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“When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight,” Samuel Johnson observed, “it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” And the prospect of a future where Kim Jong Un can put a nuclear weapon on a U.S. city is going to cause this nation to reassess the risks and rewards of the American Imperium....

Letter from Pergamum-on-the-Potomac The Trump presidency eerily inhabits two diametrically opposed realities. On the one hand, we have the Beltway Reality. This is a world where Donald Trump is friendless and on the ropes, the Kevin McCallister of American politics. His legislative agenda, starting with repeal of Obamacare, is stalled if not moribund at the...

The Post-Cold-War Consensus Collapses Like it or not, the president of the United States embodies America itself. The individual inhabiting the White House has become the preeminent symbol of who we are and what we represent as a nation and a people. In a fundamental sense, he is us. It was not always so. Millard...

Considering the unprecedented obstacles President Trump is facing from various quarters in his attempts to devise a coherent foreign policy strategy (see my column in the September issue of Chronicles), the apparent success of his anti-ISIS approach thus far is both surprising and encouraging. It shows that realist pragmatism yields results. Over the past six...

Who weeps, who languishes, who darts anxious glances at the clock just about the time Congress goes on vacation? The media, of course. With Congress out of town, what’s to report on, what’s to wring the hands over? As we all acknowledge, Washington, D.C., is the center of the galaxy. When Congress is in session...

That the Trump presidency is bedeviled is undeniable. As President Donald Trump flew off for August at his Jersey club, there came word that Special Counsel Robert Mueller III had impaneled a grand jury and subpoenas were going out to Trump family and campaign associates. The jurors will be drawn from a pool of citizens...

From the August 1997 issue of Chronicles. “It is a sort of a disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything,” confessed George Soros to a British newspaper, “but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” Recalling youthful fantasies of omnipotence in his 1987...

In crafting the platform in Cleveland on which Donald Trump would run, America Firsters inflicted a major defeat on the War Party. The platform committee rejected a plank to pull us deeper into Ukraine, by successfully opposing new U.S. arms transfers to Kiev. Improved relations with Russia were what candidate Trump had promised, and what...

From the December 1996 issue of Chronicles. At some point in their development, civilizations cease believing in the sacred and plunge into a new set of absolutes. No community likes to speak of decadence and its usually harsh symptoms; no one may even grasp the meaning of such an upheaval. Yet new absolutes appear on...

What do we take away, then, from the earthquake on the Senate floor last week, with wisps of smoke still rising from the ruins of Republican efforts to do something—anything—likely to rationalize the health care mess? We take away, or should, the lesson that government can’t do everything, and when it tries to, you get...

Saturday, Kim Jong Un tested an ICBM of sufficient range to hit the U.S. mainland. He is now working on its accuracy, and a nuclear warhead small enough to fit atop that missile that can survive re-entry. Unless we believe Kim is a suicidal madman, his goal seems clear. He wants what every nuclear power...

From the November 2015 issue of Chronicles. Politics is all about hatred.  Never mind who you’re voting for: It’s who you’re voting against that really counts.  And that’s why any disagreement I may have with Donald Trump’s actual policies is completely irrelevant.  Because what really matters is that all the people I really hate—the media,...

Given the bravery he showed in stepping out front as the first senator to endorse Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions deserves better from his boss than the Twitter-trashing he has lately received. The attorney general has not only been loyal to Trump and his agenda, he has the respect and affection of ex-colleagues in Congress and,...

From the October 2000 issue of Chronicles. For seven years (1989-96), I was a full time faculty member at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). I grew up in Las Vegas, earning a B.A. in philosophy from UNLV in 1983 before going to graduate school. In August 1996, my wife and I left Nevada...

You wouldn’t know it, based on the endless cries for more money coming from the military, politicians, and the president, but these are the best of times for the Pentagon.  Spending on the Department of Defense alone is already well in excess of half a trillion dollars a year and counting. Adjusted for inflation, that...

“One knowledgeable official estimates that the CIA-backed fighters may have killed or wounded 100,000 Syrian soldiers and their allies,” writes columnist David Ignatius. Given that Syria’s prewar population was not 10 percent of ours, this is the equivalent of a million dead and wounded Americans. What justifies America’s participation in this slaughter? Columnist Eric Margolis...

From the October 1997 issue of Chronicles. We live in an age when biography flourishes, contrary to earlier expectations. The reason for this is the decline of the novel and the rise of popular interest in all kinds of history, and biography belongs within history. The problem is “all kinds”: for appetite may be fed...

“Iran must be free. The dictatorship must be destroyed. Containment is appeasement and appeasement is surrender.” Thus does our Churchill, Newt Gingrich, dismiss, in dealing with Iran, the policy of containment crafted by George Kennan and pursued by nine U.S. presidents to bloodless victory in the Cold War. Why is containment surrender? “Because freedom is...

You remember. It was supposed to be twenty-first-century war, American-style: precise beyond imagining; smart bombs; drones capable of taking out a carefully identified and tracked human being just about anywhere on Earth; special operations raids so pinpoint-accurate that they would represent a triumph of modern military science. Everything “networked.” It was to be a glorious...

From the June 1998 issue of Chronicles In a recent PBS documentary about the exploration of Mars, a NASA scientist lectured, “We are, after all, one planet. . . . Once we get ofFour planet, especially once there’s a colony on another planet, national boundaries start to become really insignificant. . . . The New...

For a year, the big question of Russiagate has boiled down to this: Did Donald Trump’s campaign collude with the Russians in hacking the DNC? And until last week, the answer was “no.” As ex-CIA director Mike Morell said in March, “On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians . . ....

I invite readers of this blog to review this article by Peter Schweizer, author of Clinton Cash (Harper Collins, 2015), in light of the stories about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with the Russian lawyer, Miss Veselnitskaya, in Trump Tower a year ago last June: At stake in this meeting is the word “dirt” that Trump...

“Is Russia an enemy of the United States?” NBC’s Kasie Hunt demanded of Ted Cruz. Replied the runner-up for the GOP nomination, “Russia is a significant adversary. Putin is a KGB thug.” To Hillary Clinton running mate Tim Kaine, the revelation that Donald Trump Jr., entertained an offer from the Russians for dirt on Clinton...

From the December 2013 issue of Chronicles. There is a saying among jurists that hard cases make bad law.  Similarly, every book critic knows that the best books make for hard reviewing.  Faced with a truly fine work, the reviewer is tempted simply to reproduce the author’s thesis in abbreviation, while scattering as many of...

The political left really, really, really doesn’t approve of Western civilization. If you doubt it, reference the maledictions poured out by the left on Donald Trump’s Warsaw speech last week. Trump had the effrontery to say, “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” Followed by rhetorical inquiries:...

At the G-20 in Hamburg, it is said, President Trump was isolated, without support from the other G-20 members, especially on climate change and trade. Perhaps so. But the crucial question is not whether Trump is alone, but whether he is right. Has Trump read the crisis of the West correctly? Are his warnings valid?...

Transcript of Srdja Trifkovic’s RT interview in the immediate aftermath of President Putin’s press conference in Hamburg at the end of the G20 summit in Hamburg on Saturday afternoon, July 8. [Watch video] RT: President Vladimir Putin has addressed the media after two days of talks with the world leaders at the G20 summit in...

Considering the toxic Russophobic atmosphere nurtured by the Beltway establishment, the first meeting between presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin last Friday went reasonably well. Contrary to the mainstream media pack’s predictions and predictable post mortems, there were no “winners” or “losers.” The encounter was not perceived by its principals in terms of zero-cum game....

President Donald Trump flew off for his first meeting with Vladimir Putin—with instructions from our foreign policy elite that he get into the Russian president’s face over his hacking in the election of 2016. Hopefully, Trump will ignore these people. For their record of failure is among the reasons Americans elected him to office. What...

From the August 2014 issue of Chronicles. For years, the media and Hollywood have sent the message that anyone who wants to be fashionable should eschew American products and buy foreign ones.  Recently, Mike Rowe, the host of Dirty Jobs, put a different message on Facebook: “If you want to live in a country that...

In the first line of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson speaks of “one people.” The Constitution, agreed upon by the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia in 1789, begins, “We the people . . . “ And who were these “people”? In Federalist No. 2, John Jay writes of them as “one...

“The North Korean regime is causing tremendous problems and is something that has to be dealt with, and probably dealt with rapidly.” So President Trump told reporters in the Rose Garden this week. But how this is to be done “rapidly” is not so easy to see. North Korea has just returned to us Otto...

The author, plotting coordinates for an airstrike during an ambush in Pashmul, Afghanistan, 2011. We walked in a single file. Not because it was tactically sound. It wasn’t—at least according to standard infantry doctrine. Patrolling southern Afghanistan in column formation limited maneuverability, made it difficult to mass fire, and exposed us to enfilading machine-gun bursts....

Nobody ever called the late Rodney King a model citizen of Los Angeles. But he gave the world what was likely the most plaintive, plangent query of our time. He wanted to know, in the aftermath of the LA burning, “Can we all get along?” Can we—huh—rather than wallop each other and turn the air...

The United States is in danger of descending into the Syrian quagmire. There are clear signs of mission creep devoid of logic or strategic rationale. It is not too late yet to step away from the brink. This would require swift action by President Donald Trump to rein in the war party before it takes...

If Gov. Bruce Rauner and his legislature in Springfield do not put a budget together by Friday, the Land of Lincoln will be the first state in the Union to see its debt plunge into junk-bond status. Illinois has $14.5 billion in overdue bills, $130 billion in unfunded pension obligations, and no budget. “We can’t...

The tabs on their shoulders read “Special Forces,” “Ranger,” “Airborne.” And soon their guidon—the “colors” of Company B, 3rd Battalion of the U.S. Army’s 7th Special Forces Group—would be adorned with the “Bandera de Guerra,” a Colombian combat decoration. “Today we commemorate sixteen years of a permanent fight against drugs in a ceremony where all...

In the first round of the special election for the House seat in Georgia’s Sixth District, 30-year-old Jon Ossoff swept 48 percent. He more than doubled the vote of his closest GOP rival, Karen Handel. A Peach State pickup for the Democrats and a huge humiliation for President Trump seemed at hand. But in Tuesday’s...

At this point, it’s no great surprise when Donald Trump walks away from past statements in service to some impulse of the moment. Nowhere, however, has such a shift been more extreme or its potential consequences more dangerous than in his sudden love affair with the Saudi royal family. It could in the end destabilize...

The world needs a common way of viewing the world. But it won’t likely have one anytime soon, as everyone is too set on enjoying (on no express warrant) “the right to be heard,” and the media is filling all ears with junk and gunk—the trademarks of an embarrassing moment in history. And we can’t...

Sunday, a Navy F-18 Hornet shot down a Syrian air force jet, an act of war against a nation with which Congress has never declared or authorized a war. Washington says the Syrian plane was bombing U.S.-backed rebels. Damascus says its plane was attacking ISIS. Vladimir Putin’s defense ministry was direct and blunt: “Repeated combat...

“There is no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.” —Montesquieu The theme that unites the short, somewhat disparate eight chapters of this book is the use by the Supreme Court of unenumerated rights—that is, rights beyond those specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights—to invalidate state...

James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, who aspired to end his life as a mass murderer of Republican Congressmen, was a Donald Trump hater and a Bernie Sanders backer. Like many before him, Hodgkinson  was a malevolent man of the hating and hard left. His planned atrocity failed because two Capitol Hill cops were at...

Letter from Pergamum-on-the-Potomac Just imagine if a deranged Tea Party activist known to rant on social media against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had gunned down a bunch of Democrats. Would Republican officials get away with saccharine expressions of “this is an attack on all of us,” “we stand united,” and similar vacuities? Hardly. They’d...

In an earlier phase of my career, I researched the subject of serial murder.  What struck me repeatedly was how many of the cases defied the common stereotype of the lone Jack the Ripper figure, always a white male.  In fact, multiple homicide is an equal-opportunity career: Many offenders are female, and all ethnic groups...

Excerpts from Srdja Trifkovic’s presentation at the International Conservative Round-Table Conference held in Milan, Italy, on June 13, 2017. The event in the Lombard capital was co-sponsored by the Lega Nord and the Russian Party of Action. It is in their cultural and moral diseases that Europe and America certify that they share the same...

President Trump may be chief of state, head of government and commander in chief, but his administration is shot through with disloyalists plotting to bring him down. We are approaching something of a civil war where the capital city seeks the overthrow of the sovereign and its own restoration. Thus far, it is a nonviolent...

Last Thursday the Conservative Party suffered a major blow in the general election in the United Kingdom, the third such race in as many years. It had not been due until May 2020, but Prime Minister Theresa May decided to call a snap election on April 19 and obtain a “stronger mandate.” At that time the governing party...

From the June 2015 issue of Chronicles. It seems to me that in the present phase of European history the essential issue is no longer between Catholicism, on one side, and Protestantism, on the other, but between Christianity and Chaos. . . . Today we can see it on all sides as the active negation...

Pressed by Megyn Kelly on his ties to President Trump, an exasperated Vladimir Putin blurted out, “We had no relationship at all. . . . I never met him. . . . Have you all lost your senses over there?” Yes, Vlad, we have. Consider the questions that have convulsed this city since the Trump...