Category: Web

It came as a bolt of lightning out of the blue.  One moment the Trump administration was besieged on all sides.  The media were accusing him of treason, and the Democrats, having just taken control of the House of Representatives, were promising multiple investigations.  Robert Mueller was reportedly sharpening his prosecutorial knives, getting ready to...

Of our 20th-century wars World War II stands alone.  In a sneak attack early on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, Japanese naval forces bombed Pearl Harbor.  As reports were broadcast throughout the day American shock turned to anger.  The following day Congress, with but one dissenting vote—pacifist Jeannette Rankin—declared war on Japan.  We were a...

Last year, just before his 21st birthday, my son Jacob learned of a condition called aphantasia.  In its strictest form, aphantasia is the inability to create mental images.  Like many such conditions, aphantasia affects those who have it to varying degrees.  In Jacob’s case, his mental images are very fuzzy and indistinct.  In my case,...

For Texas conservatives, a surprisingly strong showing by Democrats in their deep-red state in November’s midterm election was an unexpected wake-up call.  The results also set me to thinking about my own personal history with the Lone Star State.  And how, in the absence of vigilance, the long, proud heritage of a particular place can...

Sometimes the best things come in distorting packages, no matter how good they are.  And sometimes that good is itself misleading when it has great appeal, or even particularly then. I was not yet a teenager when I stumbled into the discovery of a recording of tremendous command—an LP with Schumann’s Carnaval, Op. 9, on...

The world lacks drinking games relating to women’s studies, so here’s a suggestion: If you can get a women’s studies stalwart to say the word coverture before the conversation’s second minute elapses, throw one back for the 21st Amendment.  Then you’ll be comfortable as you receive a wealth of information about women under English Common...

“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.” Richard II’s lament might seem to apply to Theresa May, as she contemplates a near future when the final Withdrawal Agreement has to be submitted to the Commons in two weeks time. There is small prospect that the Commons will support whatever May comes with, since...

In his latest interview with Serbia’s top-rated Happy TV Morning Program, Srdja Trifkovic shares his impressions after a two-week tour of Egypt. [You can watch the interview here.] Q: So you’ve just come back from Egypt, perhaps the only country which has managed to be affected and then recover from the Arab Spring revolutions. In...

Has the Arms Industry Captured Trump’s Pentagon? By Mandy Smithberger and William D. Hartung The way personnel spin through Washington’s infamous revolving door between the Pentagon and the arms industry is nothing new. That door, however, is moving ever faster with the appointment of Patrick Shanahan, who spent 30 years at Boeing, the Pentagon’s second...

“Pay the soldiers. The rest do not matter.” This was the deathbed counsel given to his sons by Roman Emperor Septimius Severus in A.D. 211. Nicolas Maduro must today appreciate the emperor’s insight. For the political survival of this former bus driver and union boss hangs now upon whether Venezuela’s armed forces choose to stand...

The boys from Covington Catholic did a good thing by going to the March for Life. If what the Catholic Church teaches is true, Roe v. Wade marks a death sentence for roughly 1,000,000 innocent human beings every year, year in, year out. As John T. Noonan wrote decades ago, “No plague, no war, has so...

In his latest interview for Sputnik Radio International, Srdja Trifkovic discusses an unusually revealing performance by George Soros at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. [You can listen to the interview here.] Sputnik: George Soros has launched an attack on China’s President Xi Jinping in his speech at the WEF in Davos, saying that artificial...

If it was the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that black and white would come together in friendship and peace to do justice, his acolytes in today’s Democratic Party appear to have missed that part of his message. Here is Hakeem Jeffries, fourth-ranked Democrat in Nancy Pelosi’s House, speaking Monday, on the holiday...

From the December 1990 issue of Chronicles. Nathaniel Macon (Dec. 17, 1758- June 29, 1837), “Old Republican” statesman, the foremost public man of North Carolina in the early 19th century, was the sixth child of Gideon and Priscilla (Jones) Macon and was born at his father’s plantation on Shocco Creek in what later became Warren...

“You have delighted us long enough,” said Mr. Bennet, speaking for all of us on the exhausted subject of Theresa May. We had hoped for closure before Christmas, since a Meaningful Vote on May’s Withdrawal Agreement had been promised and this was surely destined for a massive defeat. But the Prime Minister pulled the vote,...

A word about hats. Now that the vicious media assault on the teens from Covington Catholic has been exposed as a lie, one of the fallback positions is that the boys shouldn’t have been wearing MAGA hats. First of all, I very much doubt that they were wearing the hats during the March. They were...

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible . . . make violent revolution inevitable,” said John F. Kennedy. In 2016, the U.S. and Britain were both witness to peaceful revolutions. The British voted 52-48 to sever ties to the European Union, restore their full sovereignty, declare independence and go their own way in the world. Trade...

Every year, on or near the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, hundreds of thousands of Americans go to Washington, D. C., to join the March for Life and protest that infamous decision.  The March for Life is peaceful and orderly, and every year the major media outlets contrive to pretend it doesn’t exist.  Until this...

My “Letter from Egypt,” with a comprehensive analysis of the country’s political, economic and social situation is coming in a few days’ time. For starters, let me present our readers with a few practical tips on how to make the most of this incredible country without spending many thousands of dollars/euros and without being herded...

Collective guilt is an invention of the Left, one of their finest. Guilt is of course of primary concern to the individual. Chambers gives it as “the state of having done wrong; sin, sinfulness, or consciousness of it.” In the law courts guilt is charged against the individual or specific individuals, and it is tried...

10 USC § 2808 gives the President authority to use the military to undertake construction in the event the President declares a national emergency. It has been used, without controversy, to build military facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan.  33 USC § 2293 is an even clearer grant of statutory authority to the President to order construction, “without...

Last night, President Donald Trump hopefully set the stage for taking measures to protect America’s borders that are long overdue. Though his brief address sometimes lapsed into the sentimental bromides realistic patriots have long grown weary of, Trump, in the end, told us what this struggle is all about. After correctly diagnosing the border crisis...

Alan Clark, that louche and radio-actively incorrect figure, once caused uproar in Westminster by referring to Africa as “bongo-bongo land.” Volcanic outrage erupted on the Left at this hideously racist remark. But on January 8, 2019, the Daily Telegraph reported that in oil-rich Gabon—which is the re-branded French Equatorial Africa—loyalists had thwarted a coup against...

From the September 1991 issue of Chronicles. “Faith is required of thee, and a sincere life, not loftiness of intellect, nor deepness in the Mysteries of God.” —Thomas à Kempis This is, in fact, a book about two men, since, due to his strong personality and his close relationship to Georges Bernanos, the author plays...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House has more women, persons of color and LGBT members than any House in history—and fewer white males. And Thursday, the day Rashida Tlaib was sworn in, her hand on a Quran, our first Palestinian-American congresswoman showed us what we may expect. As a rally of leftists lustily cheered her on, Tlaib...

If there is a more anti-Trump organ in the American establishment than The Washington Post, it does not readily come to mind. Hence, in choosing to send his op-ed attack on President Donald Trump to the Post, Mitt Romney was collaborating with an adversary of his party and his president. And he knew it, and...

I reviewed Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, for Chronicles (September 2017). I thought it the book of the year, and it stayed on the Sunday Times top 10 non-fiction best-seller lists for almost 20 weeks. There was a precursor, Hasta la Vista Europe! by Col. Walter T. Richmond, which I had also reviewed or Chronicles...

France’s ambassador to Poland Pierre Levy has said he was “surprised, even shocked,” by the Polish foreign minister, Jacek Czaputowicz, declaring that “something’s not right” with France, and that was “sad because France is the sick man of Europe, dragging Europe down.” M. Levy went on to make an astonishing statement which only confirmed that...

“Assad must go, Obama says.” So read the headline in The Washington Post, Aug. 18, 2011. The story quoted President Barack Obama directly: “The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. . . . the time has come for President Assad to step aside.”...

We live in a Puritan country, in which self-righteousness is eternally wedded to cheap theatrics.  This explains the dual phenomena of Meryl Streep and Hollywood’s earnest commitment to distributing her films to every country on the planet.  Like all good Puritans, self-righteous Americans are sure to be the most depraved of anyone.  So when Tinseltown,...

David Cameron, the former Prime Minister, once mocked his fellow Tories for “banging on about Europe.”  He meant that the European Union had become a tedious right-wing obsession—the root of all governmental problems, the enemy without, the reason Britain was going to the dogs. Now, thanks in large part to Mr. Cameron, all the British...

Blame everything on Trump.  Your car won’t start?  It’s Trump’s fault.  Your dog threw up in the living room?  It’s Trump’s fault.  The media have lost their collective mind.  That’s definitely Trump’s fault.  And the blame game seems to get worse by the day.  Every politician who won office this past November won only because...

I expected something quite different than I got when I began reading As A City on a Hill: The Story of America’s Most Famous Lay Sermon, by Daniel T. Rodgers and just released by Basic Books.  I am not yet very far into it, but plan on taking it to read at odd moments on...

When one is tired of London, said Dr. Johnson, one is tired of life.  I spent a week in London last November, a city I have visited many times and know well having lived a year there with my family while I was growing up.  The City of London remains largely intact, save for the...

Boy Erased Produced and distributed by Focus Features  Written and directed by Joel Edgerton from a memoir by Garrard Conley  The Miseducation of Cameron Post Produced by Beachside Films  Written and directed by Desiree Akhavan from a novel by Emily Danforth  Distributed by FilmRise  Private Life Produced and distributed by Netflix  Written and directed by...

Is it really necessary to explain why President Trump’s proposed Space Force would be a boon to humankind?  Do I have to contrast such a noble project with the other possible uses to which our tax dollars would be put?  Perhaps a study of how transsexuals are prone to certain color combinations.  Or one on...

Events this past week in Paris remind me of my step-sister Amanda, Lady Harlech, who is usually described—much to her chagrin—as the “muse” of the 85-year-old gay kaiser of the fashion world, Karl Lagerfeld. On Thursday—Thanksgiving Day in America—Lagerfeld switched on the Christmas lights in the Champs-Élysées.  He had been invited to do so by...

To the leaders of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960’s, self-censorship—once known as civility and decorum—was as dangerous as the social enforcement of civility by private organizations and by public educational institutions, and those social norms were, in turn, just as destructive as attempts by government to limit the freedom of speech guaranteed by...

The Paris Peace Conference opened at the Palace of Versailles 100 years ago (January 18, 1919).  It was the most ambitious gathering of its kind in history: Leaders and diplomats of 27 nations convened to shape the future, a mere ten weeks after the Armistice.  Far from reestablishing order in Europe and the world after...

Alan Walker has insisted, at the very beginning of his massive new biography of Chopin, that the composer has today a unique global reputation and appeal.  And when we consider the evidence that justifies his claims, we must admit that this evidence is most impressive—and also that some of it is the opposite: doubtful and...

One Saturday night last summer I found myself sitting on a warm, grassy knoll outside Missoula, Montana, watching a blood-red sun set behind a cup in the hills with the snow-fringed Bitterroot Mountains beyond, while in the foreground an elfin, 70-year-old man dressed entirely in black leather, accompanied by an energetically hair-swinging band, blasted out...

Project Fear, the code name for the great anti-Brexit counter-offensive, is still under way but lost its attacking force some time ago. It now survives through a few tropes that have lost their rhetorical teeth, and their power to maul minds. Some instances: 1) Brexit as “crashing out.”  Cue: BBC clip of Formula One racing...

If Democrats are optimistic as 2019 begins, it is understandable. Their victory on Nov. 6, adding 40 seats and taking control of the House of Representatives, was impressive. And with the party’s total vote far exceeding the GOP total, in places it became a rout. In the six New England states, Republicans no longer hold...