There’s nothing new about eccentrics trying to assassinate the President. Those who failed are almost completely forgotten.
Author: Roger D. McGrath (Roger D. McGrath)
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Red Diaper Tourism
Faulty 14th Amendment jurisprudence has beget the massive, nightmarish Chinese birth-tourism industry in California.
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John Russell: From Guadalcanal to Hollywood
Beta-males have not always run Tinseltown. Red-blooded warriors once dominated film and TV sets.
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Affirmative Action in the Heartland
Ian Andre Roberts’ con worked wonders until DEI met ICE, and the truth caught up with this undocumented public schools superintendent.
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Taki, Playboy and Raconteur
Taki’s new memoir holds nothing back. Like the man himself, The Last Alpha Male is interesting, witty, knowledgeable, high-spirited, and just plain fun.
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Boss Bass’s Crooked Los Angeles
The Palisades Fire of January 2025 exposed the utter incompetence, if not corruption, of Mayor Karen Bass’s administration.
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The Mysterious Disappearance of Amelia Earhart
What happened to America's most famous female aviator? Was she a spy for Roosevelt? Did she fake her own death and live out the rest of her life in obscurity? Or is she at the bottom of a Nikumaroro lagoon?
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Bullet Train Boondoggle
California's high-speed rail is emblematic of the Golden State's decline: A great idea, sure to attract new residents and businesses, that somehow turned into another wasteful boondoggle.
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Soldier and Scribe of the Old West
James Warner Bellah was a wild risk-taking airman in both World Wars who went on to shape Hollywood's Golden Era with iconic Westerns.
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Gone with the Wind
Generations of Hollywood history and local memories went up in flames during the recent Palisades fire.
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The People’s Republic of California
One-party rule in California means fiscal lunacy, hazardous living conditions, and dubious elections, among other bad things.
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Wild Bill Wellman’s Hundred Lives
World-war-I flying ace Bill "Wild Bill" Wellman lived a daring, eventful life that contributed to successful film career. Such heroic figures were not uncommon in old Hollywood.
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Will Ireland Remain Irish?
Mass third-world immigration threatens Irish identity and stretches social services to the breaking point. It remains to be seen whether Ireland will remain Irish.
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No Heaven on Earth
As long as Christianity remained vital and strong in America, attempts at creating a socialist Utopia through government policy and authoritarian control made little headway.
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American Citizens or Tribal Members of Sovereign Nations?
American Indians compose a nation within a nation. They enjoy American rights and privileges, but also tribal rights and privileges.
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The Man Who Made Cultural Marxism
Herbert Marcuse saw the transformation of the culture as the sine qua non of revolutionary change. He understood that the working classes of Europe and America wanted better wages, not the radical destruction of the western way of life.
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The Funders of the U.S. Invasion
Thanks to the UN, and your tax dollars, millions now travel north from Central and South America and reach our border looking none the worse for the wear. This is a well-planned and well-funded invasion.
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The Marine Corps’ Answer to James Bond
Legionnaire, Spy, and Marine Colonel Peter Ortiz is unknown today, but his daring exploits during WWII are incredible.
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California’s Own Reparations
California is at the forefront of the plan to grant reparations to blacks for slavery and discrimination. The state's published plan to pay up to $800 billion makes no sense, especially since California entered the Union as a free state.
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Books in Brief: August 2023
Short reviews of Danger Close! A Vietnam Memoir, by Phil Gioia, and Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet, by Marian L. Tupy and Gale L. Pooley.
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The Wheel and War
We may long for the romantic and heroic days when acts of military derring-do were performed by Medal of Honor recipients, but it looks like the future belongs to the ugly, impersonal, and utilitarian.
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Ireland’s Forgotten Genocide
Despite much handwringing about British colonial misdeeds in Africa and the Caribbean, the systematic, purposeful extermination of more than a million Irish during the potato famine of the 19th century gets little attention.
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Fake Indians
Promoting oneself as an American Indian, even when it's not true, can be a career enhancer ... until the lie is exposed.
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A Drought in Leadership
California has been living off its legacy of water projects for the last several decades like a lazy, self-indulgent, trust-fund recipient.
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Amnesia of the Weather Alarmists
Hot weather is nothing new. The climate alarmists would be less alarmed if they knew history.
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The Real Cost of Electric Vehicles
For all their use in green virtue-signaling, electric cars have enormous hidden costs, both financial and humanitarian.
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Merian Cooper, Conquering Hero
With the war in Ukraine dangerously close to Poland, the specter is raised of the forgotten Polish-Soviet War of 1920. American pilots came to Poland's aid in that war, most importantly World War I veteran and King Kong director Merian C. Cooper.
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The Admiral of American Movies
When the brilliant Orson Welles was asked to name his three favorite directors, he replied, “The Old Masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.” John Ford was arguably Hollywood’s greatest director, churning out 140 movies and documentaries and winning the Academy Award for Best Director a record four times. Nine...
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California Exodus
In the 1950s grammar schools of the Golden State we kids substituted “Oh, California!” for Stephen Foster’s “Oh, Susanna!” The tune was the same, but the lyrics came from the pen of John Nichols just before he climbed aboard the bark Eliza in December 1848 at Salem, Massachusetts, for the voyage to California. I come...
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A Tale of Two Withdrawals
It’s difficult to characterize President Biden’s precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan as anything but a shameful debacle. It’s also difficult to determine who was responsible for the lack of a strategic withdrawal plan. Can the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff be that incompetent or feckless if an immediate and unconditional...
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When Cali Was Conservative
Facing a recall election, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced the state would pay all back rent for qualifying tenants and then, sounding like Jack Bailey in the 1950s TV show Queen for a Day, said, “And that’s not all. The state will also pay all past due water and utility bills!” “Qualifying” renters include all...
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The Deliberate Infection Myth of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
Arguing with my liberal high school teachers did not endear me to them. It got worse when a day or two after one of these disagreements I brought to class material demonstrating the teacher had been feeding us a false narrative. The teacher was not doing so intentionally but simply out of ignorance, having accepted a...
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Canceling Uncle Tom
The only thing those on the left hate more than a conservative white male is a conservative black male. It simply infuriates leftists when a black man rejects their socialist dogma and espouses such conservative ideals as individual initiative, freedom from government, self-reliance, responsibility for decision making, and competing in the marketplace. How dare he! A...
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Middle American Aviatrix
Taking Flight: The Nadine Ramsey Story; by Raquel Ramsey and Tricia Aurand; University Press of Kansas, 2020; 312 pp., $29.95 Taking Flight tells the remarkable tale of a courageous woman, Nadine Ramsey, who survived a difficult childhood to become Kansas’ first female commercial pilot, a World War II WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilot), an instructor of male fighter...
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The Machines of Enslavement
The historically ignorant and leftist-driven “1619 Project” of The New York Times posits a grand design to enslave blacks in the American Colonies and to perpetuate the institution by revolting against British rule and establishing the American Republic. That slavery in the colonies was the result of the genetic constraints imposed by malaria rather than a grand design...
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Slavery’s Ironic Twist of Fate
The historical ignorance of The New York Times’ 1619 Project is difficult to accept. Is the newspaper truly that ignorant or is it disinformation in a propaganda campaign to destroy our country? What I know for certain is most colleges no longer require the U.S. History and Western Civilization courses once considered essential, and that leftist professors...
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That Damn Cowboy
His statue in front of the Museum of Natural History in New York City is scheduled for removal, which is certainly ironic for one of New York’s most accomplished, adventurous, self-sacrificing, and patriotic sons, Theodore Roosevelt. Although he never owned slaves and was a recipient of both the Nobel Peace Prize and the Medal of Honor,...
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The Chinese Exclusion Act
In 1882 Congress took steps to control Chinese immigration with the passage of “An Act to execute certain treaty stipulations relating to Chinese.” The act later became known misleadingly as the Chinese Exclusion Act. In high schools and colleges it’s taught that the act was simply another example of American racism. The real story is more...
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Epidemic for the Record Books
As the hysterical coronavirus overreaction crashes our economy, I can’t help but think of the Spanish flu, which took some 675,000 American lives in 1918 and 1919. Adjusting for the difference in the size of the American population then and now, that number would be equivalent to two million deaths today. I’ll be surprised—I’m writing...
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Jackson and the American Indians
Everyone knows that Andrew Jackson wanted American Indians annihilated, defied the Supreme Court in a famous challenge to Chief Justice John Marshall, and forcibly removed the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast to lands west of the Mississippi River. What everyone knows is not true. Once a venerated American hero, Andrew Jackson has been attacked...
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Books in Brief
Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation Against America, by Mary Grabar (Regnery; 327 pp., $29.99). Mary Grabar has performed an invaluable service by taking the time to dissect Howard Zinn’s polemical attack on America, A People’s History of the United States (1980). Although she doesn’t cover every topic Zinn addresses,...
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George O’Brien: American Star
WWI veteran George O’Brien became a star in Hollywood with his breakout performance in John Ford’s silent film epic, The Iron Horse. Handsome and built like the top athlete he was, O’Brien appeared in 11 more Ford movies and 85 films altogether, a successful career punctuated by voluntary and selfless distinction in two more wars,...
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The British Invasion of the Ozarks
Chronicles readers may recall my “Old Route 66” (September 2013) and “Keep the Water on Your Right” (February 2015) motorcycle travelogues, in which I rode through small towns and rural areas to reconnect with the land and people of America. A road trip can do this like no other kind of journey, and doing one...
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The Old West’s Deadly Doctor
Most Americans know of Doc Holliday only as Wyatt Earp’s sidekick. He was much more than that. He was not only one of the most colorful characters in the Old West but also one of the most feared. He acquired the nickname “Doc” honestly, earning a degree in dentistry and practicing in several towns. However,...
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Getting Real About Reparations
The call for slavery reparations is reverberating throughout the land once again. It will be entertaining to watch the Democratic presidential candidates for 2020 position themselves on this topic. They must know the very idea is irrational and entirely impractical, but at the same time they will worry that one candidate or another will endorse...
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James Howard: Two-Theater Double Ace
One would think the only American fighter pilot to earn the Medal of Honor in World War II in Europe would be remembered and honored, or at least mentioned in history textbooks in high school and college. No such luck today. For those of us who grew up in the aftermath of the Second World...
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William Lundigan
Of our 20th-century wars World War II stands alone. In a sneak attack early on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, Japanese naval forces bombed Pearl Harbor. As reports were broadcast throughout the day American shock turned to anger. The following day Congress, with but one dissenting vote—pacifist Jeannette Rankin—declared war on Japan. We were a...
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Butch Cassidy, Part 2
A station agent tried to telegraph Price, Utah—the direction the outlaws were headed—but Butch Cassidy and Elzy Lay had cut the wires. The paymaster had the train’s engine uncoupled. Men grabbed a variety of weapons and jumped aboard. The locomotive steamed down the narrow gorge of Price Canyon right past the unseen robbers, who were...