More often than not, current events offer an opportunity for meditation. This is the case today: The friends of a politician turned international financier, now to be tried for rape, have rallied round him, claiming his privacy has been invaded. Though in this case the claim is downright preposterous, by appealing to the right to...
As the American Empire declines, many see the People’s Republic of China, with its dynamic economy and powerful military, surpassing the United States and emerging as the new world power. The reality is more complex, and China’s future more uncertain. According to one set of statistics, China has seen impressive economic growth as a result...
In his classic history of the Lombard Communes—the finally doomed medieval republics of Northern Italy—W.F. Butler suggests that the creative and individualistic nature of the Italian people favored a rich cultural life over a stable political one. This could explain why modern Italy, historically a politically dysfunctional country, is nevertheless a civilized and delightful one. ...
When John Randolph of Roanoke looked at the America of 1806, into Thomas Jefferson’s second and disastrous term as President, he could have been describing today: “Everything and everybody seem to be jumbled out of place, except a few men steeped in supine indifference, whilst meddling fools and designing knaves are governing the country.” He...
John C. Calhoun was the last great American statesman. A statesman must be something of a prophet—one who has an historical perspective and says what he believes to be true and in the best long-range interest of the people, whether it is popular or not. A politician, which is all we have now, says and...
Prophets like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn understood that the 20th century was the substance of which prophecy is made. Its history is a poetic saga, the poetry written in God’s own fierce verse. The first decade of the 21st century was inclined to look back at its immediate centennial predecessor with a degree of self-satisfaction amounting to...
Imagine reading an interview with the founder of a new Christian church. As the interviewer points out, new denominations are scarcely a surprising story, so what makes yours so different and noteworthy? Well, explains the prophet, we have a totally different attitude toward the Bible. Our focus groups tell us that many modern people do...
Unless he is an exorcist or a pedophile, the chances of a priest being the main character in a Hollywood movie are sinfully scant. Giving star treatment to a real-life priest who would become a saint, however—and presenting him truthfully—seems as improbable as Dan Brown donning sackcloth and, as penance for miscasting Opus Dei as...
A few years ago, I was invited to appear on Glenn Beck’s television show. We were scheduled to discuss the nonsecurity spending Congress had stuffed into the supplemental appropriations bill being used to pay for the Iraq war: money for peanut farmers, spinach growers, etc. (The Iraq occupation itself should probably fall into the category...
I was in seventh grade, and we were downstate for the annual Bible Bowl. Our little fundamentalist school fielded a team every year. We were the most conservative of fundamentalists, which mean that we were King James Only (affectionately KJVO). Along with soulwinning and no syncopation, KJVO was proof to the world that we were...
Many years ago, on a train trip from New York City to Philadelphia, a friend (a city girl, actually) remarked to me, as we passed through the Jersey industrial swamps, that she would happily cancel the Industrial Revolution, supposing only that modern dental technique could be rescued for the benefit of a restored pastoral society....
In February, President Obama directed the Department of Justice to stop defending Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Immediately, many conservatives decried the announcement. Curt Levy of the Committee for Justice described Obama’s decision as “outrageous” and a “power grab that . . . would allow him to undermine any duly enacted...
I was fortunate to grow up before the Immigration Act of 1965 began an incremental and insidious change in the ethnic composition of America. I had friends whose parents were immigrants. I thought nothing much of it because the parents had all come from countries in Northern or Western Europe and almost immediately became indistinguishable...
Speculation about the possible decline of the West has been going on for the better part of a century, if it may be considered as originating in Spengler’s or Valery’s famous reflections. Obviously, the fratricidal nature of World War I triggered pessimism, but I think the very nature of our societies constitutes a reason for...
The Autobiography of Mark Twain, recently released, contains a reminiscence, dictated by the author, of a mass public meeting on the night of January 22, 1906, held as a fundraiser on behalf of Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute on the occasion of its silver anniversary. According to old Mark’s figures, 3,000 people filled the hall,...
The whole truth about Lincoln’s war to prevent 11 American states from forming a federation of their own cannot be understood unless it is seen as an extension of a brutal process of centralization that had been going on in Europe since the 13th century. Medieval Christian civilization contributed to political philosophy by introducing a...
“The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern States.” —Charles Dickens, 1862 “Slavery is no more the cause of this war than gold is the cause of robbery.” —Gov. Joel Parker of New Jersey, 1863 In 1931, sixteen...
Newt Gingrich is back! In fact, it’s his fourth or fifth comeback. He has his third wife in tow, two new DVDs, that old gift for the flabby-gabby, and presidential ambitions. With the former wunderkind turning 69 in 2012, and a Republican considered a likely winner for the presidency that year, it will be his...
If the media could invent a headline that comprehensively described the definitive news of the world today, it would be something like Experts Confirm Top Rail Is on Bottom. For almost my entire working life I have been hearing how the upper classes are being displaced by the lower ones, the American native-born by immigrants...
In 2008, a young friend from the Czech Republic spent six months in the United States, in part to help me research a book on Roman Polanski and the mores of Hollywood in general. At first she was highly impressed by what she found there; she thought she had encountered a higher civilization. No one...
“As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt Have you been to a toy store lately? Barbie’s got some heavy competition these days. The Bratz collection, for instance: Yasmin, Sasha, Cloe, Jade—all household names for several years now. Check out that hot little number Sasha in her...
In his Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini, on “The Word of God in the Life and the Mission of the Church,” Pope Benedict XVI challenged Islamic countries to offer the same religious freedom that Muslims usually enjoy in predominantly Christian countries. Alas, the news is far from encouraging in countries such as Iraq and Egypt, where...
One result of the rebalanced political power in Congress and the rise of the Tea Party within the Republican Party is that we are all likely to be spared talk about “compassionate conservatism” for the next couple of years; anyway, until the GOP discovers—as is more than likely to happen in 2012—that conservatism of the...
On December 1, 2009, the Lisbon Treaty took effect. Within a year the 27-member European Union was fractured politically and besieged economically. “Euroskepticism” was on the rise. The plan to turn Europe into a Weltmacht capable of matching the United States and China looked almost comical. Europe remained a geographic aggregation, not a geopolitical unit. ...
The Romans took citizenship very seriously. Only citizens had the right to vote, marry, make legal contracts, and have a trial and appeal the decision of the lower court. Americans, on the other hand, are in the process of getting rid of the concept of citizenship altogether. We are not controlling the border or making...
From 1979 to 1982, I was a Russian linguist stationed in Frankfurt, West Germany, with the 533rd Combat Electronic Warfare Intelligence (CEWI) Battalion, part of the 3rd Armored Division. If a war had come, assuming we hadn’t been nuked right away, we would have deployed within hours northeast to the Fulda Gap to listen to...
A perfect 360-degree horizon, occluded in the nearer distance by cloud shadow and smears and smudges of squall, is something sensed, not seen. All around lies a mottled expanse of turquoise, wine-blue, cobalt, and purple patches streaked with brilliant sunshine alternating with gray shadow and scuffed into variously textured sheets ruffled and smoothed by the...
I taught college English for 24 years, and I still search newspapers and blogs for signs of the Beast, which, these days, attacks us mostly through language—errors of agreement, misplaced modifiers, and non sequiturs. That’s how you tear down a civilization. While I was never a linguistics scholar, I have nonetheless followed its meandering course...
For centuries, the propensity to personal ownership has been considered one of the most elementary and natural features of human nature. Criticism of private property is nothing recent, either, but has turned out to be extremely commonplace in modern times: Communism haunts European consciences as the famous specter haunted Hamlet. But it is only the...
When I first read in a Soviet history book of Proudhon’s famous dictum that property is theft, I thought there had been a mistake in the typesetting. Obviously, the author had meant to say that property was not theft, but the proofreader goofed, making an interesting and valid observation into a gross and vulgar absurdity. ...
Popular culture in the West, and especially in North America, is an illusion, mostly electronic, that does not feed the soul. Indeed, it claims to do nothing but feed the senses, and as such it tends toward universal barbarism, fostering ignorance and encouraging violence. Beneath the illusion there is, however, one great civilization, and it...
Why does it take so long to get a decision from the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of President Obama’s healthcare law, or Arizona’s SB 170, or California’s Proposition 8 limiting “gay marriage”? Currently, those three cases are meandering their way around the lower federal courts. The Obama administration’s healthcare law is under attack by...
During the week of December 6, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. In the original decision, U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker held that California’s Proposition 8, which amended the state constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, violated the Due Process...
“We need another Reagan.” I’ve heard that too many times to count. Don’t get me wrong: I think another Reagan would be a good start—but only a start. Everyone should recall that Reagan, even during the six years that the Republicans held the Senate, was able to do little to trim back the size of...
“There’s a bear in the woods,” warns ad man Hal Riney, as a grizzly appears on screen. “For some people, the bear is easy to see. Others don’t see it at all. Some people say the bear is tame. Others say it is vicious and dangerous. Since no one can really be sure who’s right,...
When the American colonists seceded from Britain in 1776, Europe was shared out among great monarchies. Only Switzerland was republican, but Americans were determined to enjoy a republican style of government in the New World. The republican tradition went back over 2,000 years to the ancient Greeks and consistently taught that a republic must satisfy...
I have read in the newspapers lately that the scholarly journals have begun to experiment with a new procedural system of editorial acceptance. For generations, article submissions have been made to the editors, who in turn sent the manuscripts out for peer review by specialists in the field. Grants of academic tenure depend heavily on...
Aristotle declared that there is a limit to the size of states: “a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements; for none of these retain their natural power when they are too large or too small, but they either wholly lose their nature, or are spoiled.” But really, what did he know? ...
The special inspector general for TARP (the Troubled Asset Relief Program) reported on July 21 that the bank bailout that has been going on since September 2008 has cost $3.7 trillion in actual expenditures and guarantees to the banks. Not surprisingly, the banks are prospering. But in a just world, the failed banks would have...
Frank: “They threw me out for plagiarizing.” Ernest: “You were stealing songs?” Frank: “No, I was taking notes.” —from a Frank and Ernest cartoon (Frank has been expelled from music school) A graduate student asked if he could take a reading course; sitting at my feet, I thought, talking with the rabbi. He was...
Not long ago I attended a dinner hosted by a Catholic laymen’s organization in the social hall of a church on Colorado’s Front Range. The meal was followed by after-dinner speeches and concluding remarks by an official representing the organization. “We are caring Catholics of Colorado” were almost the first words out of her mouth. ...
On September 1, 1939, an Englishman named Harry Hinsley, walking between two lines of Nazi soldiers, crossed slowly and nervously the bridge connecting Kehl in Germany with Strasbourg in France. He made it to the French side before the border was closed. He had been warned to leave. It was none too soon; German troops...
Okinawa is a beautiful island in the Pacific. Although part of Japan, it is culturally and historically distinct, having a long list of diverse occupants and occupiers. The Allies won a decisive victory at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. Following a massive amphibious invasion by U.S. forces, the battle was one of the bloodiest...
During the June primary campaign for governor of California, a GOP operative told me that the plan of the party elites is to nominate Mitt Romney for president in 2012, with Meg Whitman as his running mate. That way, she would spend hundreds of millions of dollars of her fortune on the campaign, enriching every...
Stendhal had the delightful habit of ending his books with the closing dedication, in English, “TO THE HAPPY FEW.” The phrase is thought to be a borrowing from Henry V (“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers . . . ”) or perhaps from Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield, where the vicar anticipates his...
Deep in the heart of man there is a need imprinted by nature that may very well be his basic difference from all other animals: Being a thinking one—i.e., an animal capable of self-awareness—man needs to be something meaningful in his own eyes, something which deserves to exist, possessed of a certain dignity. All men...
Those blissfully ignorant of right-wing soap opera will have never noticed the Antichrist Right, a loose coalition of writers who regard the Church as the worst thing that ever happened to Western civilization. If I understand correctly, the Antichrist Right would describe Christianity much as Christianity defines evil: a shadowy, parasitic negation that possesses no...
The Beltway Right is a comical farce. But like the blind squirrel that occasionally finds an acorn, it is right about one thing: Liberal Democrats simply cannot be trusted on national security. That truth was no more apparent than in early April, when an A-list of Virginia Democrats were named “invited guests” on a flyer...
After 16 months, perhaps the best one can say for the Tea Party is that the contempt it originally provoked within the American establishment has turned to consternation. If the Tea Party were composed of real Indians, the elite would be understanding, if not exactly encouraging, and not in the least alarmed or offended. Since,...
In January, when Republican Scott Brown was elected to fill the remainder of the late senator Edward M. Kennedy’s term, the activists who helped make it possible traced their political lineage back to the Boston Tea Party. Jubilant supporters dubbed it the “Scott heard round the world.” This Tea Party wanted to dump into the...