Category: Polemics & Exchanges

In the November 1996 issue of Chronicles, there is a review (“Heathen Days” by Gregory McNamee) of John Gillis’s book A World of Their Own Making. I do not know whether to blame the reviewer or the author, but I find many of the statements questionable. McNamee says “Gillis combs the census records to show...

Kevin Lamb’s excellent article (“Crime Genes and Other Delusions,” December 1996) illuminated recent behavioral genetic research on temperament and its relation to crime and showed that scientific interest of this kind is growing rapidly, despite continued opposition from the political correctness crowd. Coincidentally, two new articles of mine bear directly on this issue. In the...

I have generally found myself agreeing with Jacob Neusner in his articles for Chronicles. I must, however, question his interpretation (“Haters and Self-Haters,” October 1996) of the “Anti-Jewists” excoriated by Edward Alexander in The Jewish Wars: Reflections by One of the Belligerents. The phenomenon of a people “so emotionally and mentally twisted” as to despise...

Philip Jenkins writes in his October article (“One in Ten: A Gay Mythology“): “The construction of the ‘epidemic’ is a damning indictment of the use of social science in political debate, and the uncritical way in which tendentious statistics are accepted as fact. Briefly, gay teen suicide is an outright myth.” A few sentences later,...

Regarding Michael Washburn’s comments about Basque nationalism (Cultural Revolutions, November 1996), let me say that the “nationalism” espoused by the terrorist ETA organization (and its political counterpart, Herri Batsuna) has little to do with the traditional movement by the Basques (or, for that matter, by the Catalans, Calicians, or other Spanish “nationalities”) for autonomy and...

While George Watson (“Don’t Give Us India,” September 1996) is essentially correct in his critique of multiculturalism, he misses the mark in his interpretation of a passage from Paradise Lost. Watson cites the lines in which “Columbus found the American so girt / With feathered cincture, naked else and wild . . . ” as...

If George Carey is correct in his review of Marshall DeRosa’s The Ninth Amendment and the Politics of Creative Jurisprudence (September 1996), then Professor DeRosa is justified in his concern that the judges might misapply the Ninth Amendment, as they have other general phrases, such as “due process” and “equal protection.” In recent years, the...

Like many Chronicles readers, I too am concerned about the way our electoral process is rigged in favor of the two establishment parties. I supported Pat Buchanan for the GOP nomination this year, but I am disappointed that he did not take the approach of Jerry Brown in 1992: Brown refused to run on a...

On a Sunday morning I sat down with a cup of black coffee and my July issue of Chronicles to enjoy my leisure time. Enjoy I did until I came to “Sex, Drugs, and a Republican Party” by Mare Morano. My reaction was first disgust, then anger, and finally a flashback to a day in...

I would like to respond to Clyde Wilson’s excellent editorial (Cultural Revolutions, May 1996) on the Confederate flag. Mr. Wilson is correct in what he says, as far as it goes, but there is, or should be, more here than meets the eye. First, why do we really care what may or not be “offensive”...

I would like to congratulate François Furet (“The Long Apprenticeship,” July 1996) on his Richard M. Weaver Award and do him the courtesy of taking his acceptance speech seriously. I start by confessing that here in England the sense of inexorable democratic/ constitutional progress which Furet claims for France and Europe seems tremendously problematic. England...

As an Orthodox monk, I imagine Alain de Benoist (“Monotheism vs, Politheism,” April 1996) performing his daily orisons before an icon by Gauguin, chanting selections from Diderot’s Supplément au voyage de Bougainville as his Psalter, and reading passages from Rousseau as the appointed lessons. He does remind us that pagans include the great philosophers of...

Rabbi Jacob Neusner is correct when he writes in “Letter From Inner Israel: State-Sponsored Prayer” (April 1996): “Constitutional issues aside, there are strong theological arguments against legislating prayer for young people.” “We speak each in our own, unique way; we honor the piety and prayer of others; but we do not participate and cannot participate...

Philip Jenkins’ tactful and balanced review (“Unbaptized America, May 1996) of Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore’s The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness gives credit to the authors’ attention to detail but fails to take note of their tendentious tendency to mislead their readers about the “Christian foundations” of our American republic. They...

Now that Samuel Francis’s two-part installment on his “Rise and Fall” appears complete (April and May 1996), it’s time for the readers of Chronicles to hear the rest of the story. What he did not disclose was the nature of his blatantly white supremacist writings that appeared in a newsletter called American Renaissance. In the...

As a lifelong market researcher, I couldn’t agree more with Robert Weissberg’s expose of the flaws of political polling (“Shadowmetrics,” February 1996). But Professor Weissberg did not include a list of embarrassing questions with which to attack spurious data, and so here it is: 1. Who is included in the intended target population? Age, sex,...

Thomas Molnar (“Left and Right in Eastern Europe,” March 1996) should be commended for pointing out the “scandalous impunity” with which communist criminals escaped punishment for their atrocities in Central and Eastern Europe. The communist nomenclaturas, supported by the West, acquired a thin veneer of “democracy,” and continue to rule. Naturally, they would not indict...

Come on now, Chilton, you can fool the readers of Chronicles who have never cut the scent pads off a mule deer buck or pried the “ivories” out of an elk’s jaw, but for those of us who have, your hyperbole, especially in your February column (“Hunters and Gatherers“), sometimes reaches the point where a...

Though current discussions of nationalism are incredibly confused and Wayne Allensworth in “The Nationalist Imperative” (February 1996) does a pretty good job in showing the fragility of the modernist version, what he proposes as the “primordial” counterpart is ridiculous. Let me register a few objections. The Bowie anecdote is amusing but highly misleading. What follows...

Although generally sympathetic to Philip Jenkins’s concerns about the burgeoning giants of the “media/entertainment” complex, I found the closing paragraphs of his February essay, “The Matter of Money,” to be rather confused. Is it a desire for money that has inspired the producers of top-20 sitcoms to introduce such themes as homosexuality and even homosexual...

On New Jersey In your January issue, you published an article (“Our Platonic Guardians“) on “Justice” Wilentz of the New Jersey Supreme Court by a Hamilton Township attorney named Gregory J. Sullivan. As a lifelong resident of the Garden State, I can only reaffirm what he has written. And add: what this state needs is...

The January “Cultural Revolutions” by Michael Washburn regarding the financial struggles facing organizers of the California Civil Rights Initiative, which would eliminate government-mandated affirmative action, shows the difficulty facing grass-roots organizations. Since its inception, this initiative has been attacked by liberals who want to hang onto the affirmative action status quo and paint their opponents...

In his otherwise excellent column “The Illusions of Democracy” (Perspective, January 1996), Thomas Fleming writes: “We, however, send our children to a school where they are taught theories of English grammar, theories of literary interpretation (New Criticism, Reader Response, feminist interpretation—it is all the same) and scientific theories they will never understand, much less apply.”...

I agree with Michael A. Hoffman II (Polemics & Exchanges, January 1996) that Vicki Weaver and Gordon Kahl were made of American mettle, but Robert J. Matthews? No way. Not if he means the Matthews of the notorious band of racist nuts known as The Order —the group that gunned down Denver radio personality Alan...

Ronin Colman’s aptly subtitled “The Second War Against Gunowners” (“Back From the Brink,” December 1995) is likely to be considered “a bit paranoid” by those who love liberty yet see no harm in “reasonable gun control laws.” But there is no such thing as a “reasonable gun law” if it focuses on an inanimate object...

In his December essay, “The Mark of the Beast,” Larry Pratt implies that those who oppose unconstitutional searches and seizures by the government should be in favor of the exclusionary rule. But such a rule, whereby probative (i.e., valid) evidence may not be introduced in court if it was obtained in violation of the Fourth...

I always enjoy Chilton Williamson’s writings. Yet when I hear him referring to incoming Californians (in Polemics & Exchanges, December 1995) as “fleeing the once-lovely state they have managed to ruin in a couple of generations . . . like locusts, they are moving in to find someplace else to consume,” without noting that many...

We who look to Chronicles for some cogent commentary on our environmental dilemmas aren’t getting enough from Chilton Williamson, Jr. Not that those campfire meditations, gut-wrenching elk hunts, and encounters with the West’s fast-vanishing anarchists aren’t worthy stuff; sometimes we can hear an echo of Ed Abbey. But we need some Real Truth about resources...

Michael Hill, in “Scots Nationalism, Yesterday and Today” (November 1995), says that few men of the caliber of our forefathers are alive today and that “we lack the spirit of resistance that moved our forebears to defend their ancient liberties.” If the “we” referred to consists of academics, corporate executives, and conservatives, then I heartily...

The first half of Chilton Williamson’s September essay, “Circuit Rider,” is a joy to read. The second half is also well written, but has no reality to it. The idea that Catron County, New Mexico, is fighting for some grounded life against federal interference founders if the facts are known. The facts are that Catron...

In 1994, a crackdown by New York City police on illegal street peddling on Soho’s narrow, crowded sidewalks resulted in sellers of paintings and photographs being hauled in by the dragnet. Since the Soho Alliance, a volunteer community group, draws its members from the artist residents of Soho, we felt a need to find a...

Sitting comfortably in my suburban apartment, far from the trenches and shellfire where Momcilo Selic is witnessing the desperate combat between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, I don’t know whether I can claim greater objectivity or simply greater ignorance. I am certainly grateful for Mr. Selic’s glimpse (“Letter From Bosnia,” April) into the lives of ordinary...

Congratulations on your extraordinary May issue, “Men vs. Women.” As a single, working woman in her 30’s, I’ve been embarrassed for my gender for nearly two decades (though some comfort lies in knowing that actual feminists are in the minority, despite the press they get). It was utterly refreshing to read levelheaded assessments of the...

In his May column, Samuel Francis describes a famous passage about “defunct economists” by John Maynard Keynes as “perhaps the only wise sentence that [he] ever wrote.” May I suggest that in addition to that wise passage, there are others, among them the following from a paper on the politics of Edmund Burke which he...

In his May editorial, R. Cort Kirkwood felt compelled to speak for Ayn Rand and to castigate “entitlements” for “home-owning, white Republicans” with retirement income in excess of $50,000 per annum. Kirkwood is sorely confused. Rand would indeed have been offended by the compulsory form of savings for retirement that Social Security imposes on “home-owning...

Samuel Francis is among America’s best publicists. It is thus painful to read his praise (March 1995) of three materialist, pro-robot scientists, particularly the most materialist of the three, for whom civilization is determined by cold versus hot climates and their “cognitive demands.” In Philippe Rushton laudatio, Francis quotes the barbaric passage: “the cognitive demands...

There you go again, on immigration. You restrictionists have enough interesting arguments to make, you don’t need to resort to bogus complaints. John C. Vinson did this in his February review of The Immigration Invasion, by stating that “the proliferation of Korean-owned liquor stores in South-Central Los Angeles has made many of the locals restless.”...

I’ve just completed one of Chilton Williamson’s columns and I’m literally embarrassed. I now understand what it is that he has been trying to express these last few months in his work. Everything he wrote about his elk hunting trip is absolutely perfect, and yet it sounds so anachronistic! This is what is so embarrassing....

So Chronicles, like Freud, is asking the big question in its May issue: “What Do Women Want?” Appropriating the Good Doctor’s question, Chronicles is also replicating his breathtakingly stupid approach to answering it. Freud talked at length to his female patients, ignored salient parts of their answers (when he listened at all), and triumphantly dumped...

Llewellyn Rockwell’s piece on Denny’s restaurants (Cultural Revolutions, December 1994) was a first-rate statement that cut through the fog of news reporting on the controversy. Let me add a strange footnote to this craziness. On the evening of December 30, my wife and I went to a Denny’s. There we found a perfectly natural and...

Professor Ewa Thompson’s belief that unless the Russian Federation breaks up, it will remain a tyranny regardless of appearances (“Russophilia,” October 1994) is absolutely correct. The West’s cool response to this prospect is another example of our hypocrisy, as we profess to want freedom and self-determination for all people and yet hide our eyes from...

May a new reader and (Genovese-minded) leftist be permitted to make two brief responses to Thomas Fleming’s excellent article “The Lesson of the Roaring Parrot” (Perspective, December 1994)? First, it is intensely pleasurable to boycott Tom Hanks; it does not involve an act of will at all. It may be fine to boycott Kathy Mattea....

“The Impotent American Voter” by Richard Winger and some related essays in the November 1994 issue—such as Jeffrey Tucker’s on the third-party option—are seriously wrong. I would hate to see Chronicles get a reputation for political kookiness based on a poor understanding of American politics. Winger confuses political openness with openness to third parties. One...

Mary Pride’s informed prediction of technology’s radical transformation of higher education (“Hire Education,” September 1994) incorrectly noted that I advocated “cutting professors’ salaries.” In How Professors Play the Cat Guarding the Cream: Why We’re Paying More and Getting Less in Higher Education (George Mason University Press, 1992), I lacked the courage to invoke spousal rage...

Right Samuel Francis’s remarks (“The Abortion Gambit,” October 1994) on the efforts by neoconservatives, especially Bill Kristol, to co-opt the religious right are convincingly presented. Francis rightly notes that Kristol, Bennett, and other neocon movers and shakers are working to control the religious right and thereby to provide themselves with a mass base that they...

I was dismayed to read in your August issue the review by Kenneth R. Craycraft, Jr., of Stanley Fish’s There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech. I have noticed lately in certain other “conservative” publications a tendency for some self-styled conservatives to try to derive some benefit from so-called “postmodern” ideas, on the theory, as...

I agree with Professor W. Bruce Lincoln (“The Burden of Russian History,” March 1994) that Russia’s economic and political system is prone to break society into two parts: “them,” those responsible for making decisions and managing the country, and “us,” the simple people deadly indifferent to everything that doesn’t touch them immediately—i.e., high politics. I...

I enjoyed Samuel Francis’s lucid analysis of the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education (“Forty Years After,” May 1994), but I take exception to his argument that “the only feasible moral defense of the Brown decision today is not that it replaced force with freedom, but that it replaced one kind of...

Having briefly served on the staff of the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, I read R. Cort Kirkwood’s “Life on the Front Lines” (Vital Signs, March 1994) with interest. His report on the commission is exactly correct. Particularly depressing is that so many of the Naval Academy and Military...

Chronicles does like to keep a good debate going. Samuel Francis’s bugle call (“A Banner With a Strange Device,” February 1994) for economic nationalism was another interesting alignment of Main Street conservatism with the dirigiste left. Come the Middle American political uprising, I’m still wondering, what sort of policymaking might we actually expect? Is your...