It is not necessarily a bad thing for a national leader to remain at the helm for a very long time, provided that he is successful. Otto von Bismarck’s 28 years as Prussia’s and then the Reich’s chief minister were marked by unification and consolidation internally, nifty diplomacy and overall stability of the European balance-of-power...
Category: Columns
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Crazy Horse
The horse went down on a horizontal stretch of trail where no sound horse had any business stumbling. The quadrupe-dal rhythm broke suddenly, his near shoulder crumpled, his head sank at the end of the black-maned neck, until the horse seemed to be wanting to kneel and kiss the ground. I let out rein and...
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Indian as Ecologist
Most of us learned in grammar school, if not before, that the American Indian had a special reverence for nature. He was a kind of proto-ecologist who conserved natural resources, be they trees or beasts, with a religious devotion. I cannot recall the number of times I heard someone repeat, mantra-like, that “The Indian used...
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There Goes the Neighborhood
The first time I drove to Rockford, on a cold, gray, slushy November day six years ago, I entered the city the way most people do. Heading west on I-90, I got off at the East State Street exit, where I was greeted by a horrifying metal sign, in muted oranges, purples, and greens, welcoming...
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Transcendence, Anyone?
The Man Who Wasn’t There Produced by Working Title Films Directed by Joel Coen Screenplay by Joel and Ethan Coen Released by USA Films 2001: A Space Odyssey Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Directed by Stanley Kubrick Screenplay by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick Distributed as a re-release by Warner Bros. Of the many films I’ve...
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The Decline and Fall of the Midwest
Even more than Vachel Lindsay, who liked to say that the Mason-Dixon line ran straight through his heart, Booth Tarkington embodied the regional conflict that defined the Midwest. Born in Indianapolis only five years after the end of the war between the regions, Newton Booth Tarkington was descended on his father’s side from Southern Democrats...
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The Tyrant’s Lobby
As American wars go, President Bush’s crusade—excuse me, campaign—against terrorism doesn’t really make the big leagues. So far, American military action in Afghanistan is not even comparable to the Gulf War of 1990-91, and put next to the Civil War, World War I, or World War II, the current adventure barely registers. That doesn’t mean,...
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Afghanistan and Oil
Writing in the New York Times on September 26, Paul Krugman insisted that the war against Afghanistan would not be “a war on behalf of the oil companies; not even a war on behalf of SUVs and McMansions.” It was, though, going to be a war “over a natural resource that is more vital than...
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’69 Plus 40
Sam Nash pushed the empty beer bottle away across the knife-scarred table. “I’m ready to hunt bulls,” he said. “We need to be making tracks for the mountain soon, before it gets too dark to put a camp in up there.” Jim McCorkle set his chin forward but didn’t answer right away. He’d ordered black...
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Consuming Ourselves
When my wife and I were searching for a house in 1996, we had a few basic requirements: We wanted an older home with a decent-sized yard for our children; we wanted to live in an actual neighborhood, not a new, vinyl-sided ranch development; we wanted to be relatively close to Chronicles’ office; and we...
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False Redeemers
The Last Castle Produced and distributed by DreamWorks Directed by Rod Lurie Screenplay by David Scarpa Training Day Produced by Outlaw Productions Directed by Antoine Fuqua Screenplay by David Ayer Released by Warner Bros. American film would be poorer without Robert Redford. As an actor and as a director, he has given us some vastly...
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Abuse Your Illusions
Walter Block is a libertarian without guile, a theorist who refuses to confine his classical-liberal analysis to strictly economic questions. Liberty is liberty, he would argue, and value is value, whether we are deciding a question of zoning or a case of censorship. Honest man that he is, he opposes both zoning and censorship as...
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How Do I Hate Thee? Let Me Count the Ways
The cinders of the World Trade Center had barely fallen to the earth before George W. Bush had it all figured out. “America was targeted for attack,” the President explained to the nation barely 12 hours after the first plane hit the Manhattan skyscrapers, “because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the...
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Creeds and Values
The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon may have jarred American self-confidence, caused coast-to-coast panic, and even (we shall see) ignited World War III, but so far they have failed to put a dent in multicultural etiquette. President Bush and other government spokesmen have been at pains to stress that...
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Shadow of Ecstasy
It’s starting again. Almost 20 years ago, the federal government launched what became known as the “war on drugs,” a radical experiment to suppress illegal drugs through harsh penal solutions. Among other things, this meant long prison sentences for the sale or possession of tiny quantities of controlled substances, sentences that are astonishingly severe by...
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Memorandum to President George W. Bush
In the aftermath of September 11, you have done a reasonably good job managing the crisis, symbolizing the nation’s unity, restraining the laptop bombardiers, and preparing a military response that was neither hasty nor disproportionate. Now that two months have passed, you have more time to reflect on the long-term significance of that event and...
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Green Hills of Grayest Sand
Old Jules is more than the title of a book by Mari Sandoz it is the name of one of the monsters of American letters: the Simon Legree of the pioneer household who, married four times, drove one wife to the insane asylum and struck the fourth in the face with a handful of four...
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From Here to Eternity
“Weapons—guns, knives, brass knuckles, cigarette lighters . . . ” The young man’s voice trails off. If he were not waving his metal-detector wand at us, I might think that he was offering to sell us a gun or two, not asking us if we were carrying any. “No, they’re all in the trunk,” Chronicles‘...
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Something Both Brighter and Darker
Doing Hearts in Atlantis Produced by Castle Rock Entertainment Directed by Scott Hicks Screenplay by William Goldman from Stephen King’s novel Released by Warner Brothers I went to see director Scott Hicks’ Hearts in Atlantis not having read the Stephen King novel on which it is based. The little I knew of King’s other fiction...
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The Tower of Skulls
“You’ve never been to Nish?!” My friend was incredulous. How can someone who has traveled, it sometimes seems, every inch of Montenegro, Bosnia, and Kosovo not have found the time to go to Nish? The lady is far from being a local chauvinist, but when I first met her and asked (as I had been...
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Enemies Within and Above
Within a few hours of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September, it had become commonplace for even high-ranking government officials and elected leaders to say publicly that Americans would just have to get used to fewer constitutional liberties and personal freedoms than they have traditionally enjoyed. Of course,...
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Slavery’s Inconvenient Facts
I learned firsthand how disturbing facts could be when teaching a U.S. history course at UCLA in 1987. One of my teaching assistants, a politically correct young woman, became terribly upset after listening to my lecture on slavery. “He shouldn’t be saying such things!” she exclaimed to another teaching assistant. When asked by the other...
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Just Another Tequila Sunrise
It may be several years before the results of Census 2000 are available in anyy usable form, but certain trends have already begun to emerge from the raw data. Most significantly, as Chilton Williamson, Jr., and Roger McGrath have pointed out earlier in this issue, the Hispanic population in the United States continues to grow...
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A Voice in the Darkness
Apocalypse Now Redux Produced by Producer Zoetrope Studios Directed by Francis Ford Coppola Screenplay by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola Re-released by Miramax Films and United Artists I was finishing the original draft of this column early on the morning of September 11 when I received the news. My wife called me from the...
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Redeeming the Time The Days are Evil
The human universe, we are told by optimists on the editorial pages, is contracting into a gray and insipid doughball, pasted over with brightly colored labels advertising the only ethnic rivalries that persist: the struggles between Nissan and Daimler, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. Unfortunately, there are people around the world who do not read...
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Abe-Worship
At the end of the recent remake of Planet of the Apes—turn the page now if you still plan to see it—the hero escapes from said planet and its monstrous chimp-tyrant, General Thade. Returning to Earth at night, his spacecraft crashes in, of all places, the Reflecting Pool at the Washington Mall, and he solemnly...
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NATO Expansion: Harmful and Dangerous
After President Bush’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Italy in July, it is almost certain that a new round of NATO expansion will be announced at the forthcoming summit in Prague, regardless of Moscow’s misgivings. The alliance will include Slovenia, Slovakia, the three Baltic republics, and possibly Rumania and Bulgaria. The consequences of...
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Getting Somewhere
Jackson Hole is burning up. Gerry Spence had to evacuate his ranch ahead of the wildfires, and Dick Cheney could be next. Here above timberline in the Snowy Range of the Medicine Bow Mountains, 400 miles to the southeast, the breeze is cool, the grass is fresh and green, and the ponds of standing water...
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The Tower of Babble
The first call comes late on a Friday night. “Welcome back,” says Mark Dahlgren, the organist at St. Mary’s Shrine, who is nine months through the one year of probation he received for hugging a tree at Tom and Jan Ditzler’s farm (see “For Keeps! A Christian Defense of Property,” Views, April). “You probably haven’t...
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The School of Savagery
Planet of the Apes Produced and distributed by 20th Century Fox Directed by Tim Burton Screenplay by William Broyles, Jr., from Pierre Boulle’s novel Ghost World Produced by Capitol Films, United Artists, and John Malkovich Directed by Terry Zwigoff Screenplay by Daniel Clowes with Terry Zwigoff Released by MGM-UA The 1968 film Planet of the...
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It Ain’t Me?
George W. Bush comes as close as anyone to representing the current American aristocracy. It is not that the Bushes are old family or even old money. The family fortunes are usually traced back to great-grandfather Samuel Bush, a middleweight railroad magnate in Columbus, Ohio. Samuel’s son Prescott raised the family to national prominence by...
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Obligatory Holocausts
I feel sorry for Afrocentrists—those weird and wonderful folk who claim that civilization, philosophy, and science were discovered in ancient Africa, before being stolen by the white man. True, members of the movement are cranks, with nothing worthwhile to support their positions, but they are no more ridiculous than many other historians who dominate the...
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Sunday Summer
In June, the sun gets up about the time the pollen release ends. Keeping the bedroom window down in the early morning hours is a simple preventive for hay fever that requires only getting up around 2:00 A.M. to drop the window. It’s easier to take a pill the night before and forget about it....
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Breakin’ Up Is Hard To Do
After the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals officially declared that the Rockford school-desegregation lawsuit would come to an end on June 30, 2002 (see Letter From Rockford, June), many Rockfordians simply assumed that a return to local control would solve all of our problems. But even when court-ordered spending has ended, the Rockford school...
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So What’s a Metaphor?
A.I. Artificial Intelligence Produced by DreamWorks and Warner Bros. Directed by Steven Spielberg Screenplay by Ian Watson, based on a story by Brian Aldiss Released by Warner Bros. Sexy Beast Produced by Channel Four Films and Recorded Pictures Company Directed by Jonathan Glazer Screenplay by Louis Mellis and David Scinto Released by Fox Searchlight Pictures...
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Friday Breakfast
Robinson Crusoe, as the lit boys would say, is an “iconic” character, whose mastery over nature—and over the savage Friday—expresses the West’s sometimes contemptuous sense of superiority over other cultures. In the 500-year-long iconoclastic age that is just now coming to an end, icons are made only to be broken, and in such films as...
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Averting War With China
No foreign-policy issue facing the United States is more important than our longterm relationship with China, the most populous nation and the fourth-largest country on Earth. If we think in terms of uninterrupted statehood, China is the oldest nation-state, accustomed to taking the long view in foreign affairs. More significantly, if its present rate of...
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Resistance
On my knees in the bright pebbly waters of Hermit Creek, I looked up from the cotton shirt I was wringing out to the buff-colored rim of the Kaibab Plateau, over 4,000 vertical feet overhead. “Its a long way down from up there,” I told Tom Sheeley, who had just arrived along the trail from...
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History Lite
Pearl Harbor Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer Films and Touchstone Pictures Directed by Michael Bay Screenplay by Randall Wallace Released by Buena Vista Pictures A Knight’s Tale Produced by Columbia Pictures Corporation and Escape Artists Written and Directed by Brian Helgeland Released by Columbia and Sony Pictures Most films have a signature moment, a scene that...
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“Wasted Away Again in Margaritaville”
The arrest of the 19-year-old Bush twins for drinking liquor in an Austin restaurant gave the news-starved (and starved brained) press something to cackle over. The girls, clearly in a state of arrested adolescent rebellion, checked their Secret Service agents at the door and, even after the restaurant rejected Jenna’s fake ID, succeeded in getting...
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Dust Thou Art
Sheep Mountain like a fallen tombstone lay on the horizon under a sky thickening with gray cloud ribbons and white lenticulars. It was too cold for snow yet, and rain had not fallen for weeks in the mountains. The wind raised small storms of dust on the pale surface of the clay road and whirled...
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Resurrecting the Third Man
The Third Man Produced by Alexander Korda and David O. Selznick Directed by Carol Reed Screenplay by Graham Greene Released by London Films Re-released by Rialto Pictures Forget the Dark Side. Darth Sidious? No more convincing than Bela Lugosi flitting about an Abbott and Costello travesty. For the real thing, you’ll have to visit your...
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Flies Trapped in Honey
Nineteen ninety-one was the year of revolutions, the greatest, perhaps, since 1848. Many who observed the events from safe seats on this side of the Atlantic must have recalled Churchill’s great Fulton speech, in which he described the “Iron Curtain” that had “descended across the continent,” cutting off “all the capitals of the ancient states...
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Being Bill O’Reilly
Some celebrities seem born with a natural star power that radiates from them like an angelic halo. Alcibiades had this kind of “charisma” that made him adored even by people who disliked him. To be a celebrity, as Willy Loman would say, it is not enough to be liked: You must be well liked. Musicians...
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Getting Out of Dodge
The Founding Fathers intended the “Enumeration” (Article I, Section 2) not only as a means of assuring representational equality among the states but as a graph displaying the growth of the American nation in size and prosperity. For almost 200 years, the decennial census could plausibly be accepted as doing that. The last three censuses...
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Free at Last
The Rockford school-desegregation lawsuit is finally over—or at least it will be, on Sunday, June 30, 2002. Yesterday—Wednesday, April 18—the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit overruled federal Magistrate P. Michael Mahoney and granted the school district “unitary status” (the legal term for being, in the court’s words, “sufficiently desegregated to require...
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Fearful Symmetry
The Tailor of Panama Produced by John le Carré, John Boorman, and Kevan Barker with Columbia Pictures Directed by John Boorman Screenplay by John le Carré, John Boorman, and Andrew Davies Released by Columbia Pictures One of my favorite films is Carol Reed’s 1960 adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel Our Man in Havana, which tells...
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The New Meaning of “Racism”
The tedium that descended upon the nation’s politics last winter when Bush II ascended the presidential throne was relieved briefly in the waning days of the Clinton era by the bitter breezes that wafted around some of the new President’s Cabinet appointments. After repeatedly muttering his meaningless campaign slogan, “I’m a uniter, not a divider,”...
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The Proletarian Weapon
No sooner had George W. Bush entered the White House and its previous occupants padded off to Harlem—with as much public swag as they could pack into the helicopters—than the news media suddenly began to discover “layoffs,” “downturns,” and a looming economic crisis that threatened to strip the flesh from the eight fat years that...
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Two Rooms With a View
It has been the usual 56-hour day spent in airports under siege from CNN and microwave-burned pizza, cramped into buses, taxis, and the midget seats of American Airlines steerage with two varieties of undrinkable wine-product to wash down the “looks-like-chicken” alternative to the inevitable “pasta” they serve on flights to Italy, but now we are...