Lying With Pictures In any shopping mall, on any day, you can see a grizzling kid yearning for the chocolate-covered candy bar that his/her cruel mother is withholding from the distraught child. You can take a photo of this distressing scene but will not expect to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize, or whatever touches the...
The presidency of Donald Trump has made some things many of us suspected for a long time perfectly clear, as a former president used to say. Our enemies no longer hide what their agenda is, and job #1 on that agenda is replacing what Archie Bunker used to call “regular Americans” with foreigners. Thus, the...
For Nancy Pelosi, 78, Steny Hoyer, 79, and Joe Biden, 75, the primary results from New York’s 14th congressional district are a fire bell in the night. All may be swept away in the coming revolution. That is the message of the crushing defeat of 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley, who had aspired to succeed Pelosi...
The frequency with which American politicians—and Republican ones in particular—habitually neglect or pass up obvious chances to score a telling hit on their opponents is really amazing. An immediately recent example is the claim made on the campaign trail by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leading candidate for the Mexican presidency in the forthcoming election...
Should one read Hervey Allen or Anne Rice? Why should the question be asked at all? Why might a discriminating reader today even think of picking up either Hervey Allen’s massive best-seller of 1933, Anthony Adverse, or The Feast of All Saints (1979) by Anne Rice, a hugely popular contemporary author? (Both are still available...
The best speech I ever heard on immigration was delivered by the late Terry Anderson at the Reform Party Convention in Long Beach in 2000. Anderson, a black native of Los Angeles, described how his livelihood as an auto mechanic and small-business owner, as well as the livings of blacks in the building trades and...
If Trump’s supporters are truly “a basket of deplorables . . . racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” and “irredeemable,” as Hillary Clinton described them to an LGBT crowd, is not shunning and shaming the proper way to deal with them? So a growing slice of the American left has come to believe. Friday, gay waiters...
On June 20 Serbia’s foreign minister Ivica Dacic made an interesting remark in connection with the ongoing political and territorial dispute over the status of Kosovo. We are witnessing a new reflection of the desire to create the “green transverse” in the Balkans, which is a “dangerous fantasy” motivated by ambitious Islamic extremism. “This is...
Cleverly and with their habitual dishonesty, liberals this spring have managed to turn the issue of mass immigration into issues of mass refugee and asylum seeking, thus altering the terms of debate entirely. Having failed to persuade the country that anyone who wants to immigrate to the United States should be allowed to do so,...
“If you’re . . . pathetically weak, the country is going to be overrun with millions of people, and if you’re strong, then you don’t have any heart, that’s a tough dilemma. . . . I’d rather be strong.” So said President Donald Trump, on issuing his order halting the separation of children from parents...
The Pentagon’s Provocative Encirclement of China On May 30th, Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced a momentous shift in American global strategic policy. From now on, he decreed, the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), which oversees all U.S. military forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM). The name change, Mattis explained, reflects “the...
‘Divisive’: the Left denounces the term. Good. It means that the enemy is running scared. The Left raises its hands in holy horror at the idea of a community being ‘divided’. But all elections divide voters into pro and con. You cannot hold an election for the Chairman of the Golf Club without fierce passions being involved. Voters are urged...
“It is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart,” says former first lady Laura Bush of the Trump administration policy of “zero tolerance,” under which the children of illegal migrants are being detained apart from their parents. “Disgraceful,” adds Dr. Franklin Graham. “We need to be . . . a country that governs...
From the December 2009 issue of Chronicles. William Murchison gets right to the point in his eloquent account of mainline Protestantism’s near-terminal degeneration, written poignantly from an Anglican’s perspective: Whenever traditional Christianity clashed with late-twentieth-century culture, the Episcopal Church normally weighed in on the side of the culture: for enhanced choice in life, for more...
President Donald Trump appears to belong to what might be called the Benjamin Disraeli school of diplomacy. The British prime minister once counseled, “Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.” At his Singapore summit, Trump smartly saluted a North Korean general and then lavished praise...
The Gravy Train Rolls On “The United States of Amnesia.” That’s what Gore Vidal once called us. We remember what we find it convenient to remember and forget everything else. That forgetfulness especially applies to the history of others. How could their past, way back when, have any meaning for us today? Well, it just...
I live in amity with the Southern Baptists, whose general tolerance for my fellow “Whiskeypalians” I take kindly. I wouldn’t dream of joining the media whoop-de-do over who among the Baptist faithful did what to whom, and when, and what to do now. You have read it all; I will not recount the imputations of...
At the end of their meeting in Singapore, President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Chairman Kim Jong Un signed a document in which Trump “committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK,” while Kim “reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” In principle this is a reasonable formula which...
At the G-7 summit in Canada, President Donald Trump described America as “the piggy bank that everybody is robbing.” After he left Quebec, his director of Trade and Industrial Policy, Peter Navarro, added a few parting words for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in...
In his latest Sputnik Radio interview Srdja Trifkovic discusses British Prime Minister Theresa May’s initiative at the G7 summit in Canada to develop a “rapid and unified” response to alleged hostile actions by Russia. The plan was previously divulged by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to a closed door meeting with Conservative MPs. [Audio] Trifkovic: My...
“Though New York City has one of the most segregated schools systems in the country,” writes Elizabeth Harris of the New York Times, until now, Mayor Bill de Blasio “was all but silent on the issue.” He was “reluctant even to use the word ‘segregation.'” Now the notion that the liberal mayor belongs in the...
From the June 1993 issue of Chronicles. There is plentiful historical evidence that cultural diversity and immigration need not undermine a society’s cohesion. They can be sources of enrichment and renewal. Especially in a vital civilization, groups of different religious, ethnic, and national origin may be pulled, however reluctantly in particular cases, into a dynamic...
In Italy’s general election on March 4, two parties routinely derided by the corporate media as “populist” won almost 70 percent of the votes cast. A coalition led by Matteo Salvini’s League (Lega, formerly known as Lega Nord, LN) won 37 percent of the vote and a plurality of seats both in the Chamber of...
“There is no Republican Party. There’s a Trump party,” John Boehner told a Mackinac, Michigan, gathering of the GOP faithful last week. “The Republican Party is kind of taking a nap somewhere.” Ex-Speaker Boehner should probably re-check the old party’s pulse, for the Bush-Boehner GOP may not just be napping. It could be comatose. Consider....
The Military-Industrial Complex Strikes (Out) Again Did you know the U.S. Air Force is working on a new stealth bomber? Don’t blame yourself if you didn’t, since the project is so secret that most members of Congress aren’t privy to the details. (Talk about stealthy!) Known as the B-21 Raider, after General Doolittle’s Raiders of...
On May 30, Russia Today (not to be confused with the RT television network) published an article by Srdja Trifkovic in Russian, “Putin is a manager rather than a far-seeing statesman who follows a long-term plan.” We bring you this piece in Dr. Trifkovic’s translation, a sequel to his article Putin’s Collapsing Credibility posted here a...
For Roseanne Barr, star of ABC’s hit show Roseanne, there would be no appeal. When her tweet hit, she was gone. “Roseanne’s Twitter statement, is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” declaimed Channing Dungey, the black president of ABC Entertainment. Targeting Valerie Jarrett, a confidante and...
Imagine you are a denizen of Melos enslaved by the Athenians during the brutal sack of that island in 416 BC. A year later you learn that your masters are preparing a massive expedition to Sicily as a starting point for the conquest of Italy and Carthage; and, furthermore, that they are hoping that the...
As I was finishing up an embroidery of a Maya Angelou poem while contemplating Jamie Smith’s profound and almost mystical use of parentheses and italics, I almost split my PJs and spilt my latte when I read that not-my-president Trump called the MS-13 “gang” a bunch of “animals.” With deranged determination, I tweeted my #disgust...
After being sworn in for a fourth term, Vladimir Putin departed the Kremlin for Annunciation Cathedral to receive the televised blessing of Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church. The patriarch and his priests in sacred vestments surrounded Putin, who, standing alone, made the sign of the cross. Meanwhile, sacred vestments from the Sistine Chapel...
U.S. threats to crush Iran and North Korea may yet work, but as of now neither Tehran nor Pyongyang appears to be intimidated. Repeated references by NSC adviser John Bolton and Vice President Mike Pence to the “Libya model” for denuclearization of North Korea just helped sink the Singapore summit of President Trump and Kim...
Tully Produced by Bron Studios Directed by Jason Reitman Screenplay by Diablo Cody In the summer of 1998, a teenybopper friend and I went to see some big deal war movie. Afterwards, we walked back to her car with our minds full of weeping men and piles of guts. “Did you like that?” she asked....
How Unpiloted Aircraft Expand the War on Terror They are like the camel’s nose, lifting a corner of the tent. Don’t be fooled, though. It won’t take long until the whole animal is sitting inside, sipping your tea and eating your sweets. In countries around the world—in the Middle East, Asia Minor, Central Asia, Africa,...
Like many Southern boys growing up in the 1950s, I recall fondly my father reading stories to me of “Stonewall” Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, of the “Gray Ghost,” Colonel John Mosby, and of Marse Robert Lee who led Confederate armies during the War for Southern Independence. But I also reveled in the exploits of...
That joking retort we heard as children, “Is the pope Catholic?” is starting to look like a serious question. Asked five years ago about a “gay lobby” in the Vatican, Pope Francis responded, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” As judgment was thought to...
When, in early March, Donald Trump agreed to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the Washington foreign policy elite nearly suffered a collective heart attack. For one thing, the announcement came as a complete surprise. Trump had telegraphed his other foreign policy bombshells well in advance: leaving the Paris climate accord, ripping up the Iran...
After Pyongyang railed this week that the U.S.-South Korean Max Thunder military drills were a rehearsal for an invasion of the North, and imperiled the Singapore summit, the Pentagon dialed them back. The B-52 exercises alongside F-22 stealth fighters were canceled. But Pyongyang had other objections. Sunday, NSC adviser John Bolton spoke of a “Libyan...
From the July 1999 issue of Chronicles. In The Mirage of Social Justice, the second volume of his trilogy on Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Friedrich von Hayek confessed that, “as a result of long endeavors to trace the destructive effect which the invocation of ‘social justice’ has had on our moral sensitivity,” he had “come...
From the October 1993 issue of Chronicles. A favorite exhortation of those seeking to further restrict or remove the private possession of firearms in the United States is to “look at other countries,” where lower murder rates are supposed to be a result of gun control laws. The underlying presumption beneath these laws is that...
For Bibi Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister save only founding father David Ben-Gurion, it has been a week of triumph. Last Tuesday, President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal as Bibi had demanded. Thursday, after Iran launched 20 missiles at the Golan Heights, Bibi answered with a 70-missile attack...
Will Washington, Tel Aviv, Riyadh, and Tehran Face Off in a Future Cataclysm? With Donald Trump’s decision to shred the Iran nuclear agreement, announced last Tuesday, it’s time for the rest of us to start thinking about what a Third Gulf War would mean. The answer, based on the last 16 years of American...
Brushing aside the anguished pleas of our NATO allies, President Trump Tuesday contemptuously trashed the Iranian nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions. Prime Minister Theresa May of Great Britain, President Emmanuel Macron of France and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were put on notice that their ties to Iran are to be severed, or secondary sanctions will...
The Moscow-based International Conservative Club (founded by the Party of Action) published an essay in Russian by Srdja Trifkovic, The Day of Victory – A Time to Reflect, in which he “ponders why the victory over Nazism has not marked the end of the ‘civil war’ in Europe.” We bring you the English translation of...
“Gene just isn’t a nice person.” —Bobby Kennedy You know you are not in for a Doris Kearns Goodwin/David McCullough hagiography when a biographer uses as an epigraph a character assessment by the thuggish Marilyn-mauling (Joe) McCarthyite RFK. (Isn’t the three-letter monogram usually a tip-off to a sinister force?) In March 1968, Eugene McCarthy earned...
From the December 1994 issue of Chronicles. “Democratic capitalism” equals political correctness for the neoconservative. It is a term at least as ubiquitous on these shores and on others as McDonald’s, Coke, and Disneyland. It is the “Sesame!” that opens doors as well as markets and whose usage, planet-wide, is becoming as offensive and boring...
This next week may determine whether President Trump extricates us from that cauldron of conflict that is the Middle East, as he promised, or plunges us even deeper into these forever wars. Friday will see the sixth in a row of weekly protests at the Gaza border fence in clashes that have left 40 Palestinians...
For years, the purveyors of respectable opinion assured us that there was no need to worry about the economic dislocations caused by free trade, because such dislocations would be comparatively minor and temporary. In fact, as Gwynn Guilford notes in an important new article at Quartz, even academic economists are beginning to conclude that imports...
If Donald Trump does not wish to collaborate in the destruction of his presidency, he will refuse to be questioned by the FBI, or by a grand jury, or by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his malevolent minions. Should Mueller subpoena him, as he has threatened to do, Trump should ignore the subpoena, and frame...
“This time, they think they have it right.” So declared an Associated Press story reporting an upbeat assessment by this country’s top military officer at the end of a five-day visit to Afghanistan earlier this spring. Marine General Joseph Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was heading home from the war zone,...
Tens of thousands of Armenians converged on the capital Yerevan on Wednesday morning, blocking roads and government buildings in protest over the ruling party’s reluctance to transfer power in the country to opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan. Protesters said they would stay on the streets for as long as it takes to oust the ruling Republican...