Author: The Archive (The Archive)

There are few movies I am still thinking about several days after seeing them. One such movie is Of Gods and Men, the superb French movie about the martyrdom of seven French Cistercians from the small monastery of Notre Dame de l’Atlas in Algeria in 1996, in the midst of the Algerian civil war. This...

The most significant fact to emerge from the killing of Osama Bin Laden is that Pakistan’s military intelligence service (ISI) had been sheltering him for years. This confirms what we have been warning for the best part of the past decade: that Pakistan is an irredeemably flawed entity, unable to turn itself into a stable...

With his order to effect the execution of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALs, 40 miles from Islamabad, without asking permission of the government, Barack Obama made a bold and courageous decision. Its success, and the accolades he has received, have given him a credibility as commander in chief that he never had before. The...

beyond the revolution Our Sacred Anticanon by Thomas Fleming views The Triumph of Nice by Philip Jenkins The King James Bible at 400: Love’s Labor’s Lost by Aaron D. Wolf news Glenn Beck, the Straight Dope by W. James Antle III A Saint Is Born: An Interview With Roland Joffe by Matthew A. Rarey reviews The Robot’s Focus by Derek Turner A Journey: My Political ...

One annoying old canard, reinserted into the mainstream media reporting of Osama Bin Laden’s death, is the claim that his theology represents a radical break with traditional Islam. The usual propagandists and apologists for “normative Islam”—peaceful and tolerant, and totally at odds with terrorist violence—are back peddling their old wares. CNN had Ebrahim Moosa, a...

Dr. Trifkovic Interviewed on RT by Chronicles • May 5, 2011 • Printer-friendly abc123″>8 Responses<a href="#respond"

The Rugged Individualist “Who is John Galt?” I don’t know, and I couldn’t care less, but lots of disgruntled young people waste time on the internet asking this question, as pointless as it is pretentious.  John Galt was, of course, the fictional protagonist of Ayn Rand’s mammoth novel, Atlas Shrugged, in which he leads a work-stoppage of...

“Justice has been done,” chortles President Obama and his spokespeople.  ”Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, good bye,” chanted the proles on the streets of New York.  There are already T-shirts on sale saying “Obama got Osama.” I am surprised not to have heard of a procession of little people in...

The killing of OBL is a significant event politically and psychologically. It will not have any detrimental impact on the operations of Al-Qa’eda, however, because that amorphous group does not need a leader and has not had a centralized command-and-control structure for a decade. We should not expect a single retaliatory terrorist assault by “Al-Qa’eda.”...

beyond the revolution The Unentitled by Thomas Fleming views Suicide by (Legal) Immigration by Roger D. McGrath The Death Wish of the West by Claude Polin news DOMA’s Fifth Column by William J. Watkins, Jr. reviews A Southern Foison by Ray Olson Chronicles of the South edited by Clyde N. Wilson Vol. 1: Garden of the Beaux Arts Vol. 2: In Justice to so Fine a ...

Well, it sure didn’t take long for the Tucson Truce to collapse. After Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot on Jan. 8 by a berserker who killed six others, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, and wounded 13, the media were aflame with charges the right had created the climate of hate in which...

“Unrest in Syria has discomforted rather than shaken the regime of Bashir Al-Assad,” I wrote in the May issue of Chronicles (Cultural Revolutions, p. 6). “On current form it is an even bet that he will survive, which is preferable to any likely alternative.” The violence has become far worse since the editorial was written...

The Great American Jerk is a chameleon who changes colors according to circumstances, from obsequious to bullying, from pious to lewd.  He may, on some occasions, display buck-waving generosity and on others check-splitting stinginess, but underneath there is always the baby boy or girl who wants what he or she wants, whether it is money,...

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Zagreb and other Croatian cities over the past week to protest the conviction of two Croatian generals by the UN war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. The ICTY sentenced Ante Gotovina to 24 years in jail and Mladen Markač to 18 years for their role in...

Of our Libyan intervention, one thing may be safely said, and another safely predicted. When he launched his strikes on the Libyan army and regime, Barack Obama did not think it through. And this nation is now likely to be drawn even deeper into that war. For Moammar Gadhafi’s forces not only survived the U.S....

(Inspired by Clyde Wilson) Every human society has had its share of offensive or annoying people: busybodies and bores, poseurs and bullies, cheapskates and  check-grabbers, hypocrites and egomaniacs.  You might even be able to define some societies by the offensive characters they tend to produce or by the qualities they find most offensive. Southerners used to regard Yankees...

Lucy just pulled the football away from Charlie Brown again. In the budget compromise that averted a government shutdown, it was the Republicans not the Democrats who blinked on the funding of Planned Parenthood, and it was the pro-lifers who look to the GOP and not the abortion supporters who look to the Democrats who...

The problem with President Barack Obama’s foreign policy is not that it is “too pragmatic,” as recently alleged. The problem is that Obama combines the broad ideological assumptions of liberal interventionists with a leadership style that allows people more doctrinaire than he to dominate the internal debate and decision-making process. Libya is the product of...

This morning brought the surprising news that, according to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Donald Trump is running second among GOP presidential hopefuls, at 17%, behind Mitt Romney’s 21%. I am far from a fan of the obnoxious, egomaniacal Trump, but his rise in the polls could be good news: The issue Trump has...

As in the case of Serbia twelve years ago, Canada’s air force is once again bombing a country presenting no threat to the safety or security of our country. In fact, we are at war. There has been no declaration of war. There has been no serious attempt to intervene peacefully to help resolve the...

THEY’RE BACK! No, not the demons that terrorized the Freeling family in Poltergeist II. I am referring to the far more menacing demons who are already wasting the TV lives of sports fans and Idol watchers, the presidential candidates.  Barack Obama has already thrown his hat into the ring–though considering his intelligence and manners, it...

beyond the revolution The Algebra of Equality by Thomas Fleming views The Other Side of Union by Clyde Wilson The American “Civil War” and the Tower of Babel by Donald W. Livingston news Re-Newtering America by John C. Seiler, Jr. reviews A Convergence of Catastrophes by Jack Trotter Archeofuturism: European Visions of the Post-Catastrophic Age by Guillaume Faye Paris Personified by Chilton Williamson, Jr. Parisians: An Adventure ...

I have so far refrained from commenting on the Libyan fiasco.  I do not understand what is going on, and  the administration has so far not condescended to enlighten us.  We are not taking sides or deciding the future of the country–that is up to the Libyans, we say–but then declare that no outcome is...

As our country plunges into yet another foolish war in the Moslem world and teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, it is easy to be focused on the negative. But today’s news also brought a small reminder of hope. The synod of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, meeting in Lvov, just elected 40-year old Sviatoslav Shevchuk,...

“Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.” So wrote the poet Byron, who would himself die just days after landing in Greece to join the war for independence from the Turks. But in that time, Americans followed the dictum of Washington, Adams and Jefferson: Stay out of foreign wars. America “goes not abroad...

“Total German triumph as EU minnows subjugated,” The Daily Telegraph headlines a report by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s latest diktat. Whoever wants credit must fulfill our conditions, she declared. Her conditions amount to capitulation by three vulnerable states on core policies, and further erosion of sovereignty for the rest of the eurozone. For...

“This will not stand!” declared George H.W. Bush. He was speaking of Saddam Hussein’s invasion, occupation and annexation of the emirate of Kuwait as his “19th province.” Seven months later, the Iraqi army was fleeing up the “Highway of Death” back into a country devastated by five weeks of U.S. bombing. When Bush spoke, the...

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, started his congressional hearing on Islamic radicalization Thursday amidst accusations of “Islamophobia” from the Sharia activists and expressions of distaste from most Democrats. In his opening statement King cited recent terror plots against the United States to justify his decision and suggested the hearings...

Robert Spencer is making something of a nuisance of himself these days.  I don’t know much about Spencer. I do not spend a lot of time looking at websites and hardly ever visit Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch.  It is not that I particularly disagree with him on the Muslim threat; it is only that he...

Today’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church has encouraged many decent conservatives to think that the United States will not so quickly go down the garden path of political correctness as Canada and the EU.  I think this view is seriously mistaken. As everyone knows, the Westboro Baptist “Church” is a...

beyond the revolution To Save One Child by Thomas Fleming views Growing Up Too Fast by Christopher Sandford Going Down With the Good Ship Lollipop by Jack Trotter news Interview With the Archbishop of Kirkuk by Alberto Carosa reviews A Life Rediscovered by John Willson American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll by Bradley J. Birzer The Elusive Conflict by H.A. Scott Trask The American Civil War: ...

Robert E. Holloway is a high school teacher in suburban Northern Virginia. He is probably considered a decent man by his neighbors, a competent educator by his peers, and a figure of some authority by his students. He is the embodiment of much that is wrong with this country’s education system, however: a bigot, a...

Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman has announced that President Hosni Mubarak was stepping down from the office of president of the republic “and has charged the high council of the armed forces to administer the affairs of the country.” In other words, the Army has taken over. This is the least bad outcome on offer...

The cry of the protestors in Cairo, as they greet the news of the military coup that has toppled Hosni Mubarak.  What’s next?  An interim government, perhaps the troika proposed by Mohammed El Baradei, with the reality of power remaining in the hands of the military.  Then comes the countdown to the day when the...

It is essential to take William (“Bill”) Kristol seriously. He has been so utterly wrong on so many things (America’s ability to run the world, NATO, Turkey, the Balkans, Chechnya, Iraq, Sarah Palin, Russia, Iran, Georgia, John McCain, missile defense . . . ) that his pronouncements merit respect. Being consistently wrong—in the fleeting guise...

Recent developments in Moldova have placed the former Soviet republic, strategically placed at the hub of Central and Southeastern Europe’s energy corridors, at the center of Russia’s occasionally tense relations with the West.  On February 7, echoing the rhetoric and mindset of half a century ago, Senator Richard Lugar, a leading NATO expansionist and Russophobic...

“He who dies with the most toys wins.” Every year on Black Friday, American shoppers brave the bad weather and go out to do battle with other shoppers in a contest that will determine who pays the least for the most stuff they are better off without.  Twenty years ago, the worst these victims of...

The image of the “democratic revolution” in Egypt, as constructed by the mainstream media in North America and Europe over the past two weeks, evokes the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989. The BBC World Service, NPR and other Western media outlets bring us young, articulate, lightly-accented demonstrators who talk of democracy, freedom,...

beyond the revolution Back to the Garden by Thomas Fleming views Europe: Weltmacht or Laughingstock? by Doug Bandow Gelded Europeans by John C. Seiler, Jr. news Birthright Citizenship by William J. Quirk and Janek Kazmierski reviews Picking Up the Pieces by Tobias Lanz Phillip Blond, Red Tory: How Left and Right Have Broken Britain and How We Can Fix It Philosophical Arcs by ...

In the second book, Tocqueville tries to demonstrate a double thesis, which may be summarized as: 1) The centralized authoritarian regime installed by the FR represents continuity with the old regime, not a break with the past, and 2) there is, nonetheless a qualitative difference between the benevolent busybodying of ...

Recently, the European Union published a calendar for school children that noted Moslem and Jewish holidays but made no mention of any Christian holiday, including Christmas. The same principle operates here, in the countless public school “winter concerts” that highlight music for Kwanzaa and Hanukkah but feature no Christmas carols. If the Eurocrats wish to...

In the first book, AT confronts the mystery of the French Revolution, which no one seemed to understand at the time and which baffled the succeeding generation. In chapter two, he makes a twofold argument, that the FR aimed neither at destroying religious authority nor at weakening the central authority ...

President Barack Obama’s second State of the Union Address was almost entirely focused on domestic issues. This was appropriate considering the magnitude of social, economic and moral problems America is facing, and the attendant absurdity of pursuing grand global themes for as long as those problems remain unresolved. The clichés and the rhetoric were kitchy...

I had intended, as always, to keep in touch during my brief sojourn in Rome, but the vagaries of my hotel’s WiFi (which healed itself near the end), the usual weariness that attends the noontime devil of winebibbers, were exacerbated by an injured knee-cum-inflamed tendon that made walking five miles a bit more exhausting than...

Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Al Gore’s vice-presidential candidate in 2000 who subsequently broke away from the Democratic Party and won reelection as an independent in 2006, has announced that he will not seek reelection when his fourth term expires next year. Lieberman’s departure will not make much difference to the political scene in Washington...

This is a call for reading and comments for a discussion of Tocqueville's masterful analysis of the French monarchy and the French Revolution.  Since Tocqueville is so clear and explicit in his argument, I intend only to present the briefest of introductions to each section.  I hope that, in addition ...

Last week, President Obama named William Daley as White House Chief of Staff and Gene Sperling as the chief White House economic adviser. Last fall, he named Austan Goolsbee as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. These appointments are significant in part because all three men share a strong commitment to free trade:...

“Conservative Tycoon … Dies at 95,” said the New York Times headline on New Year’s Eve about the death of Roger Milliken. Clearly, the headline writer did not know the man. For Roger Milliken exemplified the finest in American free enterprise. He cared about his workers. He cared about his industry. He cared about his...

beyond the revolution The Five Good Reasons by Thomas Fleming views In Defense of Private Property by Claude Polin Proudhon, Beauty, and Lego by Andrei Navrozov news A Linguistic Dilemma by Tom Landess reviews A Self-Contained World by James Kalb Pascal Bruckner, The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism The Coming North American Order by H.A. Scott Trask Charles Bowden, Murder ...

With Christmas shoppers out in force and the stock market surging to a two-year high, talk is spreading that the long-awaited recovery is at hand. Perhaps. But gleaning the news from Europe and Asia as U.S. cities, states and the federal government sink into debt, it is difficult to believe a worldwide financial crisis that...