Category: Reviews

A woman files a sexual-harassment suit against a man for wearing spandex shorts.  A black college student tacks racist notes on his own door to try to start a campus outcry against racism.  Howard Schwartz has tried to explain these and other examples of political correctness in psychological terms in The Revolt of the Primitive.  For...

In this densely composed study, E. Michael Jones, editor of Culture Wars and outspoken Catholic traditionalist, tries to explain why American inner cities have been physically and socially devastated.  Investigating four metropolitan areas that he knows well—Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Boston—Jones argues that established urban neighborhoods did not deteriorate simply because of economic crises or...

Wilhelm Roepke (1899-1966) is one of the most original, yet least recognized, economic thinkers of the 20th century.  One of the reasons for his relative obscurity is that he does not fit well into the prevailing capitalist/socialist dichotomy.  Roepke borrows from both capitalism and socialism, yet he goes beyond defining economics in abstract terms and...

Law professors rarely write books.  When they write at all, they typically produce incomprehensible and heavily footnoted articles (usually unread) for obscure law reviews.  It is even rarer to find a law professor who can write with flair about something of more than ephemeral interest.  And it is rarest of all to find a law...

To understand the impact of the event known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, it is useful to focus on the date of that atrocity: September 11, 1857.  On that Friday morning, Mormon militiamen lured the members of a California-bound wagon train into an ambush.  Collaborating with Paiute Indian allies, the Mormons slaughtered 120 people.  Many...

For those who know it, the Huguenot-derived name “Pettigrew” immediately evokes the associated word, “Gettysburg.”  Brig. Gen. Johnston Pettigrew was prominent on the first day of that battle, as the commander of Pettigrew’s Brigade, and on the third day, as the commander of Heth’s Division, which included his brigade.  Pickett’s Charge might as well have...

“There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.”  —Ralph Waldo Emerson What helps set this study apart is its still largely verboten subject.  Joseph Scotchie devotes his attention to that part of the American right that Lee Edwards, Jonathan M. Schoenwald, and William Rusher...

A Texas Ranger, it was famously claimed, “can ride like a Mexican, trail like an Indian, shoot like a Tennessean, and fight like a very devil.”   These days, such a bland presumption of ethnic attributes would merit a visit from the Sensitivity Police, and even respect for martial skills verges on political incorrectness, since progressive...

James Q. Wilson, the esteemed social scientist, should be loved by liberals: He is deeply concerned with root causes.  While the title of his latest work, The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families, suggests otherwise, the book is not just another screed about how the 60’s destroyed the family.  In fact, Wilson says,...

There have been dozens of books and hundreds of articles written about Flannery O’Connor (1925-64) in America alone, and considerable attention from overseas as well.  Indeed, R. Neil Scott’s new Flannery O’Connor: An Annotated Reference Guide to Criticism describes 3,297 books, articles, dissertations, and master’s theses by 2,474 different authors.  Though she died at age...

“We are divided in the face of a Mohammedan world, divided in every way—divided by separate independent national rivalries, by the warring interests of possessors and dispossessed—and that division cannot be remedied because the cement which once held our civilization together, the Christian cement, has crumbled.” —Hilaire Belloc Neither Christians nor Jews can claim that...

Linda Raeder’s study of John Stuart Mill as a critic of religion and, more specifically, of Christian beliefs and morals is heavily researched and densely composed.  Although carefully and gracefully framed, it is too conceptually demanding to please dull-witted movement conservatives or politically correct academics.  Those who disregard this study, however, are missing a devastating...

Not until I was well into this book did I realize how much it is needed.  The son of illiterate Serbian immigrants from Montenegro, I knew almost no early Montenegrin history.  Some of that history is noble, some confused, and some characterized by treachery and double-dealing.  There were plots and counterplots.  Agreements were always of...

José Martí is an icon in communist Cuba.  Visitors disembark at José Martí International Airport in Havana, where the Plaza de la Revolución contains a prominent statue of Martí.  In 2000, Fidel Castro had a José Martí Anti-Imperialist Tribunal built in front of the U.S. Interests Section.  Not surprisingly, Castro and his functionaries assert harmony...

What’s So Great About America by Dinesh D’Souza Washington: Regnery; 227 pp., $27.95 Dinesh D’Souza is a classic example of the immigrant imperialist.  Others are Fouad Ajami (professor of Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University), Fareed Zakaria (managing editor of Foreign Affairs and a contributing editor to Newsweek), and Ramesh Ponnuru (a senior editor...

“All you need to make a film is a girl and a gun.” —Jean-Luc Godard In 1947, an executive director of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals deplored the “sizable doses of communist propaganda” in many films of the day.  Leaving aside the question of whether “American ideals” could be identified—much...

Most partisan recollections of the economic world that existed before Adam Smith conjure up words from “feudal” to “primitive” to “mercantilistic” to “Catholic”—a dark era ridden by “just price” theory, wanton poverty induced by ridiculous regulation and barriers to international trade, and the divine right of kings.  Then (so the story goes), Smith published The...

“In these days a great capitalist has deeper roots than a sovereign prince, unless he is very legitimate.” —Benjamin Disraeli Appearing just in time for the Enron and WorldCom scandals and the ensuing stock-market plunge, Kevin Phillips’ harsh new scrutiny of the trends toward the concentration of wealth and power in the emerging American social...

The question of whether the media has a liberal bias is, on the face of it, absurd.  No one who reads newspapers—fewer people with every passing day—or watches the major networks—those numbers are plunging also—is not fully aware that the liberal slant in the news is alive and thriving.  Nevertheless, Bernard Goldberg’s Bias and William...

Gore Vidal, award-winning essayist, novelist, and playwright, has been a keen observer of American culture and politics for several decades.  Yet when he originally submitted to major American magazines of opinion the essay that forms the first chapter of his new book, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, he found himself completely shut out.  No one...

The decline of the household economy is one of the most significant economic changes in post-World War II America.  Unfortunately, it has received relatively little attention.  Professional economists find it trivial compared to the workings of large-scale institutions and global economies, while the average American sees only a positive development that has meant greater mobility,...

“San Pietro si fece la barba prima per sé e poi per gli altri.” (“Saint Peter shaved himself first and then other people.”) —A proverb from Lazio, near Rome Americans believe that they are unusual.  They use the word “unique” as a term of praise so often that it has lost its status as a...

Years ago, when Parker Tyler memorably instructed us in the magic and myth of the movies, he indicated something about the archetypal power of film and the status of the stars as our own popular pantheon.  The godlike qualities of star power were made manifest when Errol Flynn personified them as the ultimate swashbuckling man...

In this impressive collection of speeches and essays reflecting decades of somber thought, John A. Howard, senior fellow in educational philosophy at the Howard Center, takes stock of changing American manners and values.  What makes these comments especially noteworthy is the distance between Howard’s accomplishments and the irremediably “toxic” culture that he criticizes.   The...

This is a difficult time to be a Catholic.  The moral scandals in the Church, which should have provided an occasion for constructive change and for replacing the leftist American hierarchy with bishops of strong faith, pure morals, and sound theology, have only aggravated the divisions within the Church.  Even many self-described traditionalists are taking...

Bolchazy-Carducci is one of those little success stories that can happen “only in America.”  Where else could a Latinist, who once studied for the priesthood, start a publishing firm devoted to putting out teaching aids for Latin teachers and end up with a catalogue that includes the most successful computer instruction series on Latin (Artes...

“Who says A must say B.” —James Burnham Most adult conservatives as well as many educated people know that James Burnham was an anticommunist author and columnist for William F. Buckley’s National Review; a number of others will be aware that Burnham’s name seems to flap through the corridors of early 20th-century American intellectual history,...

In Vienna, during the decade before the Great War, an astounding concentration of creative genius coincided with the final stages of political collapse.  The work of Hofmannsthal, Musil, Broch, Schnitzler, Kraus, Werfel, and Zweig in literature; Mahler, Wolf, and Schönberg in music; Krafft-Ebing and Freud in psychology; Wittgenstein and Buber in philosophy; Schiele and Kokoschka...

Abraham Lincoln remains the central historical figure in modern America; the only others who can compete with him in their influence on the present and the degree of adulation accorded them are Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Rev. “Dr.” Martin Luther King, Jr.  Lincoln is praised for having accomplished two things: preserving the Union and...

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., was the first of our Northeastern rich-boy presidents, blazing a trail for his kinsman Franklin, John F. Kennedy, and the two Bushes.  Even Nelson Rockefeller, who had no abilities and no popularity that was not bought and paid for, ended up a heartbeat from the executive mansion.  TR was also the first...

How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again. ­­–Mark Twain Just in case you have not heard, we are in the midst of a Culture War.  Death by Journalism? is a battle report from the front lines.  The Last Confederate Flag and Bedford: A...

The author of these various pieces can truly claim that he has lived “a writing life.”  George Garrett has been working—successfully—for decades as a novelist and short-story writer, as a poet, playwright, and essayist, and as an editor and satirist.  But there is even more to the writing life, which Garrett does not fail to...

Reading this account of David Brock’s journey from the “bigoted” right to a left-liberal politics that allows him to embrace his homosexuality was no kind of pleasure.  Luminous observations in the book are few and far between, while betwixt them are ponderous revelations pertaining to David’s sexual awakening, his relations with a “blond blue-eyed dreamboat...

Most political junkies in the United States are at least marginally familiar with Chris Matthews.  The dustjacket of his most recent book—with a goofy, grinning Matthews in suit and tie superimposed over an image of the Capital dome—is meant to jog these people’s memories as they browse the local Barnes & Noble: Oh yeah, there’s...

There are probably more judicial biographies of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall than of all the rest of the Supreme Court justices combined, so why another one?  R. Kent Newmyer, historian and law professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law, undertook to write a work that would not mirror the standard hagiographical...

For the fifth time, Señor Pérez-Reverte, the Spanish novelist and international journalist, has presented “a novel of suspense” that adheres to his formula, and this may be his best yet, or at least his longest.  The length of this ironic romance is significant; since the author works within a narrow scope and with a small...

If even a rough correspondence between poetic accomplishment and public reputation existed in America today, R.S. Gwynn would be one of our most widely read and highly honored poets.  The publication of his selected poems, No Word of Farewell, would be an occasion for readers to measure the arc of a 30-year career.  Today, however,...

“Isn’t it pretty to think so?” —Ernest Hemingway There are two fictions that most American conservatives have taken to heart.  First, that the Republican Party stands for conservative ideas and principles; second, that there has been a conservative renaissance in the last several decades, a resurgence that culminated with the Reagan presidency and continues into...

In his Journals of the early 1990’s, English novelist Anthony Powell observed that Kingsley Amis (1922-95) “has begun to look oddly like Evelyn Waugh.  He now seems to be behaving rather like Evelyn too.”  On the telly, showing full jowl, pot belly, and beefy complexion, and sporting loud check suits, Amis—who moved from trendy Socialist...

Some writers, by dint of hard work, luck, mock outrageousness, and an acute instinct for the acceptable limits of dissent, are able to rise to the prized status of Tellers of Truth.  Unlike Orwell—who was a bona fide secular prophet and, therefore, ignored—they are rewarded in their lifetimes with brisk-selling books, access to important media...

To call something “Victorian” is, in left-liberal parlance, to say that you don’t like it.  The fact that hardly anything routinely called “Victorian” accurately characterizes the era of Queen Victoria’s long reign, from 1837 to 1901, is one of the great historiographical tragedies of the 20th century.  Thus, when a large number of African bishops...

Richard Brookhiser’s biographical study of four generations of the Adams family illustrates once again that the rich and complex history of our country remains a closed book to the ruling class and their literary apologists.  Brookhiser reveals in his introduction that his purpose is to create a usable past: “The United States is formally an...

“An Liberalismus gehen die Völker zugrunde.” —Moeller von den Bruck Pat Buchanan’s exciting new book demonstrates clearly and convincingly that the population base of Western civilization is disappearing as Europeans and Americans are no longer reproducing themselves even at replacement rate and thus are being supplanted, both in their traditional homelands and in the New...

Hans-Hermann Hoppe may be the most brilliant and original classical liberal alive today.  Often lumped together with the libertarians, of whom he is justly critical, Hoppe was a student of Jürgen Habermas before becoming a disciple of Murray Rothbard and, through Rothbard, of Ludwig von Mises.  Hoppe is probably the most important philosopher produced by...

“‘That precisely for us is justice, that the world be filled with the tempests of our revenge’—so speak they to each other.” —Friedrich Nietzsche Ortega y Gasset once judiciously observed that “Man reaches truth with hands bloodied from the strangling of a hundred platitudes.”  One such commonplace is the popular belief that virtually all of...

Those who have only a passing acquaintance with the history of post-World War II conservatism are not likely even to have heard of Francis Graham Wilson.  Yet, before the emergence of William F. Buckley, Jr., and National Review or the publication of Russell Kirk’s Conservative Mind, Wilson had already marked out the grounds for an...

“There are a large number, possibly a majority, of people who call themselves conservative.  But the more they are examined, the less conservative they will appear.” Chesterton, an English Catholic version of a Southern Agrarian, once remarked that Yankee tycoons (John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan) all had the same face—a face, he added,...

Which of our editors wrote this indictment of post-Christian America? More than a few of us begin to see that while wealth accumulates in these United States, man seems to decay.  Corruption corrodes our political and industrial doings.  In our private lives a pervading relativism, an absence of conviction about what is the good life,...

It is 1923, hot on the heels of the Progressive era and World War I.  Radio Broadcast magazine confidently opines that the advent of radio as a popular medium “is destined, economically and politically, to bind us together more firmly.”  It might even produce “to some extent at least, unification of the religious ideas of...