Author: The Archive (The Archive)

The Bush-Obama bailout-stimulus plans are not going to work. Both are schemes hatched by a clique of financial insiders. The schemes will redistribute income and wealth from American taxpayers to the shyster banksters who have destroyed American jobs, ruined the retirement plans of tens of millions of Americans and worsened the situation of millions of...

PERSPECTIVE Self-Evident Liesby Thomas Fleming VIEWS Mainline Marital Mélangeby William MurchisonWhen the culture preaches to the church. Immigration and Marriage in Americaby R. Cort KirkwoodBeyond definitions. Moonstruck Morality Versus the Cosmosby Hugh Barbour, O.Praem.Romancing the self. NEWS School of Rapeby Beverly K. EakmanFrom health class to hotties. REVIEWS Romancing the Skullby Jack Trotter John Carroll:...

The U.S. Constitution has few friends on the right or the left. During the first eight years of the 21st century, the Republicans mercilessly assaulted civil liberties. The brownshirt Bush regime ignored the protections provided by habeas corpus. They spied on American citizens without warrants. They violated the First Amendment. They elevated decisions of the...

Most Americans agree that the greatest problem America faces right now is a faltering economy.  One would never know that by looking at NRO’s Corner from 4:54 pm to 6:21 pm on Thursday, February 26.  A visitor to the Corner at that time would conclude that the greatest threat to the Republic is the appointment...

“Real men go to Tehran!” brayed the neoconservatives, after the success of their propaganda campaign to have America march on Baghdad and into an unnecessary war that has forfeited all the fruits of our Cold War victory. Now they are back, in pursuit of what has always been their great goal: an American war on...

A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored.  Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.  —John Adams Honest history is one of the many casualties of the ethnic spoils competition that now dominates American society.  —Clyde Wilson Blood will tell.  —proverbial wisdom There is a great deal of ruin in a nation. ...

As I understand gun control, the idea is to disarm criminals unless they work for the government. Police used to see their duty as to protect people.  Since the feds took over training them, more and more of them think their job is to swagger, push people around, and make military-style assaults. An Obama spokesperson...

Lecturing a conscript conclave of Justice Department bureaucrats, Attorney General Eric Holder last week called America a “nation of cowards” for not spending more time talking about race. Reading his speech, however, one recalls the sage counsel of Pat Moynihan to President Nixon in 1970: This whole subject might benefit from a long period of...

“The situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating,” said President Obama, as he announced deployment of 17,000 more U.S. troops. “I’m absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism in that region, solely through military means.” “(T)here is no military solution in Afghanistan,” says Secretary of Defense Robert Gates....

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s policy of Great Society spending and the Vietnam War is credited with the rising American inflation that persisted until checked by President Reagan’s supply-side policy. In Johnson’s time, the American economy and the U.S. dollar were strong, and there was no current account deficit. Yet, LBJ’s policy of guns and butter...

A Muslim businessman who with his wife created the Bridges TV Network to offer a kindler gentler image of Islam has been arrested for cutting off the head of his estranged wife, who had sough and received an order of protection.   Muzzammil “Mo” Hassan, who has been has been lauded by Jay Leno and NPR,...

It’s beat-up-on-the-rich time in America: a cheap alternative to paying a veterinarian’s bill for the dog you just kicked violently upon checking your 401(k) statement. This, too, will pass, along with the recession, that’s to say. The sun will break through the clouds, and we’ll return to being a nation of strivers, with a built-in...

Thursday, February 12, 2009, marks the Bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.  To mark the occasion, ChroniclesMagazine.org will post at least one article each day of the week beginning February 9, and concluding with Friday the 13th.  Up first on Monday is Daniel Larison's View from the February issue, ...

Vast numbers of people in the United States and abroad are hoping that President Obama will end America’s illegal wars, halt America’s support for Israel’s massacre of Lebanese and Palestinians, and punish, instead of reward, the shyster banksters whose fraudulent financial instruments have destroyed economics and imposed massive sufferings on people all over the world....

PERSPECTIVE Rendering Unto Lincoln by Thomas Fleming VIEWS The Treasury of Counterfeit Virtue by Clyde Wilson Abe’s indulgence. Obama as Lincoln by Justin Raimondo Mask and mirror. Lincolnism Today by Daniel Larison The long marriage of centralized power and concentrated wealth. NEWS The Financial Crisis by William J. Quirk How it happened, and why it is still happening. REVIEWS Strippers to the Rescue by Stephen B. Presser William ...

To know truly is to know by causes.  —Francis Bacon Success begets excess, and excess begets death.  —Anonymous Something is going on and will not stop.  You are outside the going on, and you are, at the same time, inside the going on.  In fact, the going on is what you are.  —Robert Penn Warren...

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” sayeth Rahm. Opportunistic and cynical, yes. But also savvy political counsel that transformational presidents have always followed. FDR exploited the Depression to launch his New Deal, bring an end to a Republican hegemony of seven decades and make Democrats the majority party, until Richard Nixon...

The term limit issue has been sweeping the country.  Since 1990, voters in 15 states have used the petition and referendum process to impose term limits on their state legislators. Earlier this year [1994] in Illinois, term limit supporters filed 437,088 petition signatures from almost every county calling for a statewide referendum on term limits. ...

No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith: The old is better.  —Luke 5:39 Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples.  —Paul Craig Roberts Consistency is the touchstone of truth.  —Ilana Mercer If you have ten thousands of regulations,...

“Where there is no solution, there is no problem,” geostrategist James Burnham once wryly observed. Ex-Sen. George Mitchell, the latest U.S. negotiator to take up the Palestine portfolio, may discover what it was that Burnham meant. For Israel’s three-week war on Gaza, where Palestinians died at a rate of 100 to one to Israelis, appears...

Such is the Wickedness of some men, and the stupid Servility of others, that one would almost be inclined to conclude that Communities cannot be free.  —Sam Adams Much American public discourse—the larger part—is made up of false impressions and invalid assumptions, what sensible people used to call cant, that are designed to disguise and...

Does the public stock market actually serve a purpose?  To some free-market zealots, the answer is obvious: The public markets increase liquidity, and this enables fledgling businesses to get off the ground by allowing them access to capital.  Moreover, we can all reap the benefits of capitalism’s “creative destruction” and become a nation of investors...

“Forward, gentlemen, and show them the bayonet.”  —Stonewall Jackson, born January 21, 1824 It may be that automobile workers are not very good workers, as some assert.  But they are a whole lot better at being workers than the automobile industry executives are at being executives. Parts of the Posse Comitatus Act have been repealed,...

As President Barack Obama delivers his inaugural address to a nation filled with anticipation and hope, the vital signs of the loyal opposition appear worse than worrisome. The new majority of 49 states and 60 percent of the nation Nixon cobbled together in 1972, that became the Reagan coalition of 49 states and 60 percent...

What nobody is going to listen to during inauguration week is cynicism, or anything that savors thereof: the sound of pins pricking happy balloons, the minimizing tone of voice that says, “Ummm, HMMM, just you wait … ” When it comes to Barack Obama, we’re not into that. We’re into—no cynicism intended—a Lincoln moment. Really,...

One good rule of thumb: if the state itself is claiming the banner of freedom . . . it is almost surely lying and should be watched more closely than ever.  —Anthony Gregory Civilizations that get too far from the land are bound to decay.   —J.I. Rodale I cannot accept your canon that we are...

As Israel entered the third week of its Gaza blitz, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert regaled a crowd in Ashkelon with an astonishing tale. He had, said Olmert, whistled up George Bush, interrupted him in the middle of a speech and told him to instruct Condi Rice not to vote for a U.N. resolution Condi herself...

With his public approval where Harry Truman’s stood when he left office, George W. Bush gave his last press conference yesterday. And like that predecessor he often identifies with, Bush showed a Trumanesque defiance of his critics—and a Trumanesque failure to understand what ruined his presidency. He denounced protectionism, as he has with dismissive contempt...

At the polls last November, conservatives and libertarians who vote according to conscience had two options: Bob Barr (Libertarian Party) and Chuck Baldwin (Constitution Party).  Combined, these two garnered only 719,655 votes—a paltry amount compared with John McCain’s 59,082,002.  For those who believe in smaller government, fiscal responsibility, and individual liberty, the 2008 election was...

The fact is that New England has been so busy writing history that it hasn’t had time to make it,  while the South has been so busy making history that it hasn’t had time to write it.  —Henry Tucker Graham Never attribute to malice what is more obviously due to stupidity or sloth.  —Oscar Handlin...

Barack Obama, it is said, will inherit the worst times since the Great Depression. Not to minimize the crisis we are in, but we need a little perspective here. The Great Depression began with the Great Crash of 1929. By 1931, unemployment had reached 16 percent. By 1933, 89 percent of stock value had been...

What a story!  It has everything!  Aliens, legal and otherwise, teen pregnancy, polygamy, miscegenation, crooked Chicago political bosses, a “true confessions” autobiography, a crazy preacher, a Cinderella rise to fame and glory, a Hamlet-like hero, a dual-loyalty Svengali, a spectacular  affirmative-action success story.  Race, sex, dysfunctional family, extreme limousine leftism, crime and mystery!  You couldn’t...

“Nothing doth more hurt a state than that cunning men pass for wise.”  —Francis Bacon I finally figured out why so many people admire Obama and his family.  They remind TV watchers of the Heathcliffe Huxtables. I have been practicing “Kumbaya” lately.  I want to be ready for Real Change. Of course, Obama owes a...

Over at NRO, Mona Charen announces that she will be attending a rally to support Israel in front of the Israeli embassy today, and she asks NRO readers to “please come and help demonstrate that millions of us passionately support Israel’s right to exist in peace and security.” One wonders how it would be possible...

I propose, in the two weeks I have before going to Florence, that we look at two works of Dante: the Convivio and the De Monarchia .  Although the whole of the Convivio is worth our attention, I am only going to talk about Book IV, in which Dante talks about the empire, Rome, the...

After the defeat of the Persians in 480/479 Athens was  united as never before.  There was little division in the social classes, and leaders of the Alcmeonid party like Aristides cooperated with rivals like Themistocles and even with Cimon, of the enemy Philaid clan, in the continuing war against Persia.  The lowest class, the day-laboring...

The Choephoroe (Libation Bearers) is the most dramatically interesting of three play.  The dramatic focus is on Agamemnon’s two children–the long-suffering Electra and the heroic Orestes–and also highlights minor players such as the loyal Pylades, and even the lower-class character of the faithful nurse who intrigues with the Chorus to keep Aegisthus in the dark...

That India should accuse Pakistan of involvement in recent Islamic-terrorist outrages in Bombay was to be expected. That the accusation would turn out to be so well founded so quickly, was not. The only lasting solution to the problem of Pakistan is the disappearance of Pakistan from the political map of the world. This goal...

The Agamemnon Concluded: I’ll be very brief with the rest of the Agamemnon in order to discuss, more rapidly, the next two plays, where the moral and political crisis becomes apparent.   The central scene of the play, in dramatic terms, is the confrontation of Clytaemestra and Agamemnon.  She is the complete master of the situation,...

Socrates and Xanthippe have been discussing a proposed bailout of the cartmakers in the Peiraeus.  They are joined by a very young Plato and  Pheidippides, the dissolute son of Strepsiades, who sent him to study in order to find out how to evade his debts. Socrates:  Well, I see we have reached another impasse, Xanthippe. ...

PERSPECTIVEChristmas Nightmaresby Thomas Fleming VIEWSSola Scriptura: The Case for the Crusadesby Hugh Barbour, O.Praem.Following Christ. How to Win the War Against Christmasby Tom PiatakRemembering how we got here. Muslim Pressure and Christian Appeasementby Christie DaviesThe British retreat as the Muslims advance. NEWSThe Cold War Never Endedby Joseph E. FallonU.S.-Russian relations since September 11. REVIEWSThe Fall...

The recent invasion of South Ossetia by the U.S.-trained and -equipped Georgian army turned into a debacle for both Tbilisi and Washington.  It also demonstrated that, for the U.S. government, the fall of the Soviet Union on December 8, 1991, did not mean the Cold War had ended.  Washington simply shifted focus to the newly...

“What do you think about the bailout?” The old philosopher sighed.  Xanthippe had been getting market gossip again from the slave girl she sent to the agora.  How many times did he have to tell her to pay no attention to these rumors?  News, he snorted to himself.  Those people were right in Thurii who...

I was leaving for Ft. Worth early Wednesday morning and, although I did not turn on the radio, watch television, or buy a newspaper, “the news was out all over town” and impossible to evade, even though I have avoided the media ever since.  Yesterday, my wife asked me to listen for the weather on...