As Chief of the Pentagon’s Criminal Law Division, I tried or supervised hundreds of rape cases, and my aggressive prosecutions earned me a place on the Army General Staff. I demanded that my JAG lawyers prosecute the toughest sex crime cases, regardless of evidentiary challenges. But I also insisted that they firmly believe that each...
Theresa May is on death row but files legal appeals that extend her life. She might have taken a mortal hit at the Conservative Party Conference, but Boris Johnson, the Young Pretender (he is actually eight years short of her 64) did not strike the assassin’s blow that many expected. He gave a barnstorming speech...
Blowback From U.S. Policy in the Greater Middle East He was shot in the back, the ultimate act of treachery. On September 3rd, a U.S Army sergeant major was killed by two Afghan police officers—the very people his unit, the new Security Force Assistance Brigade, was there to train. It was the second fatal “insider...
Republican leaders are “a bunch of wimps,” said Jerry Falwell Jr. Conservatives and Christians need to stop electing “nice guys.” “The US needs street fighters like Donald Trump at every level of government because the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps.” So tweeted the son and namesake of the founder of the Moral Majority,...
While we await the FBI’s seventh investigation into Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s background, some considerations: All four of Christine Blasey Ford’s witnesses to a party where he allegedly attacked her deny the party ever happened. The first narrative having run its course, the Democratic War Room spun out another dubious claim of sexual assault. The second...
We need a word for the forces that govern our lives. Establishment, a term popularized by Henry Fairlie in the 1950’s, is common currency. He meant by it “the whole matrix of official and social relationships within which power is exercised.” Ralph Waldo Emerson is held to be the first to use the word in...
BlacKkKlansman Produced by Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks Directed by Spike Lee Screenplay by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, and Spike Lee Distributed by Focus Features Crazy Rich Asians Produced and distributed by Warner Brothers Directed by John M. Chu Screenplay by Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim from Kevin Kwan’s novel Mission: Impossible—Fallout Produced...
Chronicles has lost a longtime writer and friend, Egon Richard Tausch, who passed away on July 27. In Egon was found both brilliance and humility, a rare combination reflecting his Christian faith. He was also a man of fierce loyalty, unmoved by the patricidal demands of the politically correct and faithful to his inheritance as...
At the end of Garet Garrett’s Rise of Empire, the grizzled old prophet of the dystopia we’re living in held out hope to his conservative comrades and their intellectual descendants. Although pessimistic by nature (at least so it seems to me), the Old Right journalist, novelist, and peerless polemicist ended his philippic against empire this...
Starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was a smash success when it was released in 1969. Surprisingly, the movie generally follows the actual events of Butch Cassidy’s outlaw life. It’s a fun romp from beginning to end. Most of the casting is not bad for Hollywood: Believe it or...
The most remarkable aspect of Bruce Springsteen’s performance at the 2018 Tony Awards wasn’t what he said or that he said it, but the unanimous acclaim with which it was greeted by both the assembled audience and those who viewed it at home. As I noted in my August column, the story of faith, family,...
The collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa on the motorway that links Italy to Monte Carlo and the French Riviera reminds me of one of the great American novels: The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Here’s my attempt to modify the memorable first sentence of Thornton Wilder’s 1927 masterpiece about the role of God...
Of all the epithets Donald Trump has delivered over the last 24 months (“Mexican immigrant thieves and rapists,” “shithole countries,” the “Mueller Witch Hunt,” etc.), none has provoked greater outrage on the part of liberals than his characterization of the media as “enemies of the people”—the media themselves included. But just as Trump never characterized...
The author is chief executive of Humanists UK, president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and a former director of the European Humanist Foundation. He describes his book as “not intended as an argument for secularism but as an introduction to it, in the hope that secularism will become better known as a concept...
There’s a sucker born every minute. For just $99.00 and a used ticket stub for Wonder Woman, if you order by midnight tonight, you can enroll in a course on Healing Toxic Whiteness. It is taught by a young woman named Sandra Kim, a person of “multiple marginalized identities,” as she describes herself; with what...
Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) was one of the most important philosophers and authors of the 20th century. Camus called him, “after Nietzsche, . . . perhaps the greatest ‘European writer.’” Yet he is virtually unknown today, and scarcely ever read, or even referred to or quoted. One needn’t read far in any of his many...
Leon Redbone left the scene in 2015—I don’t mean that he expired, but simply that he retired. There was mention at the time of health concerns, but he was through with television appearances and concerts and touring, and with recording as well. There has been almost nothing about him on the national scene since then,...
Some of you oldsters will never believe this, but London is no longer the place where The Blue Lamp and other black-and-white golden oldies were made. During the postwar years, with rationing still on and the empire unraveling, England made some of the best movies ever. They were intelligently scripted, underplayed, and beautifully acted by...
Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court was approved on an 11-10 party-line vote Friday in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yet his confirmation is not assured. Sen. Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, has demanded and gotten as the price of his vote on the floor, a weeklong delay. And the GOP Senate has agreed...
Failure of a Mission was the title of Nevile Henderson’s book. He had been British Ambassador to Germany (1937-39), and hoped to the end that he could bring peace. He had some heartening talk with Germans in high places, but their rulers had other plans. Last week Theresa May’s visit to Salzburg merited the same...
Sen. John McCain’s death at 81 on August 25 was followed by effusive praise from everyone who is anyone in the Permanent State. His memorial service at Washington’s National Cathedral on September 1 confirmed that, inside the Beltway, even death is eminently political. It was the biggest gathering of the nation’s bipartisan establishment and its...
There are many ways to commit suicide in academia today. Bret Weinstein, a biology professor at Evergreen State College, opted not to take part in the school’s annual “Day of Absence” celebration. Participation in the racially motivated festivity required white students and faculty to absent themselves from campus for 24 hours in order to reflect...
In his latest interview with Radio Sputnik International, Srdja Trifkovic discusses President Donald Trump’s speech to the UN General Assembly and contrasts his defense of national sovereignty with French President Emanuel Macron’s advocacy of multilateralism before the same forum. The first question concerned Trump’s suggestion that his Administration has already accomplished more than almost any...
Thursday is shaping up to be the Trump presidency’s “Gunfight at O.K. Corral.” That day, the fates of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and much else, may be decided. The New York Times report that Rosenstein, sarcastically or seriously in May 2017, talked of wearing a wire into the...
On Saturday morning, September 22, I switched on Fox News and there witnessed a gaggle of five garrulous women, all talking at the same time, all vacuous and empty headed, and all saying basically nothing—a so-called “panel” discussing the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and the last-minute and largely-unfounded accusations hurled...
Greece is lovely most of the time and irresistible in the late summer, so I am back for a second stint in two months. Mercifully there are fewer tourists around now. There is no line to get into the palace of Knossos and even the ferry to Santorini is half-empty. The intense heat is gone,...
Writing on the events preceding the Terror of the French Revolution, Augustin Cochin described a scene that might be familiar to us today. Indeed, there are many parallels. What follows is an excerpt (emphasis mine) from Organizing the Revolution: Selections From Augustin Cochin, edited and translated by our late friend Claude Polin and his wife, Nancy,...
From the December 1991 issue of Chronicles. To the degree that it is remembered at all, the America First Committee (AFC) has gone down in history as an organization most suspect, at best composed of good people serving a bad cause, at worst riddled with conscious agents of a Nazi transmission belt. During its heyday...
By the end of his second term, President Ronald Reagan, who had called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” was strolling through Red Square with Russians slapping him on the back. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. And how have we husbanded the fruits of our Cold War triumph? This month, China’s...
“Dirt is dirtier than clean is clean,” observes one of John O’Hara’s characters—a history professor, I think—remarking on the human race’s observed partiality for darkness and grime in their news diet, rather than sweetness and light. Note the uproar over Brett Kavanaugh’s behavior—nice or nasty—at a high school party he attended at age 17, during...
From the September 2010 issue of Chronicles. John Poindexter—Navy veteran and national-security advisor during President Reagan’s second term—resigned in disgrace after congressional hearings revealed that the United States, with Poindexter’s approval and with the help of an enterprising young lieutenant colonel named Oliver North, was selling arms to Iran and giving the profits to the...
Upon the memory and truthfulness of Christine Blasey Ford hangs the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, his reputation, and possibly his career on the nation’s second highest court. And much more. If Kavanaugh is voted down or forced to withdraw, the Republican Party and conservative movement could lose their last best hope for...
From the July 2005 issue of Chronicles. Whatever happened to Randolph Scott ridin’ the range alone? Whatever happened to Gene and Tex And Roy and Rex, the Durango Kid? Whatever happened to Randolph Scott His horse plain, as can be? Whatever happened to Randolph Scott Has happened to the best of me. So sang the...
Our diversity is our greatest strength. After playing clips of Democratic politicians reciting that truth of modern liberalism, Tucker Carlson asked, “How, precisely, is diversity our strength? Since you’ve made this our new national motto, please be specific.” Reaction to Carlson’s question, with some declaring him a racist for having raised it, suggests that what...
From the June 2016 issue of Chronicles. In 1996, Barry Alan Shain published his Myth of American Individualism: The Protestant Origins of American Political Thought. It was a book that should have shaken professional conservatism to its foundations. At the time Patrick J. Buchanan was a standard-bearer for an America bound by a common cultural...
From the December 1992 issue of Chronicles. I had heard about, but not read, “The End of History?” Francis Fukuyama’s star-burst essay published in 1989; but I felt a twinge of sympathy for him as his critics chortled and pointed at history rumbling anew: people dancing atop the Berlin Wall, the Soviet Union falling to...
Is President Donald Trump about to intervene militarily in the Syrian civil war? For that is what he and his advisers seem to be signaling. Last week, Trump said of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s campaign to recapture the last stronghold of the rebellion, Idlib province: “If it’s a slaughter, the world is going to get...
Two words of caution before we close down our judgment on the Salisbury poisonings. One: I have never seen what’s in it for Putin. He’s had to take a deal of international flak for a crime committed shortly before the World Cup of football—which was designed to be, and was, a huge propaganda triumph for...
The primary purpose of a grand jury is to vote on indictments. The Pennsylvania grand jury that examined the Church issued two indictments. Forty-four percent of the priests mentioned in the report are dead; the average age of the remainder is 71. The Pennsylvania grand jury report does contain details of actions that can only...
The campaign to overturn the 2016 election and bring down President Trump shifted into high gear this week. Inspiration came Saturday morning from the altar of the National Cathedral where our establishment came to pay homage to John McCain. Gathered there were all the presidents from 1993 to 2017, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and...
Now that a week has passed since Sen. John Sidney McCain III was given a truly presidential sendoff in Washington, it is not in poor form to try and amend the gushing record presented by the media and the bipartisan establishment. The plaudits and perorations are well known, including Meghan McCain’s amazing claim that America’s...
From the August 1995 issue of Chronicles. A popular belief about the founding era is that America was a society of atomistic individuals. All that Americans demanded, according to myth, was that their life and property be protected by government; the remainder of their affairs was to be their own concern, Barry Alan Shain, in...
If kids aren’t reading books, maybe it’s because they don’t have exciting books to read. According to the American Psychological Association, a third of all teens have not a read a book for pleasure in a year. The report cites the usual culprits, especially the prevalence of spending time on social media, which is even...
HASTINGS: ‘What news, what news in this our tott’ring state? CATESBY: ‘It is a reeling world indeed, my lord, And I believe will never stand upright Till Richard wear the garland of the realm.’ —(RICHARD III, 3.2.37-40) Catesby is testing out the reaction of Hastings to the question: where will he stand when Richard makes...
Last week, a prominent American replied “Of course not” when he was asked on FOX News whether Donald Trump was racist. He added that America wasn’t racist, either. When asked about NFL players protesting during the national anthem, he declared: “We should never denigrate our flag and our national anthem. We should always be Americans...
“It is time for this war in Afghanistan to end,” said Gen. John Nicholson in Kabul on his retirement Sunday after a fourth tour of duty and 31 months as commander of U.S. and NATO forces. Labor Day brought news that another U.S. serviceman had been killed in an insider attack by an Afghan soldier....
This summer, the sex scandal that has bedeviled the Catholic Church went critical. First came the stunning revelation that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former Archbishop of Washington and friend to presidents, had for decades been a predator-priest who preyed on seminarians and abused altar boys, and whose depravity was widely known and covered up. Came then...
TORIES FEAR INFILTRATION BY UKIP MEMBERS warned a headline in The Times this week. That journal of record has been slow on the uptake, but this is now a settled trend. People are joining the Conservative Party in large and growing numbers, not because they believe in it—au contraire—but because they reckon a leadership contest...
The War for the Tory Succession is about to resume in all its fury, as the combatants leave their summer quarters and prepare for the fall campaign. The War Cry will be voiced by Boris Johnson, who has a Monday column in the Daily Telegraph paid at £275,000 a year. It is a bully pulpit,...
“McCain’s Death Leaves Void” ran the Wall Street Journal headline over a front-page story that began: “The death of John McCain will leave Congress without perhaps its loudest voice in support of the robust internationalism that has defined the country’s security relations since World War II.” Certainly, the passing of the senator whose life story...