In the year 2000, many conservatives, with or without holding their noses, turned out to vote for George W. Bush. One of the Republicans’ strongest selling points during the campaign was Governor Bush’s oft-repeated declaration that his administration would not engage in nation-building experiments. After eight years of President Clinton’s busybodying in the Balkans, where...
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January 1, 2007June 21, 2022European Diary
Déjà Vu by the Gross
Off the back of the little three-wheel ladybug-shiny truck in front of the house, parked under an exuberant tree to which one of the neighbors had attached a washing line, early this morning I bought two yellow melons, three kilos of Muscat grapes, two kilos of late, hillside peaches, a kilo each of plums and...
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January 1, 2007June 21, 2022The American Interest
Iraq: The Least Bad Scenario
The Democrats’ victory on November 7 and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s departure a day later marked the beginning of the end game in Iraq. The moment is reminiscent of December 1970, when President Nixon decided to pull U.S. forces out of Vietnam by the end of the following year. The major difference is that...
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January 1, 2007June 21, 2022In the Dark
Cross-Cultural Follies
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan Produced by Everyman Pictures Directed by Larry Charles Screenplay by Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham, and Dan Mazer Distributed by 20th Century Fox Babel Produced by Anonymous Content and Zeta Film Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu Screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga Distributed...
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January 1, 2007June 21, 2022The Bare Bodkin
On Being “Right Wing”
As I write these words, just after the November 7 elections, liberal Democrats are enjoying a well-earned gloat on their victory over the right wing. Just one question: What does right wing mean? I’ve puzzled over this question for years. I’ve also posed it to liberals, who can’t really answer it. They apply this term,...
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January 1, 2007June 21, 2022The Rockford Files
Are the Good Times Really Over?
In mid-September, the original campus of Rockford’s Barber-Colman Company was named an historic district and placed on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s a fitting end to one of Rockford’s best-known manufacturing sites. Founded in 1900, the Barber-Colman Company gradually built the 15-building plant between Rock and River Streets, by the very ford in...
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December 1, 2006July 26, 2022Heresies
Solemn Joy and Hot Gospel
’Twas the middle of that sacred time of year when all Americans pause to remember what is most important—Christmas Shopping Season. I had just walked through the automatic doorway of MediaPlay, out in what was then the edge of Rockford’s wasteland (the East State Street shopping corridor, which has since sprawled itself all the way...
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December 1, 2006June 21, 2022Perspective
Jihad’s Fifth Column
No one on the planet, by now, has not heard of the violence that greeted Pope Benedict’s references to Emperor Manuel II and his reflections on Islam. Manuel, invariably (and unfairly) described as “obscure” or “forgotten,” lived in one of those interesting ages of the world that teach lessons to those who are not blind...
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December 1, 2006June 21, 2022European Diary
Eyeless in Love
The desire to spit is widely underrated as a motive. Yet it was known throughout the university I attended, for instance, that the founder of Pan American Airways, one of its illustrious and discontented alumni, had built the PanAm skyscraper over Grand Central Station in New York with the single-minded purpose of being able to...
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December 1, 2006June 21, 2022The Hundredth Meridian
American Parenthood
Overwhelmed by the shame of having a juvenile delinquent for a daughter, Héctor could almost forget that he himself was a convicted criminal and the subject of an investigation by the Immigration and Borders division of the Department of Homeland Security. The entire business had been a father’s worst nightmare, as well as a major...
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December 1, 2006June 21, 2022In the Dark
Infernally Yours
The Departed Produced and distributed by Warner Brothers Directed by Martin Scorsese Screenplay by William Monahan In The Departed, a raucously sordid meditation on the ways of the lower-class Boston Irish, director Martin Scorsese has included a passing tribute to Carol Reed’s peerless film, The Third Man. Reed’s adaptation of Graham Greene’s novella concludes with...
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December 1, 2006June 21, 2022Sins of Omission
“Scratch One Flattop”
It was America’s first naval battle of World War II, Japan’s first loss at sea in the war, the battle that saved Australia from a Japanese invasion, the greatest naval battle in Australian waters, the first carrier battle, and the first battle in which the opposing fleets never came within sight of each other or...
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December 1, 2006June 21, 2022The Rockford Files
What Lies Beneath
According to an article in the New York Times on September 10, “In 2005, more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent United States residents—nearly 96,000—than in any year in the previous two decades.” Moreover, many of these are not simply Muslims who had been here on guest visas but now have been granted permanent...
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November 1, 2006June 21, 2022Perspective
El Gringo y El Mexicano
America has not been a nation for well over a century. She is more like an Indian stew: Never taken off the fire, the mess of wild carrots and fish is gradually transformed by the daily addition of squirrels and squash, birds and deer, and the odd bit of human body. By the end of...
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November 1, 2006June 21, 2022European Diary
Of Love’s Compromises
Death is terribly tactful. It comes to a man when he finally realizes that he understands nothing, thus saving his face. Watched back to front, like the videocassette that you know is on fast rewind when you see the hooker paying the client, life is a gradual shedding of obsolescent platitudes, a quiet letting go...
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November 1, 2006June 21, 2022The Hundredth Meridian
Government by the People
Héctor Villa was, by nature, a patient, long-suffering man. Even so, he arrived home in a cross mood that evening, at the end of an unusually frustrating day. First, there had been the traffic ticket; next, his unproductive meeting with Mrs. Ahmadinejihad. Finally, he’d been unable to meet with the school principal, after waiting for...
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November 1, 2006June 21, 2022The American Interest
To Lose a War
President George W. Bush’s highly anticipated prime-time speech to mark the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America was supposed to be nonpartisan and conciliatory. It offered him an opportunity to present mature thoughts on one of the most momentous events in this country’s history, to correct several manifest flaws in his conceptual approach...
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November 1, 2006June 21, 2022In the Dark
Of Men and Supermen
Hollywoodland Produced by Miramax Films Directed by Allen Coulter Screenplay by Paul Bernbaum Distributed by Focus Features Of the entertainment industry’s many venerable traditions, cashing in on dead celebrities ranks just below rehabilitating headliner junkies. Untold millions have been made under the guise of immortalizing fallen performers—think of James Dean, Elvis, John Lennon. And who...
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November 1, 2006June 21, 2022The Bare Bodkin
Aaron’s Tormentors
This summer, as the odious Barry Bonds advanced toward Henry Aaron’s home-run record, I told a friend: “I’m going to write Bonds a letter. And it’s going to be even more vitriolic than the one I wrote Aaron 30 years ago.” Just kidding, of course! When Aaron broke the most venerable record in baseball—then held,...
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November 1, 2006June 21, 2022The Rockford Files
Life in a Border Town
The archetypical middle-sized town in the middle of the Middle West, Rockford seems about as far removed from the border as you can get, unless we count the border with Wisconsin, a few miles to the north. And yet, Rockford has been subject to successive waves of immigration that have brought with them (if in...
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October 1, 2006June 21, 2022Perspective
The Root of All Evil
When George Bernard Shaw decided to devote himself to the destruction of civilization (or, as he would have preferred to call it, the cause of socialism), he spent years studying political economy. As Chesterton put it in a book devoted to his longtime friend, Here was a man who could have enjoyed art among the...
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October 1, 2006June 21, 2022European Diary
Of Chance and Memory
Coincidence is the smile of luck, but it is also the laughter of misfortune. A smile is singular, rather like tears; it appears meaningful insofar as it seems to have a precipitant cause. Laughter, by contrast, is repetitive and mechanical; automatons may laugh, but they can scarcely be imagined smiling. Thus, hysterical laughter is common...
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October 1, 2006June 21, 2022The Hundredth Meridian
Government for the People
“I owe you an apology, compadrito,” Héctor Villa was telling his friend, Jesús “Eddie” Juárez. Jesús “Eddie,” who hadn’t the foggiest idea what his friend was talking about, nodded his head and attempted a forgiving smile anyway, on the off chance it might prompt Héctor to clinch his apology by offering to buy another round....
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October 1, 2006June 21, 2022Breaking Glass
Historians in Blunderland
The academy is in an even worse plight than you may imagine. Every so often, surveys reveal just how far America’s professors are out of touch with the political and cultural mainstream. Not only do they overwhelmingly register with the Democratic Party, but most adhere to the straitest sect within that tradition, those who regard...
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October 1, 2006June 21, 2022The American Interest
A Turbulent Layman
If you did not know beforehand that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadine-jad was one of the most important men in the most neuralgic region of the world—and, by extension, in the world itself—you’d never have guessed it. One of the few things he has in common with President George W. Bush is a forgettable face. In...
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October 1, 2006June 21, 2022In the Dark
Prohibition Addiction
Miami Vice Produced and distributed by Universal Pictures Directed by Michael Mann Screenplay by Michael Mann and Anthony Yerkovich Miami Vice isn’t a film; it’s a cultural indicator. This thought came to me as I was making my way off a plane coming home from Las Vegas. (I was traveling for business, not pleasure, if...
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October 1, 2006June 21, 2022Sins of Omission
Atrocities Azteca
Nearly every celebration of Mexican heritage by Mexicans in the United States now features references to the Aztecs and some form of traditional Aztec dance, called La Danza Azteca. This would be something like the Irish celebrating Oliver Cromwell and the Cromwellian confiscations and settlement—only worse. Few Mexicans today, on either side of the border,...
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October 1, 2006June 21, 2022The Rockford Files
A Third Way
The American love of free enterprise has been one of this country’s greatest blessings. The same, however, cannot be said unequivocally of the economic individualism that we too often assume is an indispensable part of the free-enterprise system. The fundamental fallacy of that assumption should be obvious: Every economic transaction, by definition, requires more than...
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September 1, 2006July 26, 2022Heresies
For Zion’s Sake
“For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace,” declares the LORD, through his prophet Isaiah, “and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.” So great is God’s provision for His people that even “the Gentiles shall see...
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September 1, 2006June 21, 2022Perspective
Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off
Faculty parties are excruciating experiences—bad food and worse conversation. It has been many decades since American professors were scholars or scientists who could take an intelligent interest in a wide range of subjects, but they doggedly persist in repeating the opinions they have picked up like so much lint. Younger professors are perhaps the worst...
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September 1, 2006June 21, 2022European Diary
Sex and Poverty
The poor smelled, and there was nothing to be done about it. “Middle-class people believe that the working class are dirty,” George Orwell recalled, “and, what is worse, that they are somehow inherently dirty.” His childhood nightmare was having to drink from a vessel touched by the lips of a presumed social inferior. I had...
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September 1, 2006June 21, 2022The American Interest
An Undesirable Independence
Given the wars and rumors of war from North Korea to the Middle East, the last thing America needs is to reignite the proverbial powder keg in the Balkans, a region that has been fairly stable for the better part of this decade, especially when compared to the bloody 1990’s. That precarious stability could be...
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September 1, 2006June 21, 2022In the Dark
Super Savior
Superman Returns Produced and distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures Directed by Bryan Singer Screenplay by Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris The American Civil Liberties Union’s executive officers must be on vacation somewhere off the telecommunications grid. This supposition occurred to me as I watched Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. Although the film takes off the wraps...
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September 1, 2006June 21, 2022The Bare Bodkin
Holmes & Sons
During a recent bout of infirmity, I turned for solace to the greatest storyteller of modern times, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930). If this sounds like excessive praise, I ask you—no, I defy you—to name his superior, or even his nearest rival, for that title. Late in the Victorian era, Conan Doyle, a struggling physician,...
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September 1, 2006June 21, 2022The Rockford Files
Shades of Blue
The Rockford Public Schools, as longtime readers of Chronicles know, have seen more than their fair share of troubles. With the end, in June 2002, of the 13-year-long desegregation suit and its accompanying rule by the federal courts, and the hiring of Dennis Thompson as superintendent in 2004, however, the school board has begun to...
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August 1, 2006June 21, 2022Perspective
Socialism Is Theft
The troubles of youth have long been a staple of popular fiction. In 19th-century fiction, wellborn young men borrowed against their future inheritance in order to pay for the wine, women, and song that red-blooded young men have always pursued. In the mid-20th century, readers were titillated by tales of urban ethnic kids—Irish, Jewish, black—whose...
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August 1, 2006June 21, 2022European Diary
A Position of Poverty
It is all very well, strolling arm in arm through the hothouse of gloriously midsummer fiction, snatching a vermouth and bitters in the shadow by Fouquet’s, hailing a taxi some gilded moments later; it is all very well when you have the money to get yourself to Paris, to pay for the perfumed drinks, to...
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August 1, 2006June 21, 2022The Hundredth Meridian
Noche de Desastre
The morning after meeting Juanito Villalobos, Héctor, throwing Dr. Spock’s strictures to the wind, put his foot down when Dubya demanded to be taken to the Lion Habitat immediately after the family’s return from breakfast at McDonald’s. His patience was suddenly at an end. Although the Habitat itself was free, the Villas’ suite by now...
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August 1, 2006June 21, 2022The American Interest
A Serious Third Party?
The looming amnesty of millions of illegal immigrants is deeply unpopular with millions of Americans, and for good reason: If the immigration bill the Senate passed in June gets through the House, this nation is finished. The bill would not only legalize some ten million illegal aliens but bring in five times that many—legally—over the...
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August 1, 2006June 21, 2022In the Dark
Leonardo’s Little Joke
The Da Vinci Code Produced by Columbia Pictures Directed by Ron Howard Screenplay by Akiva Goldsman from the novel by Dan Brown Distributed by Sony Pictures At one point in The Da Vinci Code, the marvelously funny movie based on Dan Brown’s as nearly hilarious novel, Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), renowned cryptologist for the Direction...
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August 1, 2006June 21, 2022Sins of Omission
Guadalcanal: An Emotion, Not a Name
In most history textbooks today, coverage of the war in the Pacific consists of a summary of the Battle of Midway, a brief mention of leapfrogging islands, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Battle of Midway is almost invariably described as the “turning point” in the Pacific campaign that put the Japanese...
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August 1, 2006June 21, 2022The Rockford Files
Black Like Me
Rockford alderman Ann Thompson owns a cleaning service. That, in itself, is not surprising; while Rockford aldermen receive some benefits that are traditionally reserved to full-time employees (such as health insurance), they are paid a part-time stipend, and only those who are retired or independently wealthy could afford not to have another job. For months...
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July 1, 2006July 26, 2022Heresies
Church Shopper
Like the French, we Americans live in, to borrow from Claude Polin, a “me-first” society. Each and every man is the measure of all things, his own arbiter of that which is beautiful, true, and of good report. Reared on the Disney principle (You can be whatever you want to be, or, Be true to...
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July 1, 2006June 21, 2022Perspective
Violent Revolution
This past spring, while Congress was engaging in its usual mock debate about tightening immigration, hundreds of thousands of Mexican-Americans took their case to the streets. In the first round of demonstrations, Chicanos, waving Mexican flags, demanded rights for illegals and declared that all those who favored enforcing the law were racists. We all heard...
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July 1, 2006June 21, 2022The Hundredth Meridian
A Desert Idyll
For Héctor, Las Vegas was the American city. The Strip at night suggested, Héctor thought, an explosion in a fireworks factory—all the flashing, soaring, running, bursting lights in every color of the universe; the gaudy hotels, like upended cruise ships; the fancy stores, luxurious casinos, and romantic cocktail lounges; his compatriots crowding everywhere and jabbering...
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July 1, 2006June 21, 2022Breaking Glass
By Any Means Necessary
Was there a point at which American liberals consciously adopted Jacobinism, or did it just creep up on them gradually? This question was brought into rather sharp focus earlier this year when the PBS series American Experience presented an expensive two-part documentary entitled “Reconstruction: The Second Civil War.” The series recounted the story of Reconstruction,...
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July 1, 2006June 21, 2022The American Interest
One Hell for All
In Sartre’s grim play No Exit, a man and two women are in Hell, which, in this case, is a brightly lit drawing room furnished in the style of deuxième empire. At one point, the man, Garcin, famously quips that “hell is other people” (“l’enfer, c’est les autres”). One of the women, Inès, eventually responds...
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July 1, 2006June 21, 2022In the Dark
Nobody’s Going to Help Us
United 93 Produced and distributed by Universal Pictures Directed and written by Paul Greengrass United 93 is the extraordinarily convincing faux-documentary of what might have happened aboard the fourth plane hijacked on September 11, 2001. Flight 93 was the one that may have been headed for the Capitol in Washington, D.C., until its passengers stood...
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July 1, 2006June 21, 2022The Bare Bodkin
The Big Word
What is culture, anyway? It’s one of those baffling words that at first seem to mean a narrow range of things (stuff such as “grand opera”) and then turn out to cover just about everything—even the New York Post, if you stretch it far enough. As with art and history, you may find yourself using...
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July 1, 2006June 21, 2022Sins of Omission
The Saint of the Sourdoughs
More than 20 years ago, I presented a paper on the Old West at an historical conference and was surprised to find that I upset several female professors in the audience. I had not disparaged their frontier sisters. Quite the opposite: I described how strong, courageous, enterprising, and successful were many of those pioneer women. ...