Author: The Archive (The Archive)

The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for more than eight years. That is longer than our involvement in both world wars combined. Yet the end of the conflict appears to be further away than ever. It is not even clear what would constitute victory. Afghanistan began as the “good war,” receiving near-unanimous...

“Anti-Catholicism,” said writer Peter Viereck, “is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual.” It is “the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people,” said Arthur Schlesinger Sr. If there was any doubt that hatred of and hostility toward the Catholic Church persists, it was removed by the mob that has arisen howling “Resign!” at Pope...

“Diplomacy has failed,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told AIPAC, “Iran is on the verge of becoming nuclear and we cannot afford that.” “We have to contemplate the final option,” said Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., “the use of force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.” War is a “terrible thing,” said Sen. Lindsay Graham,...

perspective Cheating “Honest” Menby Thomas Fleming views Putting America Back to Workby Tom Pauken Bringing Back the Old Economyby Tom Piatak news Sam Francis’s Mad Tea Partyby Chilton Williamson, Jr. reviews Brush the Distanceby John Freeman [Catharine Savage Brosman, Breakwater: Poems] Dark Age to Dark Ageby Thomas Fleming [Adrian Goldsworthy, How Rome Fell] A Man...

Throughout most of American history region has been a better predictor of political position than party.  That aspect of our reality has been neglected and suppressed in recent times  as the rest of the country has conspired or acquiesced in transforming the South into a replica of Ohio. Yet the notorious squeak vote on the...

“[With health care done] Democrats will turn unequivocally to the economy, putting forth additional efforts to accelerate the recovery.”—John Harwood, The New York Times, March 29 “Efforts” such as, um, well, hmmmmm . . . Something anyway: a cycle of speeches from the White House; federal grants for job creation; exhortations to start hiring and...

As Democrats, after a Sunday rally on the Capitol grounds, marched to the House hand-in-hand to vote health care reform, Tea Partiers reportedly shouted the “n-word” at John Lewis and another black congressman. A third was allegedly spat upon. And Barney Frank was called a nasty name. Tea Partiers deny it all. And neither audio...

“The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital.” With this defiant declaration, to a thunderous ovation at AIPAC, Benjamin Netanyahu informed the United States that East Jerusalem, taken from Jordan in the Six Day War, is not...

By now, many Chronicles readers have no doubt heard that David Frum was fired from his cushy job at the American Enterprise Institute, following an online column claiming that the passage of Obamacare was the GOP’s “Waterloo,” which could have been avoided if the GOP had been more willing to negotiate with Obama.  Frum is...

When the noble art of casuistry was driven from the field by an army of moral pygmies led by Descartes, Locke, and Kant, a gaping hole opened up.  In an ethical system devoted exclusively to abstract rights or abstract duties, how could the real problems of life be discussed?  The answer (and I owe this...

Benjamin Netanyahu is back in the United States, rallying his troops and hectoring the administration.  I stand in such awe of this man that I propose we suspend our now pointless requirement of being American born and run Mr. Netanyahu as the candidate of both parties.  Why not?  It’s not as if the US government,...

When the Soviet Union disintegrated, most Americans likely had never heard of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan. Yet the ethnonationalism of these Asian peoples, boiling to the surface after centuries of tsarist and communist repression, helped tear apart one of the great empires of history. There swiftly followed the collapse of Yugoslavia. Yet, if one...

According to news reports, the U.S. military is shipping “bunker-buster” bombs to the U.S. Air Force base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Herald Scotland reports that experts say the bombs are being assembled for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The newspaper quotes Dan Piesch, director of the Centre for International Studies...

Actually, Joe set himself up. From the moment he set foot on Israeli soil, our vice president was in full pander mode. First, he headed to Yad Vashem memorial, where he put on a yarmulke and declared Israel “a central bolt in our existence.” “For world Jewry,” Joe went on, presumably including 5 million Americans,...

My goodness, it’s just one favor after another the U.S. government wants to do for us. By week’s end, the president and his minions hope to have bought, embarrassed or intimidated enough fellow Democrats into passing, at long last, health care “reform.” In the meantime, the White House lets us know it wants action on...

Are they really bumblers? The opinion columns quiver with reproofs for maladroit handling of foreign policy by President Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Those who cherished foolish illusions that Obama’s election presaged a substantive shift to the left in foreign policy fret about “worrisome signs” that this is not the case. It’s...

Though Bush 41 and Bush 43 often disagreed, one issue did unite them both with Bill Clinton: protectionism. Globalists all, they rejected any federal measure to protect America’s industrial base, economic independence or the wages of U.S. workers. Together they rammed through NAFTA, brought America under the World Trade Organization, abolished tariffs and granted Chinese-made...

Greece this past weekend saw the worst rioting since the debt crisis began. After Athens had announced new tax hikes and budget cuts to reduce a deficit of 13 percent of gross domestic product, mobs drove guards from Greece’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and attacked police. In our own country, students, teachers and administrators...

A review of Up in the Air (produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures; directed by Jason Reitman; screenplay by Sheldon Turner, adapting Walter Kirn’s novel) and The Road (produced and distributed by Dimension Films; directed by John Hillcoat; screenplay by Joe Penhall, adapting Cormac McCarthy’s novel). George Clooney, well-groomed and exceedingly fit at 49, seems...

Swiss voters approved a constitutional amendment banning the construction of new minarets last November, to the howls of bien-pensant rage at home and abroad.  The proposal was supported by 57.5 percent of the participating voters and 22 of the 26 Swiss cantons.  It was originally drafted in May 2007 by a group of conservative politicians,...

One long-standing hallmark of Western conservative thought is the emphasis on the rule of law.  Earlier generations of conservatives understood that, without such constraints, liberty would be imperiled and a free society would ultimately descend into tyranny.  As Lord Acton observed, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Even during the 20th century,...

PERSPECTIVE Print the Legend by Thomas Fleming VIEWS The Great American Outlaw by Roger D. McGrath On Dueling, Divorce, and Red Indians by Hugh Barbour, O.Praem. NEWS Conservative Leninists and the War on Terror by Ted Galen Carpenter REVIEWS A Huge and Healthy Pessimism by Jack Trotter John Derbyshire, We Are Doomed: Reclaiming
Conservative Pessimism plus Clark Stooksbury on Chris Hedges' ...

The Commandant of the Marine Corps, General James Conway, has courageously defied the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and his Commander-in-Chief with public testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee opposing lifting the ban on homosexuals serving in the Armed Forces.  “Ban,” of course, hardly describes the current policy.  Homosexuals who keep their inclinations relatively...

You there! Congressman! Come out from behind that tree! The speaker of the House has wonderful plans for you, involving the very sharp sword she says you’re going to fall on for the greater glory of . . . whatever. Wondrous to behold are the leadership instincts of a Democratic establishment conflicted when it comes...

With publication of “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, the hunt was on for the “missing link.” Fame and fortune awaited the scientist who found the link proving Darwin right: that man evolved from a monkey. In 1912, success! In a gravel pit near Piltdown in East Sussex, there was found the cranium of...

perspective Divide and Conquerby Thomas Fleming views The Soviet Intervention in Afghanistanby Srdja Trifkovic From Good War to Bad Social Engineeringby Doug Bandow news The Graveyard of Empiresby Janek C. Kazmierski reviews On the Quai at Smyrnaby Srdja Trifkovic [Giles Milton, Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922—The Destruction of a Christian City in the Islamic World] One For...

One of the great interests of Anglo-Saxon poems is the heroic code of the warriors.  They fight for their own glory, of course, but also to protect and avenge their lord, to preserve their religion, and defend the liberties of their people.  Unlike the Vikings, they are neither savages nor merely predators. Before going on...

It’s moments like this one—our Health Care Moment, we could call it—that make numerous friends of democracy and good government want to pull the covers over their heads and leave a wake-up call for next month. The health care charade has gone on for a year. Polls suggest most Americans don’t want the measures now...

Ron Unz, the neoliberal publisher of The American Conservative since the departure of Patrick J. Buchanan and Taki Theodoracopulos, penned an article for the March 1 issue of TAC entitled, like Geraldo Rivera’s recent pro-immigration book, “His-Panic,” where he argues that the notion of widespread Hispanic crime is largely a myth.  He writes that conservatives...

Few things in life are as clear as the futility of a real debate on the clarity of America’s religious origins. “Debate,” I said? Lay a finger, unsuspectingly, on The New York Times Magazine‘s inspection of the attempt by so-called Christian fundamentalists to overhaul history textbooks, and you require treatment for first-degree burns. I refer...

Did Robert Gibbs let the cat out of the bag? Last week, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the world that Iran, unable to get fuel rods from the West for its U.S.-built reactor, which makes medical isotopes, had begun to enrich its own uranium to 20 percent. From his perch in the West Wing, Gibbs scoffed: “He...

Heavy weekend snowfall closed down the capital of the United States. Not that many outside the Washington Beltway were sorry about it. Possibly—by their reasoning—the blizzard was God’s gift to decent government, a holiday from the ceaseless commotion, braggadocio and show-offing that have become the capital’s principle pastimes. Did Sarah Palin bring down the house...

They are called the PIGS—Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain. What they have in common is that all are facing deficits and debts that could bring on national defaults and break up the European Union. What brought the PIGS to the edge of the abyss? All are neo-socialist states that provide welfare for poor people, generous unemployment,...

It’s always nice to have one’s beliefs confirmed.  I was traveling this week, and wasn’t able to follow current events closely, but as the bad news around Toyota continued to mount, I figured that someone at NRO would be flacking for the Japanese and suggesting that it was all part of a government plot to...

Anyone who sees health policy as a trackless jungle for policymakers should take a gander at education policy as mediated by the federal government. Anyone who thinks U.S. public schools are better overall than when the federal government muscled its way into a policy jurisdiction reserved generally to the states—careful about jostling sleepwalkers. Oh, well,...

A month after Germany surrendered in May 1945, America's eyes turned to the Far East, where the bloodiest battle of the Pacific war was joined on the island of Okinawa. Twelve thousand U.S. soldiers and Marines would die—twice as many dead in 82 days of fighting as have died in all ...

President Obama is in a dilemma from which there appears to be no easy or early escape. Democrats are the Party of Government. They feed it, and it feeds them. The larger government grows, the more agencies that are created, the more bureaucrats who are hired, the more people who become beneficiaries, the more deeply...

I got into it recently—in cordial fashion—with the editors of an editorial page for which I used to labor. One of their columnists had used a word . . . well, let’s say we wouldn’t have printed it in Ye Olden Tyme. The editors took exception to the exception I took to the word’s appearance...

It’s jobs, jobs, jobs now for the Obama team, rather than health care, health care, health care. You have to call it progress, particularly if you’re jobless, or fearful of becoming so at a time when 17 million Americans are either non- or underemployed. We’re about done, in other words, with the free-floating pretense that...

Next let us turn to Woods’ comments on my discussion of scarcity as an economic concept.  I again quoted Paul Samuelson who introduces the topic as fundamental to economic analysis and concludes by saying:  “If you add up all the wants, you quickly find that there are simply not enough goods and services to satisfy...

PERSPECTIVE When the Going Gets Tough . . . by Thomas Fleming VIEWS The Mass Age Medium and Future Shlock by James O.Tate Making sense of the 60’s. How To Survive “Creative Destruction” by Greg Kaza Clarifying terms. NEWS Too Big To Fail by William J. Quirk The underlying cause. REVIEWS At the Crossroads by Justin Raimondo Anne C. Heller: Ayn ...

Almost five years ago I wrote for ChroniclesMagazine.org a piece attacking Thomas Woods’ views on the relationship between Catholic social teaching and the science of economics.  In brief, my complaint was against Woods’ contention that certain teachings of the popes on social matters overstep the boundaries of legitimate Church teaching because they contradict the findings...

What lies ahead politically? Look for an answer back in the ’90s. Even if the Republicans don’t take over after the midterm elections, the Democratic Party now in Congress is dominated by politicians fashioned in the Clinton era, nourished by such heirs of Aristotle as Rahm Emanuel and, before him, Tony Coelho. Their maps had...

We were blindsided. We never saw it coming. So said Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein of the financial crisis of 2008. He likened its probability to four hurricanes hitting the East Coast in a single season. Blankfein was reminded by the chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Committee, Phil Angelides, that hurricanes are “acts of...

Can’t stand to watch the English language’s losing encounter with the culture of who-cares-anyway? A new book says, get over it, fella. “Too often,” argues Jack Lynch, professor of English at Rutgers University, “the mavens and pundits are talking through their hats. They’re guilty of turning superstition into rules, and often their proclamations are nothing...

The Underwear Bomber case indicates that whoever is behind these bomb scares is laughing at our gullibility. How realistic is it that al-Qaida, an organization that allegedly pulled off the most fantastic terror attack in world history, would in these days of heightened security choose for an attack on an airliner a person who is...

“We are at war. We are at war against al-Qaida, a far-reaching network of violence and hatred that attacked us on 9/11, that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people and that is plotting to strike us again.” Thus did Barack Obama clear the air as to whether we are at war, and with whom and why....