Category: Polemics & Exchanges

Chronicles is by far the best political/cultural journal in America today and, unfortunately, the only consistent voice of traditional, rooted conservatism. Your unapologetic defense of Christianity and Western civilization offers some hope that both might enjoy a rebirth before it is too late. I am a refugee from the “mainstream” conservative press. I had known...

I so thoroughly enjoy Chronicles and the various writers that you feature that I hesitate to single out a particular article for comment. But “Modern Elections and Head of Households” by Aaron D. Wolf (Views, February) requires a note. I could hardly believe my eyes as I read the article. This kind of thinking is...

To argue, as Paul Gottfried did in “Distrusting John Locke” (Views, January), that the writings of John Locke were not instrumental to the founding of this country is to suppose that the authors of the Federalist did not know what they were about. In philosophy, John Locke was sometimes an extremist, and he was wrong...

William J. Watkins’ comment on states being forced to adopt the .08 blood-alcohol standard for drunken driving (Cultural Revolutions, January) is a narrow objection to federal power. The feds are not threatening to jail the entire population of any state which does not adopt the standard; they are only threatening not to return some of...

Although I agree with most of the ideas expressed in your round table “What Is Paleoconservatism?” (Views, January), I believe it is a serious mistake to call this persuasion by such a name. The liberals must love you for so hobbling yourselves. To the average person, the name brings one of two things to mind:...

I was pleased to read Greg Kaza’s review of the fruitless campaign to end draft registration (“Uncle Sam Still Wants You,” Vital Signs, January). I remember well why Ronald Reagan reneged on his firm promise to end draft registration: Alexander Haig convinced him that Brezhnev’s tanks would be stopped before Warsaw only by the terrifying...

The British Conservative Party’s defense policy remains frozen in a time warp as we head toward a general election in the United Kingdom this spring. The party is opposed to the European Reaction Force on the grounds that it undermines NATO and the alliance with America. For a party that has been in opposition, it...

Christie Davies’ enraged tirade against the Scots (“The English Rejoice at Scotland’s Coming Independence,” Correspondence, December 2000) was unusually bitter, even for the often bitter pages of Chronicles. There really is no point in dwelling on Davies’ hysterical eruptions (which I am clipping out and saving as examples of undiluted, distilled nationalist venom), except to...

I have been subscribing to Chronicles for over three years, and I look forward to the enlightenment offered by each issue. I wish I had begun partaking of this wisdom long, long ago, but I suppose we have to be ready for something before we can reap the benefits of it. Every issue offers a...

I enjoyed reading George McCartney’s review of Monsters From the Id in the November 2000 issue of Chronicles (“Frankenstein’s Children,” Opinions). However, it contains some misrepresentations of what I had to say on the relationship between sex and horror. To begin with, the Ford Foundation never funded Alfred Kinsey’s sex surveys; it is the Rockefeller...

I appreciate the extraordinarily well-informed commentary by Sean Scallon on the current political scene in Canada (“CRAP Happens,” Correspondence, October 2000). As I learned 20 years ago when I visited Quebec and met my French-Canadian wife, Anglo-Canadians are fond of pulling the wool over the eyes of Americans on the actual situation in Quebec. The...

Philip Jenkins is certainly right about the rising trajectory of demands for reparations for slavery (“For What We Have Done, and What We Have Failed to Do,” Vital Signs, November 2000). I hope, but am doubtful, that he is also right about the potential of this gambit for exposing the root absurdity of liberal social...

While I agree with much of what Justin Raimondo wrote in his review of Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (“An Empire, If You Can Bear It,” Opinions, September), I must take issue with some of his “facts.” First, the “American military machine” has not become autonomous; it is, rather, completely...

As both a capitalist and an Old Rightist, I was ambivalent about Sam Francis’s article declaring capitalism the enemy (Principalities & Powers, August). There is much truth to his analysis, but his blanket condemnation goes too far. Small-scale capitalism provides much of die freedom that remains in this country. The entrepreneurial boom of the last...

While William Murchison (Cultural Revolutions, June) is correct that the United States, and, in particular, almost all of its nominally Christian bodies, should be seen as a missionary field, his prescribed cure will only make the patient more gravely ill. Protestant faith is being eaten alive by a monster with three heads: heresy, Anglo-Catholicism, and...

I thank Paul Gottfried for a generally accurate and positive review of my book, The Culture of Critique (“A Race Apart,” Opinions, June). Nevertheless, there are a few issues that bear discussion, the most important of which is the role of Jewish organizations and intellectuals with strong Jewish identifications as agents of change in the...

Samuel Francis (Principalities & Powers, April 2000) is correct in much of his analysis of the weaknesses of Gov. George W. Bush’s political strategy for attracting Hispanic votes. He is also correct in debunking the endlessly repeated canard that Bush won 49 percent (rather than 39 percent) of the Texas Hispanic vote in his successful...

William Murchison’s “Color Me Kweisi” (Views, May 2000) brings to mind an aspect of the so-called “civil rights” movement which has played an active part in undermining this country. While the left has failed to achieve total collectivization through the democratic process, it has introduced a caste system that can circumvent both referenda and ethics...

Thomas Fleming is wrong when he writes (Cultural Revolutions, April) that, by Cuban law, Elian Gonzalez belongs to his next-of-kin, his father. According to Cuban law (specifically the Codigo de Familia Ley, No. 1289), parental authority is subordinated to “inculcating” the “internationalist spirit and socialist morality.” According to Article 95, section three, of this so-called...

I look forward to reading Sam Francis in each issue of Chronicles and rarely have a major quibble with his analysis of politics and public policy. However, in his otherwise thorough and accurate critique of the Buchanan campaign (“Revolt of the 300-Pound Beefy Guys,” Principalities & Powers, February), he includes a sentence that could be...

It is with sadness that I must inform you that I will not be renewing my subscription . . . the next time around. I was severely disappointed in the Thomas Fleming article “X2K: aut Christus aut nihil,” in the December 1999 issue. This is the second major disappointment I have experienced in an article...

Citizens Clyde Wilson is simply wrong when he writes that “the Council of Conservative Citizens was not responsible for saving our flag” and that the Council’s “efforts, including rallies by tattooed motorcycle thugs and David Duke followers, have been resoundingly counterproductive—just what the media wanted” (“Letter From South Carolina,” Correspondence, January). In the first place,...

Scott P. Richert’s endorsement of Pat Buchanan’s candidacy (Cultural Revolutions, January) is misplaced. At one time, Buchanan was a figure who could, thankfully, separate the “Old Right” from the “neoconservatives.” Now, Buchanan is the candidate who will further divide the “Old Right” into two camps, “paleoconservative” and “paleolibertarian.” If you think that this has already...

The “Letter From Montreal: Qui Shall Overcome!” (Correspondence, December) by John O’Neill, who “writes from Detroit,” is so riddled with errors that it makes this reader question the credibility of all your Correspondence. 1. “Jean Baptiste, the patron saint of Quebec.” John the Baptist is the patron saint of French Canadians. Quebec has its quota...

In “Downsizing Detroit: Motown’s Lament” (Views, November), Greg Kaza provides an insight into the bleak future for unskilled workers in one American city. Unskilled workers in many other American cities face that same future. The problems of the inner city, however, can only be worsened by restricting trade or by creating government-sponsored “Renaissance Zones.” Rather...

I was pleased to see the article in the November Chronicles by Justin Raimondo on Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. Lindbergh stands with William Jennings Bryan and Louis McFadden, who also made control of the money supply by private interests an issue in public debate. Bryan, Lindbergh, and McFadden are all swept under the rug by conventional economists,...

Donald W. Livingston’s insightful sketch of individualism and its history (“The Strange Career of Individualism,” October) pays scant attention to what is surely the most important part of the story: the Protestant Reformation. For Livingston, the emergence and development of modern individualism has to do primarily with philosophy—Hobbes, Descartes, Paine, Mill—but it was Protestantism’s emphasis...

I wondered, reading the “Letter From Gaza and the West Bank” (Correspondence, October), what the author would recommend as a suitable basis for peace negotiations, now so far advanced, other than dismantling the state of Israel. He takes a position that the Palestine Authority has not adopted. As a Zionist for life, I was saddened...

Aaron D. Wolf’s condemnation of civil disobedience by pro-life activists (Cultural Revolutions, October) strikes me as a classic case of sloppy thinking, characterized by what Hannah Arendt called the inability to grasp elementary distinctions. Wolf’s sweeping denial that one may break the law even for a good cause is not good law. There exists in...

Greg Kaza’s article on Canadian Red Tory and former prime minister Brian Mulroney (“Bush’s Red Tory,” Vital Signs, August) was well informed and insightful almost throughout. But near the end, Mr. Kaza erroneously stated that Reform Party leader Preston Manning “has no intention of abandoning his conservative base.” In fact, he already has. Except for...

I’d like to commend Christopher Check on his great piece “Not Ready, Aim, Misfire” (August). It was superb and right on the mark. I subscribe to the Marine Corps Times, which is mainly aimed at active-duty Marines. Mostly, the Times is concerned with this benefit and that benefit, and just how to get them all....

Subscribing to your magazine has been an event in my life. It is surely intellectually challenging to me, meaning I don’t know exactly where you stand. I thought you were far right and impishly mailed a copy on the New World Order to a friend who claims to be a socialist and gets angry about...

Antony Flew’s fine essay on the infelicities of John Rawl’s treatment of justice (“‘Social’ Justice Is Not Justice,” July) would, I think, have benefited from calling attention to the fact that Rawls appears to have been influenced very much by a scientistic account of human character formation. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls says that...

The Supreme Court, in the case of Johnson v. Texas, arrogated to the federal government the power to decide that all states must allow the public burning of the federal government’s flag. This decision clearly contradicted both the near unanimous understanding of previous Supreme Court justices, including such constitutional nihilists as Chief Justice Earl Warren...

I was disappointed by Karina Rollins’ simplistic portrayal of sexual mores in her review of Wendy Shalit’s book, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue (“Natural Woman,” May). Shalit’s book should not have been embraced so uncritically. In fact, I doubt that anyone with mature sensibilities could get through it without shuddering at its...

Let me get this straight. In the June Chronicles, one W. Robert Hawkins opposed the U.S. war against Serbia, dismissing interventionist congressmen as ahistorical nitwits and likening the Serbs to Texans threatened with the loss of San Antonio. Yet in the April 26, 1999, number of the Weekly Standard, one William R. Hawkins, “senior research...

My grandparents both emigrated from Germany shortly after World War I. Grandma hailed from a small town on the plains of Lower Saxony, and Grandpa grew up in a smaller town in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. Both came from large families and left behind numerous brothers and sisters and their offspring. Among my...

Like Michael Stenton (“Letter From England: Thoroughly Modern Monarchy” March), I am amazed by these “modern” Englishmen who are so rapidly dismantling the finest constitution in the world, without the traces of which the United States and Canada would be far more lost than they already are. The only objection which can fairly be raised...

While so many publications are content to serve up the same flabby perspectives, it is always refreshing to read Chronicles. Each issue just gets better and better. As luck would have it, the May issue showed up the very same day that I had gone to the public library to catch up on what the...

To make an urgent point—the corruption of the representation of history in film by the anachronistic distortions of contemporary politics—Roger McGrath, in his fine and well-argued analysis (“Celluloid Nation,” March), at the outset and at the end uses language that suggests that he holds non-Christians are un-American, the practice of religions other than Christianity marking...

State Considering his kind assessment of my work (“Force and Idea,” February), which is matched by my judgments of his, it may seem ungenerous to criticize Sam Francis’s treatment of my comments on ideology in After Liberalism. I bring up our difference of opinion only for purposes of clarification. In most of our views about...

David Hartman’s comments about the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) tests are on the mark (Cultural Revolutions, February). It is a widespread practice for Texas teachers to “teach the TAAS.” Depriving students of a broad-based liberal arts education has never been so common. History classes are being downgraded to “social studies” status so that...

No sooner were my spirits raised by reading your quotation from the Oxford English Dictionary on the meaning of to parse than they were dashed by this sentence in the New York Times: “‘It’s not just, “Can you parse this sentence in the subjunctive?'” said Mrs. Cipolone, who had 36 Latin students when she began...

Reading Chronicles has provided me, in equal parts, education, philosophic inspiration, and new words to add to my vocabulary—until now. Justin Raimondo’s review (“The British Were Coming!” December 1998) of Thomas Mahl’s Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44 is one of the best examples of misinformation, damning indictments unsupported by facts,...

Wayne Allensworth, in his poignant and beautifully written review of Saving Private Ryan (“The Face of Battle,” January), focuses on what is right with the film. However, I find much that is wrong, and, for me, the wrong outweighs the right. Nonetheless, Steven Spielberg makes an important contribution to the making of war movies by...

During Hillary Clinton’s recent trip to Bulgaria (Cultural Revolutions, December), the Washington Times featured a front-page photo of the First Lady surrounded by several Bulgarian orphans, over the caption, “Aiding Orphans.” I sincerely hope that Mrs. Clinton showed more compassion toward these Bulgarian orphans than she did during her 1996 visit with their Rumanian counterparts....

Your October 1998 issue struck a particularly agreeable note. I am 62, and the society that I knew as a child and young man has been so corrupted that, when I describe that former time to young people, they believe I am indulging some sort of fantasy. Still, the question posed by Thomas Fleming (“Mob...

Douglas Wilson’s article, “Why Evangelical Colleges Aren’t,” (Vital Signs, September) is provocative but unsubstantiated. It is also quietly self-serving, failing to mention his role as a founder of New St. Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho. His assertions about evangelical higher education ought to be measured against the facts of those colleges and against his own...

Lew Rockwell (“Flies in the Ointment,” September) and I have the same ultimate objective: “an educational market in which parents are responsible for paying for their own children’s education.” We agree also on the “twin evils of public education: involuntary funding and compulsory attendance.” In our ideal (libertarian) world, government would play no role in...

Ralph Reiland (“Cultural Revolutions,” August) find himself in the same camp as the AIDS activists in insisting that political philosophy dictate physiology. The AIDS activists say “AIDS is everyone’s disease” because they can’t stand the idea of a virus disproportionately affecting them. Reiland pooh-poohs mountains of evidence of obesity’s harmfulness (heavily documented in my book...