Category: Polemics & Exchanges

Aaron D. Wolf is absolutely right to argue that, from a Christian perspective, J.J. Rousseau is the fountainhead of political evil in our day (“Ignoble Savages,” January-March, Heresies).  Indeed, the Prince of this World has been rejoicing in Christianity’s shameless pandering to the courtesan Mlle Égalité, ever since the catastrophe of the First Republic.  Rousseau...

I have to admit, I began reading Roger D. McGrath’s article “The Real McCoy,” (Sins of Omission, August) about Tim McCoy with the suspicion that he was just pulling my leg, but was drawn in enough to read it to the end.  There really are people in this world like Tim McCoy, whose lives keep...

Aaron D. Wolf’s portrayal of the rabble in New Orleans jeering at General Lee’s dishonored image (“The Discarded Image,” Heresies, July) conjures a scene from C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: A mob of repulsive scum, all manner of beasties and boggles, heap inane insults on the bound Lion, whose nobility they...

My thanks to Aaron D. Wolf for his article “The Discarded Image.”  It reminded me of G.K. Chesterton’s “The Age of America,” published in The Illustrated London News, December 14, 1929 (The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. 35). Chesterton saw the Civil War as a real clash of civilizations, with good and great men...

I have just finished reading Illiberal Reformers, by Thomas C. Leonard, motivated by Carl E. Olson’s interest-piquing review “A Faith Misplaced” (Reviews, June).  I heartily concur with Mr. Olson’s enthusiasm for a fine, concise, and accessible account of the 19th- and early-20th-century Progressives’ infatuations with German economics, evolution, racial stereotyping, and paternalism toward women and...

As a Texas resident and an alumnus of the University of Texas, I can attest that Jon Cassidy’s dreary assessment of the situation there is totally accurate (“Scandalous Education: UT’s War on Standards,” Correspondence, June).  Sadly, Cassidy’s exposé merely scratches the surface of the transformation of UT into what he aptly calls “Berkeley South.” Chronicles...

I just finished reading Chilton Williamson, Jr.’s May entry in What the Editors Are Reading, regarding Ed Abbey. I have been reading Edward Abbey’s work for years (my dog-eared copy of Desert Solitaire is a Ballantine paperback purchased in 1972 for 95 cents), and my library of Abbey’s work includes Appalachian Wilderness, Slickrock, Confessions of...

I was very pleased to see Dr. Carle Zimmerman’s Family and Civilization referenced in Allan Carlson’s “A City on a Hill—With Transgender Toilets?” (View, March).  I discovered this book early last year and was amazed by its lessons.  The rapid and unintelligent changes in our culture seem so absurd without the context of history, and...

I thank Mr. Jeff Minick for his letter “Blood From a Stone: Observations of a Serf” (Correspondence) in the January issue, on the burden of personal taxes and the sorts of things these onerous obligations fund.  I do sympathize and empathize with his words.  If I were as articulate as he, I would have written...

Aaron D. Wolf has written the best summary I have seen of the moral confusion of the Millennials (“Rise of the Alt-Left: After This, the Deluge,” View, January): “Their morality is . . . entirely relativistic and personal.  They are the world.” Wolf asks, “Who will teach them otherwise?”  Yes, a very difficult reeducation problem...

As a new subscriber to Chronicles, I was drawn to Chilton Williamson’s reply to Mr. Patterson in the December issue (“Start Somewhere,” Polemics & Exchanges).  He wrote that “ideology by definition is silly.”  It made me recall my late Austrian friend, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. Mr. Williamson may be aware of Erik’s 1981 article, “The Portland...

Things are not so bad with the National Anthem as James O. Tate might think (“The Twilight’s Last Gleaming,” The Music Column, December).  In October I attended the fall meeting of Keeneland Racetrack in Lexington, Kentucky.  On one of the days, the announcer told us that the anthem would now be sung by a young...

I found Scott P. Richert’s article “Taking Back the Culture” (The Rockford Files, December) very interesting.  It brings to mind Robert Nisbet’s central thesis that the medieval was an era of higher civilization, since it had power spread over a wide field, rather than the concentration of everything in one institution.  Nisbet, as I understand...

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 individualistic, classless society still cannot wholly eradicate the longing for real distinctions and concrete identities. However, I think he...

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 question, “What is creativity without editing?”  Had someone actually replied, “Stephen King,” I would not have been...

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 instances.  Donald Trump said, on the day of the result, “What I like is that I love to see people...

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 community, and only a well-armed community, has the immediate power to react to criminal invasions of any kind. In...

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 Hills Regional High School in northern New Jersey during the recently concluded school year.  Several...

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 unanchored theorizing, the author wants to make America’s greatest writer out to be a clueless dupe of postwar “American...

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 goodbye to “The Boss”—the latter because of Springsteen’s recent decision to cancel a concert in North Carolina...

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.  “Merle Haggard: A Conservative American”?  When?  I suggest you check the definitions of conservative and sociopath.  I think I...

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 “rootless entertainment for a rootless people, lost entertainment for a lost people, and vile entertainment for...

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 passed the test of time and matter most to real people. With such ideas I could not...

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 answer, therefore, is an obvious yes.  So what is Mr. Sandford really getting at? He claims some...

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 Patriotism,” The Rockford Files) would consider ideal is the one that I would truly love to see.  And unlike the proposals...

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 what matters most to capitalists is capital.  Capital is wealth used to gain more.  That suggests that what...

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 the Left’s Narrative,” News, June), which I’m interested in as a UVA alumna and parent.  When Mr....

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 as well completely alienate myself from your editorial staff while I’m at it), I attended school in...

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 allow for a little Dr. Lecteresque correction: “No no no, Dr. McCartney, you were doing fine.  You had established trust with...

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 built upon self-confidence that leads men “to rely exclusively on themselves to steer their lives.”  The key tenet of...

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 a particular composer that it is hard to make up one’s mind as to which...

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 bed.  That critter is, of course, slavery, the “peculiar institution” at the core of what Williamson sees as...

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 and elementary school and a passel of college English classes, I have a slightly different take on...

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 chestnut, that in a democracy the numerous poor can rob the wealth that the rich have worked so hard...

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 Roman Catholic clergy is a benighted institution that’s done much harm to the Church.”  He credits the recent...

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 do with the reality of this lovely little school.  I doubt that he has ever been here; in fact,...

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 All Shall Equal Be.”  Fleming bemoans the “trillions of dollars” spent on “hopeless and useless projects to...

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 bit shaky.  To wit, he writes of “various Polish/Lithuanian empires.”  There most certainly was a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which just...

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 royalist novel to counteract the “pro-Jacobin novels of Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac.”  Balzac never wrote any...

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, what is the point of words?—most of their analyses of Ukraine merit a response.  I...