Mostly, the Times is concerned with this benefit and that benefit, and just how to get them all....

Post

On Scientism and John Rawls

Antony Flew’s fine essay on the infelicities of John Rawl’s treatment of justice (“‘Social’ Justice Is Not Justice,” July) would, I think, have benefited from calling attention to the fact that Rawls appears to have been influenced very much by a scientistic account of human character formation. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls says that...

Post

On Federalism and Flag-Burning

The Supreme Court, in the case of Johnson v. Texas, arrogated to the federal government the power to decide that all states must allow the public burning of the federal government’s flag. This decision clearly contradicted both the near unanimous understanding of previous Supreme Court justices, including such constitutional nihilists as Chief Justice Earl Warren...

Post

On Flexibility

Let me get this straight. In the June Chronicles, one W. Robert Hawkins opposed the U.S. war against Serbia, dismissing interventionist congressmen as ahistorical nitwits and likening the Serbs to Texans threatened with the loss of San Antonio. Yet in the April 26, 1999, number of the Weekly Standard, one William R. Hawkins, “senior research...

Post

On the Human Condition

My grandparents both emigrated from Germany shortly after World War I. Grandma hailed from a small town on the plains of Lower Saxony, and Grandpa grew up in a smaller town in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. Both came from large families and left behind numerous brothers and sisters and their offspring. Among my...

Post

On Modesty

I was disappointed by Karina Rollins’ simplistic portrayal of sexual mores in her review of Wendy Shalit’s book, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue (“Natural Woman,” May). Shalit’s book should not have been embraced so uncritically. In fact, I doubt that anyone with mature sensibilities could get through it without shuddering at its...

Post

On Modernizing Monarchy

Like Michael Stenton (“Letter From England: Thoroughly Modern Monarchy” March), I am amazed by these “modern” Englishmen who are so rapidly dismantling the finest constitution in the world, without the traces of which the United States and Canada would be far more lost than they already are. The only objection which can fairly be raised...

Post

On True Refreshment

While so many publications are content to serve up the same flabby perspectives, it is always refreshing to read Chronicles. Each issue just gets better and better. As luck would have it, the May issue showed up the very same day that I had gone to the public library to catch up on what the...

Post

On Diversity

To make an urgent point—the corruption of the representation of history in film by the anachronistic distortions of contemporary politics—Roger McGrath, in his fine and well-argued analysis (“Celluloid Nation,” March), at the outset and at the end uses language that suggests that he holds non-Christians are un-American, the practice of religions other than Christianity marking...

Post

On the Managerial

State Considering his kind assessment of my work (“Force and Idea,” February), which is matched by my judgments of his, it may seem ungenerous to criticize Sam Francis’s treatment of my comments on ideology in After Liberalism. I bring up our difference of opinion only for purposes of clarification. In most of our views about...

Post

On Education in Texas

David Hartman’s comments about the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) tests are on the mark (Cultural Revolutions, February). It is a widespread practice for Texas teachers to “teach the TAAS.” Depriving students of a broad-based liberal arts education has never been so common. History classes are being downgraded to “social studies” status so that...

Post

On Propoganda and Piety

Reading Chronicles has provided me, in equal parts, education, philosophic inspiration, and new words to add to my vocabulary—until now. Justin Raimondo’s review (“The British Were Coming!” December 1998) of Thomas Mahl’s Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44 is one of the best examples of misinformation, damning indictments unsupported by facts,...

Post

On Dictations

No sooner were my spirits raised by reading your quotation from the Oxford English Dictionary on the meaning of to parse than they were dashed by this sentence in the New York Times: “‘It’s not just, “Can you parse this sentence in the subjunctive?'” said Mrs. Cipolone, who had 36 Latin students when she began...

Post

On Saving Private Ryan

Wayne Allensworth, in his poignant and beautifully written review of Saving Private Ryan (“The Face of Battle,” January), focuses on what is right with the film. However, I find much that is wrong, and, for me, the wrong outweighs the right. Nonetheless, Steven Spielberg makes an important contribution to the making of war movies by...

Post

On Public Enemies

Your October 1998 issue struck a particularly agreeable note. I am 62, and the society that I knew as a child and young man has been so corrupted that, when I describe that former time to young people, they believe I am indulging some sort of fantasy. Still, the question posed by Thomas Fleming (“Mob...

Post

On Hillary Clinton in Bulgaria

During Hillary Clinton’s recent trip to Bulgaria (Cultural Revolutions, December), the Washington Times featured a front-page photo of the First Lady surrounded by several Bulgarian orphans, over the caption, “Aiding Orphans.” I sincerely hope that Mrs. Clinton showed more compassion toward these Bulgarian orphans than she did during her 1996 visit with their Rumanian counterparts....

Post

On Evangelical Education

Douglas Wilson’s article, “Why Evangelical Colleges Aren’t,” (Vital Signs, September) is provocative but unsubstantiated. It is also quietly self-serving, failing to mention his role as a founder of New St. Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho. His assertions about evangelical higher education ought to be measured against the facts of those colleges and against his own...

Post

On School Vouchers

Lew Rockwell (“Flies in the Ointment,” September) and I have the same ultimate objective: “an educational market in which parents are responsible for paying for their own children’s education.” We agree also on the “twin evils of public education: involuntary funding and compulsory attendance.” In our ideal (libertarian) world, government would play no role in...

Post

On Fat and Fatter

Ralph Reiland (“Cultural Revolutions,” August) find himself in the same camp as the AIDS activists in insisting that political philosophy dictate physiology. The AIDS activists say “AIDS is everyone’s disease” because they can’t stand the idea of a virus disproportionately affecting them. Reiland pooh-poohs mountains of evidence of obesity’s harmfulness (heavily documented in my book...

Post

On Christian Vegetarianism

Many of us eat without giving a thought to the miserable lives and violent, bloody deaths of the animals on our plates. Christians have a choice. We can add to the level of violence, suffering, and death in the world, or we can attempt to withdraw our support for violence and bloodshed wherever and whenever...

Post

On Pat Buchanan and Trade

Kudos to Chronicles for “Sovereignty for Sale? The Free Trade Debate” (July) and high praise to Brother Pat for “Toward One Nation, Indivisible“! One thing, though: the Buchananite fair trade “Long March Back” will only come via the third-party route. The Republicans are but the Fabian wing of the Socialist Party, the Democrats being the...

Post

On Buchananism

A generation ago, utopianism was mainly a leftist mental habit. In the past decade, the right has adopted the Utopian frame of mind, not a surprise for groups out of power for so long. By utopianism, I mean Patrick Buchanan’s lament in Chronicles (“Toward One Nation, Indivisible,” July), a rather one-sided analysis (among excellent observations),...