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 . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
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 . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access to...
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....
Although the U.S. seems to be as woke and post-biblical as any other transformed Western country, our abortion laws since Roe v. Wade (1973) have been wildly out of line with those of the rest of the West. Betsy Clarke, writing in Chronicles’s sister publication, Intellectual Takeout, offers this well-considered observation on the subject: ...
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 . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access to other exclusive features. Already a subscriber? Sign in here
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....
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...
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 . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full...
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 . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access to other exclusive features. Already a subscriber? Sign in here
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 . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access to other exclusive features. Already a subscriber? Sign in here
I dutifully took the Moderna COVID vaccine booster on Nov. 5 at the advice of my younger brother, who practices medicine. Two hours after this ordeal, I began to feel chills and suffer from a very upset stomach. These symptoms vanished two days later, and I resumed my normal routine, which includes jogging. However, a...
There are a number of lessons for those of us on the real right—not the GOP establishment—to learn from Tuesday’s election in Virginia. First, Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory came not so much from bringing the races and parties together, as the usual suspects on Fox News declared, but rather because he won Republican counties in...
Open season has been declared on the late and longtime Chronicles columnist Samuel Francis. Evidence for this can be found in, among other places, a diatribe recently published by political journalist Michael Lind in Tablet, “
Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II by Sean McMeekin Basic Books 864 pp., $40.00 This
Although Thomas F. Bertonneau published only once in Chronicles, on science fiction in 1997, this recently deceased professor of comparative literature was a contributor to whom we should have paid closer . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access to other exclusive features. Already a subscriber? Sign in...
Imgard Furchner, a 96-year-old resident of a special care facility in Germany, is being investigated as a war criminal. She will appear in court in a wheelchair, which is now her customary way of moving about, the Swiss magazine DieWeltwoche reports. She did try to escape from her accusers in a taxi but was apprehended...
Although we didn’t know it at the time, the incidents in Charlottesville, Virginia on Aug. 12, 2017 would soon develop into a narrative for the left to repeat and then recycle in the summer riots of 2020 and eventually the events at the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. Anne Wilson Smith unpacks this narrative in...
Homo Americanus, by Zbigniew Janowski (St. Augustine’s Press; 250 pp., $24.00). Polish American political thinker Zbigniew Janowski examines the reasons that modern American democracy has taken a totalitarian turn. Contrary to the happy talk coming from establishment conservatives about the need to spread America’s so-called liberal democratic values everywhere, Janowski paints a dark but compelling...
That Donald Trump bothered to challenge the official outcome of the November 2020 election was an annoyance to a number of congressional Republicans, representatives and senators alike.
Homo Americanus, by Zbigniew Janowski (St. Augustine’s Press; 250 pp., $24.00).
It seems that capitalists, woke zealots, and street gangs are joined at the hip right now. This idea is fleshed out by writer Michael Anton in an enlightening interview with IM 1776. Anton offers this chilling thought: Certain folks will howl at this, but if you listen to the woke left, they think it’s not merely fine...
In discussions of World War II, much emphasis and critical attention has been conferred on German forces and actions. What is often overlooked, however, are the Soviet deeds during the same time period. Author Sean McMeekin, a historical studies professor at Bard College, seeks to slay this sacred cow of the historical profession and...
The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition (1995) by Willmoore Kendall and George W. Carey Catholic University of America Press 168 pp., $19.95
Impassioned attacks on critical race theory (CRT) are the subject of AMAC Magazine’s August issue. A publication of The Association of Mature American Citizens, a Republican alternative to the American Association of Retired People, the magazine . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access to other exclusive features....
A devastating leftist critique of Mark Levin’s bestselling book American Marxism was posted by Zachary Petrizzo at Salon the other day. After reading Petrizzo’s remarks, I am left wondering about the colossal foolishness of Levin, who set out to write a book—which his celebrity would push to the top of the New York Times best seller list—on something it seems he never bothered...
Conservatives are malcontents who feel alienated from an American politics and culture controlled by the left, Zack Beauchamp declares in a recent Vox article entitled “The anti-American right.” Such dissatisfaction has most recently manifested itself during the Olympics, Beauchamp declares, as these conservatives have even dared to root against Olympic contenders technically representing the U.S. but spewing hatred for...
Despite repeated claims to the contrary by American elites, slavery is not a uniquely American, or even a uniquely white enterprise. Peoples of all nations and colors have engaged in the institution throughout history. One such example is easily found in the compelling history of the Seminole people. Joseph Cotto, of Cotto/Gottfried podcast fame, has self-published an...
That political ideology and activism have become a new religion is something the average individual sees signs of nearly every day. A black man is killed in an altercation with police and his face instantly becomes an icon to be carried in protests, his name a phrase to be . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
The term “political religion” designates the infusion of political beliefs with religious significance. Political religions involve grand plans to transform society into a new sacral order unrelated to how humans have lived beforehand. Political religions also typically divide people into the righteous and the evil based on whether they . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
On July 21, President Joe Biden held a townhall in Cincinnati, taking questions from gushingly friendly CNN “journalists.” The room in which he spoke was half empty. From all appearances, Biden confirmed the suspicions of his critics that he is failing mentally and that what his “advisers” told him to say parroted the views of the left...
Decades before the electronic media giants rose to their dizzying heights of power and began canceling those whom they decided to bully, a man named Leopold Tyrmand, the future founder of Chronicles magazine, exposed the false self-image of the media as they claimed to defend our freedoms, when they were really aiming for absolute social control. Today,...
Lately I’ve been hearing from colleagues and friends that Leo Strauss helped birth neoconservatism and that Straussianism and neoconservatism belong together rhetorically and conceptually. Supposedly neoconservatism would not have existed in the form in which it took over the conservative movement in the 1980s if Strauss had not provided its essential ideas. Thus, so goes...
Members of the establishment conservative media are wimps when it comes to responding to the left’s accusations about white American “systemic racism.” Whether it’s refusing to stand for the national anthem at sports events, substituting the Black National Anthem for the Star-Spangled Banner on PBS, announcing fireworks shows on Independence Day are a “racist” activity, or...
Compared to today’s woke left, Hitler’s methods for seizing power look like something out of the technological Stone Age. This statement is not to dismiss the horrors unleashed by Nazi rule. It is rather to focus attention on how much easier it is for today’s totalitarians to operate compared with their musty-looking predecessors. The fashion...
American institutions have been allegedly occupied by Marxists who are waging a war against the “American Revolution,” according to conservative commentator Mark Levin. Demonstrating how this alleged occupation occurred is at the core of Levin’s
We are living in a political culture in which anyone identified with the now-vaguely-defined “right” can lose his fortune, reputation, and possibly his freedom. Meanwhile, the racist, vandalizing left can do what it wants with total impunity. A professor lecturing at the Yale School of Medicine dreamt aloud about “shooting white people,” and has not suffered...
The civil rights movement is often placed on a pedestal today with an almost religious fervor, with its own Christ-like figure in the form of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Such an attitude is on display in a recent, generally incisive critique by Victor Davis Hanson on the breakdown of lawfulness and the eruption of crime in...
The right is often accused of fascist tendencies in many of today’s political diatribes. A typical response is for the right to return the same accusation toward the left, a fact Edward Ring explores in a recent article for American Greatness, citing Jonah Goldberg’s famous book Liberal Fascism. Ring provides an intellectual service by bringing up the relationship...
My mother’s older sister Sadie and her husband Roy spent a lifetime concealing a secret: both had been in earlier marriages that ended in divorce. My aunt wanted no one of the younger generation— not even her children—to know about this source of embarrassment and only told . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
The swear words “Marxist” and “revolutionary” are now thrown around by conservatives, such as those at Heritage, the New York Post, and Fox News, with the same abandon with which the left speaks about “human rights” or “marriage,” particularly in relation to the concept of Critical Race Theory (CRT). But as someone who has studied Marxism extensively,...
Blacks are intensely devoted to the Democratic Party and to corrupt Democratic machines in urban areas, at least partly because they hate Republicans, the white man’s party. It makes no difference how often Fox News tells blacks they are living on the “Democratic plantation,” or that the Democrats are the party of slavery defender John C....
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...
My establishment conservative acquaintances are still swooning over an anti-Biden tirade that Mark Levin delivered on his TV program last week, when we learned that our current president is the most racist person who has ever occupied the Oval Office, a charge that was then qualified with the phrase “since Woodrow Wilson.” Only two points in...
With tensions rising between nations such as Taiwan and China, as well as between Russia and Ukraine, many are wondering how involved the Biden administration will be. Should the United States leave these nations alone, or should they interfere? A look at the past through Stephen Wertheim’s new book, Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S....
The reincarnation of Hitler in some national leader and the heroism of Churchill, both stand-by props of neoconservatives, rear their head again in a recent commentary by Daniel Gelernter. Expecting neocons to abandon their continual reference of these props would be comparable to asking the Democratic Party to stop talking about “systemic racism” or Mike Pompeo to...
In 2015 Michelle Malkin wrote a column, praising the wife of distinguished neurosurgeon and later Trump Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson. Malkin appropriately designated her subject as the “anti-Michelle Obama.” Her description encapsulates some of the merits of Candy Carson, who graduated from Yale with a triple major in music, psychology, and pre-med,...
Recently The Michelle Obama Podcast revealed shocking information that should concern all white people. “When I’ve been completely incognito during the eight years in the White House, walking the dogs on the canal,” Obama explained, “people will come up and pet my dogs, but will not look me in the eye. They don’t know it’s me.” She further...
America’s Revolutionary Mind, by C. Bradley Thompson (Encounter Books; 584 pp., $32.99). Thompson’s examination of colonial America’s natural rights political culture and the effects of the Declaration’s oft-quoted passage about unalienable rights is not likely to please members of the traditional right, and as such I consider it required reading. Thompson presents copious evidence that those...
A Somalian feminist and well-known critic of Islamic patriarchy, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, expressed the following critique of Black Lives Matter in an interview with the Hoover Institution last summer: What we are seeing now is this mishmash of people who call themselves Black Lives Matter have found the hook. They found a way of going about the...