Author: Tom Piatak (Tom Piatak)

Earlier this week, Michael Gerson, formerly a speechwriter for George W. Bush, now a scribbler for The Washington Post, trained his sights on those he termed “Rust Belt revivalists.” These are the Republicans who have noticed that “the GOP has been dominated by corporate interests and needs to identify more directly with the economic frustrations...

During oral argument on the cases challenging the definition of marriage upheld by the voters in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee, Justice Anthony Kennedy remarked, “I don’t know how to count the decimals when he talk about millennia. The definition [of marriage] has been with us for millennia. And it’s very difficult for the court...

Last week, Dylann Roof walked into the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston and slaughtered nine of the innocent people he found there. Roof’s act of slaughter has rightly been greeted with universal revulsion. But the media and politicians from both parties seized the opportunity to inaugurate a self-righteous crusade against a flag he displayed in...

A recent New Hampshire poll showed Jeb Bush in first place, at 14%. In second place was Donald Trump, with 11%. Bush, of course, represents the Republican Establishment. Trump represents disenchantment with that Establishment, and he is likely to climb higher in the polls as the result of its latest actions.  Yesterday, the Senate voted...

Thomas Piatak: You contrast our approach to Israel’s immigration policy. Israel has built a fence to keep out illegal immigrants and deported those who managed to get in before the fence. Israel did that because changing the ethnicity of Israel changes the idea of Israel. And you also note that “changing America’s ethnicity changes the...

Last week saw the publication of Ann Coulter’s new book on immigration, Adiós America! This is an important book. Although Coulter sounds a number of themes that will be quite familiar to Chronicles readers, she also breaks new ground, particularly in her detailed description of how mass immigration is harming ordinary Americans. It also comes out...

Seventy years ago today, Chapman & Hall published Brideshead Revisited, written by Evelyn Waugh while he was on leave from the British Army during World War II.  The book became Waugh’s most popular, and the 1981 British television adaptation remains perhaps the finest film adaptation of any book. One of the reasons for the novel’s...

It is hard to see how a country that hates its past can have much of a future. If that is so, the gay marriage referendum in Ireland last week suggests that Ireland has no future.  In the aftermath of the vote, Agence France-Presse ran two articles summarizing the reactions of the Irish press. The...

One of the basic political problems of today is the increasing tendency of political leaders to ignore the views of those who elected them. Across the board, political leaders advance the interests of the wealthy elites who bankroll their campaigns and feather their nests after they leave politics, rather than the interests of the people...

One of the more absurd, not to mention offensive, aspects of political correctness is the increasing tendency to treat the Confederacy as the equivalent of Nazi Germany. An ad currently running on TV shows the now middle-aged actors from The Dukes of Hazzard driving a car very similar to the one they drove on the...

Today brings the news that 15 Moslem migrants seeking to enter Europe illegally are under arrest by Italian police for throwing 12 Christian migrants to their deaths in the Mediterranean. No doubt this incident will be downplayed or ignored by those who want Europe to welcome any illegal immigrant who can make it across the...

Late last week, I saw a small piece from AFP reporting that, on a visit to South Africa, Zimbabwe’s de facto dictator Robert Mugabe said, “I don’t want to see a white man.”  Of course, if a European leader had commented, “I don’t want to see a black man,” the international outcry would still be...

Last week’s furor over the version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act approved in Indiana and awaiting only the governor’s signature in Arkansas was illuminating. Once again, the contemporary left demonstrated that it values conformity, not tolerance. Indeed, the left is now committed to using the full power of the state and the culture to...

One of the many unfortunate trends in today’s American politics is that being wrong on significant matters seems to carry little penalty, while being right on significant matters seems to carry little reward. Consider those who told us that the invasion of Iraq was going to be a “cakewalk,” with American troops being greeted as...

Earlier this week, Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio wrote an opinion piece in the Akron Beacon Journal announcing that, after much soul-searching, he no longer considered himself pro-life. Ryan wrote that listening to constituents who have had abortions convinced him “that we must trust women and their families—not politicians—to make the best decision for...

The big political news this week was that 25 Republican members of the House of Representatives did not vote to re-elect John Boehner as Speaker of the House.  Most of those voting against Boehner were conservatives, and the principle source of dissatisfaction was Boehner’s pushing through the House a massive spending bill that provided funding...

Over the weekend, Ismaaiyl Brinsley murdered New York City policemen Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, after leaving messages stating he was going to take revenge for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner by killing “pigs.” Brinsley’s actions, of course, took place against the backdrop of a months long media campaign intended to convince...

Last night, John Boehner convinced 162 House Republicans to vote for a bill funding the federal government, with the exception of the Department of Homeland Security, through September. Boehner couldn’t convince 67 House Republicans to vote for the bill, but it passed the House, since the White House was able to convince 57 House Democrats...

Last week, Brett Arends of MarketWatch reported that, for the first time since Ulysses S. Grant sat in the White House, the United States no longer has the world’s largest economy. That honor now belongs to China.  Recent International Monetary Fund figures show that China will produce 17.6 trillion dollars worth of goods and services...

There has been no better leader on the immigration issue on Capitol Hill than Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, who was just reelected without any opposition. Yesterday, Senator Sessions issued a powerful statement urging congressional Republicans to defund President Obama’s amnesty for illegal immigrants, an act that even Yale Law School Professor Peter Schuck, writing...

There is much to be said about Barack Obama’s announcement last night of an executive amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, and other Chronicles writers have already addressed several important aspects. But I would like to say a word about what this announcement reveals about President Obama. Last night, Barack Obama showed that he holds...

Yesterday there was supposed to have been a debate at Christ Church College in Oxford between two British writers whose work I have enjoyed, Tim Stanley and Brendan O’Neill. The topic was to have been whether the abortion culture harms Britain. Stanley was going to argue that the abortion culture harms Britain, though he was...

Back in 2004, I was part of the 62% of Ohio voters who supported a referendum to amend the Ohio Constitution to define marriage as “a union between one man and one woman.” Last week, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decided, in a 2 to 1 decision, that my vote—and those of some 3....

Last night’s midterm elections marked a decisive repudiation of Barack Obama. Not only did the Republicans seize control of the Senate, increase their majority in the House, and win an overwhelming number of the governorships being contested, but most Democratic candidates wanted nothing to do with Obama, with the Kentucky candidate for the U.S. Senate...

Today I received an email I knew would be coming, telling me that one of my high school theology teachers, Jim Skerl, had died of pancreatic cancer. So ended a thoroughly Christian life, one that deserves to be better known. I liked Mr. Skerl as a teacher—he had us read Evelyn Waugh’s “The Loved One”...

Much of the financial support for the sort of “immigration reform” favored by Barack Obama has come from Silicon Valley. The immigration bill that passed the Senate but stalled in the House would not only grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants but also greatly increase legal immigration. Of central importance to Silicon Valley,...

There has been much attention given in the media to the Synod of Bishops that began meeting today in Rome. The focus of most media coverage has been on the the supposed need of the Catholic Church to give its blessing to contemporary culture, particularly those ways in which modern men and women ignore or...

The Center for Immigration Studies reports this morning that the number of immigrants, both legal and illegal, in the United States is now 41.3 million, the highest it has ever been. Even as the American economy continues to sputter and many Americans face unemployment or underemployment, an additional 1.4 million immigrants entered the country between...

Back in 2011, President Barack Obama said this about the possibility of using executive action to legalize illegal immigrants: “there are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not...

The defeat in June of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the GOP primary by a conservative challenger with little money was one of the most encouraging developments in American politics in a long time. This week’s announcement that Cantor now has a $3.4 million job with a Wall Street investment bank, however, is a...

Over the weekend, I caught some of Raymond Arroyo’s interview with Paul Bremer, George W. Bush’s envoy to Iraq after our invasion. Bremer admitted that Iraqi Christians are worse off now than before the invasion, but he maintained that other Iraqis are “much better off.” In support of his claim that Iraqis are better off,...

According to economists, the US economy began recovering from the recession back in 2009. However, last week brought further confirmation that there has been no economic recovery for many Americans. The United States Conference of Mayors released a report showing that the average wage in the sectors of the economy devastated by the last recession,...

My old compatriot from law school Ann Coulter has a habit of writing columns not designed to advance her interests as a columnist. When Coulter’s friend Joe Sobran died, she wrote a column praising Joe without reservation.  Given the relative power of Joe’s friends and Joe’s enemies, some wondered if this was wise. Indeed, another...

Alabama Republican congressman Mo Brooks generated outrage among the usual suspects this week by telling Laura Ingraham that the Obama Adminstration’s push for amnesty for illegal immigrants is “a part of the war on whites that’s being launched by the Democratic Party. And the way in which they’re launching this war is by claiming that...

The most important borders for Americans to worry about are our own. But the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 has certainly shifted media attention from the crisis on our southern border to the borders of Ukraine. Although we do not know with certainty, it appears likely that pro-Russian rebels were the ones who shot...

Last week, there was much talk of a crisis at the border with Mexico, prompted by a surge of Central American teenagers trying to get into the United States. President Obama asked Congress for $3.7 billion to deal with this influx, with the largest single appropriation, $1.8 billion, to go to the Department of Health...

                      One hundred years ago today, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie Chotek, the Duchess of Hohenberg, visited Sarajevo. Waiting for them was a band of would be assassins, who planned to use bombs to kill the heir to the Habsburg throne. The bombs...

My short piece on the anti-Catholic hysteria in the media surrounding the St. Mary Home for unwed mothers and their children in Tuam, Ireland—which closed its doors 53 years ago—has generated a lengthy response from Rod Dreher entitled “Trust Diarmuid Martin, Not Tom Piatak.” Judging by Dreher’s response, my post accomplished at least two things....

The defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in tonight’s Virginia Republican primary is a victory for America. Cantor lost for one reason: he was seen as weak on immigration. The entirety of the American Establishment is pushing for what it calls “immigration reform,” which actually means amnesty for illegal immigrants and a massive increase...

“Eight Hundred Dead Irish Children thrown into the sewer by Catholic nuns.” So charged Rod Dreher last week at The American Conservative. Dreher was referring to the findings of local Irish historian Catherine Corless, who found that 796 children died at a home for unwed mothers and their children operated in Tuam by the Bon...

In recent years, there has been much media attention given to “bullying” in schools, with the lion’s share of attention given to a particular type of bullying, that directed at youngsters identified as “gay.” The schoolyard scorn directed at students who are fat or unathletic or unattractive or unpopular for a myriad of other reasons...

In March, a group of academics released their estimate of the costs of the Iraq war: 1.7 trillion dollars, with an additional 490 billion dollars in benefits owed to wounded veterans. Given that wounded veterans will need a lifetime of care, the estimated costs could rise to 6 trillion dollars over the next four decades....

“Un pere, une mere, c’est elementaire.” This is the batte cry of La Manif Pour Tous, the French group that mobilized in opposition to gay marriage in France. Although the Hollande government did legalize gay marriage last spring, La Manif Pour Tous made a name for itself by organizing two mammoth rallies in Paris before...