Category: Polemics & Exchanges

I very much enjoyed Chilton Williamson’s “Class and Identity” (In Our Time, October), especially its vivid description of the leveling steamroller operated by liberalism across generations.  Mr. Williamson also quite properly points out that the resulting

My name was invoked by Scott P. Richert in the October issue (What the Editors Are Reading), in reference to my comments on the avant-garde at a John Randolph Club years ago, during which I asked the rhetorical

Freddy Gray’s “Brexit: What Now?” (City of Westminster, September) reads like the continuation of the Remain campaign by other means.  After a balanced opening, his article tilts like the final stages of the Titanic.  Some

In “An Aroused Populace—With Guns” (Sins of Omission, August), Roger D. McGrath tells of the reaction of the townsfolk in Northfield, Minnesota, to an attempted robbery of the local bank.  His thesis is that a well-armed

Chronicles falls short of its usual high standards by giving so much space to “Faulkner in Japan: The ‘American Century’” in the August issue (Society & Culture).  As far as I can tell amidst all the

Please let this note serve as a belated acknowledgement that Dr. Allen Frederick Stein’s poem “Ralph Waldo Emerson Meets John Brown,” which appeared in the January issue, served as an enlightening study tool for 65 of my students at Warren

As both a fellow conservative and a fellow fan of Bruce Springsteen, I read with interest Scott P. Richert’s June column, “The Ties That Bind” (The Rockford Files), which is at once a loving tribute and a sad

Merle Haggard: truancy, auto theft, robbery, drug problems, prison in San Quentin, five-times married—all of this, according to your three writers in the June issue (Wayne Allensworth, Roger D. McGrath, Aaron D. Wolf).  Talented musician?  Yes. 

After twice reading what so far has been available of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and viewing the first five seasons of Game of Thrones, I do not share Douglas Wilson’s impression that these are

The March issue (“Against Ideology”) was a brilliantly perceptive one, notably as it stresses the utmost importance, for any true conservative, of defending loyalties to local mores and traditions, small hometowns and family farms, regional cultures—things that have

In his March Correspondence, “EMP (‘Are You Experienced?’),” Christopher Sandford asks if rock music is truly an art.  The Oxford Dictionary defines the arts as “various branches of creative activity such as painting, music, literature and dance.”  The

I thoroughly enjoyed the March issue (“Against Ideology”), and it is among the best Chronicles has produced.

The kind of economy that Jack Trotter (“Capitalism: The Conservative Illusion,” View) and Scott P. Richert (“Economic

Where capitalism is “relatively benign of itself,” as Chilton Williamson, Jr., wrote when commenting on Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ (“Church and State,” Editorials) in the September issue, it is inaccurately named.  The word capitalism means that

I am a “liberal Democrat” who likes to read different perspectives on the many issues facing our country.  I picked up Chronicles to read your article on Rolling Stone’s and Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s egregious misreporting (“UVA: Facts Versus

Clyde Wilson’s View in the April issue (“Society Precedes Government: Two Counterrevolutions”) was excellent.  A New England “Yankee” (my great-grandfather was captured and put in Libby Prison during the war) and a Bunyanesque Calvinist at that (I might

The two takes on American Sniper in the April issue (Wayne Allensworth’s “An American Tragedy,” Correspondence; George McCartney’s “Hopalong Rides the Iraqi Range,” In the Dark) were both great reads . . . but

In “1865: The True American Revolution” (Views, April) Claude Polin asserts that Calvinism somehow led to the division between North and South.  Such an assertion is unsupportable.  The main flaw lies in his defining Calvinism as

I pretty much devoured the “Minority Cultures” issue (February) in one sitting.  Every issue is stellar, but the great thing I find again and again is that reading all these fine writers is like loving so many different works of

Like most “whose hearts pump Confederate blood,” Chilton Williamson, Jr., in lamenting the failure of Dixie’s attempt at secession (“The Revenge of the Confederacy,” What’s Wrong With the World, January), neglects to address the elephant in the

I enjoyed Christopher Sandford’s “It’s a Drag” (Cultural Revolutions, December).  With memories of a teaching career beginning in 1960 in Zion, Illinois, and continuing through Montana, Indiana, Manitoba, Washington, and ending in New Hampshire in 2001, including secondary

I just finished reading Claude Polin’s “The Quintessential Democratic Politician” (Vital Signs, November), and it was a gem.  Yet even in this brilliant analysis of politics in a democracy the author brings up the Robin Hood

I found myself aghast that, after more or less favorably reviewing Calvary (“Vocation,” In the Dark, November), which sounds like a disgusting and anti-Catholic movie, George McCartney takes the opportunity to declare that “mandatory celibacy in the

Jack Trotter has written a most unfortunate article (“Conservative Education: Caveat Emptor!,” Views, September), at least as it concerns Hillsdale College.  I have been here for 40 years, and what he describes has very little to

I always look eagerly for Thomas Fleming’s article when my latest issue of Chronicles arrives, but I was shocked and disappointed to read his cavalier dismissal of “seriously retarded people” and the “lowest” in the August Perspective, “And

In “Borderlines, Part 2” (News, June), Mr. Hugh Prysor-Jones takes on a great deal in covering a vast section of Europe.  Apparently, his understanding of some of the background is, at least in some places, a

There was a remarkable oversight in the otherwise wonderful piece by Eugene Girin (“Elena Chudinova: Telling the Truth,” Vital Signs, June) on the work of the Russian novelist, when the author states that Madam Chudinova wrote her

I was delighted to see that the May issue was focused on Ukraine, the largest European country.  While there is no point in polemicizing with those of your contributors who believe in an amoral Realpolitik—after all, if force trumps ideas,

R. Clay Reynolds’ “From Castro to Cancun” (Correspondence, May) presented a number of observations that contradict much of what has been documented with regards to Cuba.  For the sake of brevity, I am only highlighting some of the

In his review of Mark R. Levin’s The Liberty Amendments (“Impractical Solutions, February), William J. Quirk emphasizes the novelty of an Article V convention, calling it “a constitutional-amendment process that has never been used before” and criticizing Mr.

In “That Special Relationship” (Vital Signs, February), Christopher Sandford compares British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s attitudes toward communism with those of President John F. Kennedy.  I hope that Mr. Sandford’s upcoming book on the subject will

Catholics and Protestants sometimes remind me of Captain Quint and Chief Brody on board the Orca.  While they are at odds with each other, a monstrous thing is circling their beat-up old boat and threatening to swallow them whole,

When I delivered Liberty: The God That Failed into the hands of my publisher, I did so with no little trepidation.  Supported entirely by Protestant, secular academic, and other non-Catholic sources, including the work of numerous historians of the first

Scott P. Richert (“Returning to Reality,” Views, December) says he’s a Catholic.  He doesn’t write like one.

What distinguishes Catholics is possession of a Deposit of Faith given 2,000 years ago.  No, saith Richert.  What’s important is

Because it’s reasonable to assume that Gerald Russello (“The Agrarian Burden,” Reviews, October) is highly knowledgeable of his chosen subject, the Southern Agrarians, I must conclude that his avoidance of their intellectual hypocrisy (or worse) is by

I am grateful to George McCartney for his articulate and fascinating review of Copperhead (“Reason’s Enemy,” In the Dark, September).  Unlike most reviewers, he concentrates (at least this time) on the plot, theme, historicity, characters, and atmosphere,

A few points on “Of Presidents and Guns,” by Egon Richard Tausch (Vital Signs, June).

After the French and Indian War the British crown gave George Washington some large land grants in Western Pennsylvania for his service.  The

In William J. Quirk’s essay “How Goldman Sachs Is Swindling America’s Cities” (American Proscenium, July), Professor Quirk evidences profound misunderstanding of what is happening in an interest-rate swap.

An interest-rate swap for a borrower is a way to

Englishman Michael Stenton’s article “Margaret Thatcher” (Correspondence, June) never once mentions Thatcher’s hatred of the Irish, especially Catholics, which caused her to commit war crimes in Northern Ireland—crimes for which she should have been tried at The Hague.

Joseph E. Fallon’s assertion (in “The North’s Southern Cash Cow,” Vital Signs, June) that the reason the South seceded “was the tariff, not slavery” is simply wrong.  The loss of revenue from the American System of tariffs may have

I enjoyed Dr. Thomas Fleming’s “Topsy-Turvy” (Perspective, June).  But I thought his gratuitous denigration of Jakob Dylan both unnecessary and ill informed.  I am not some Jakob Dylan “fanboy”; in fact, the only album I had owned is

As a friend of many years, who has often disagreed with Thomas Fleming, I especially appreciated his perspicacious article, “Topsy-Turvy” (Perspective), in the June issue of Chronicles.  For in that article, amid his varied historical