Category: Web

Americans will cease arguing over the federal Voting Rights Act and its intricacies—oh, I imagine around the time Texas starts exporting ground water to Minnesota, or the Lord returns to judge the quick and the dead. Mandatory voter ID laws passed by Republican legislatures in Texas, Arkansas and Wisconsin have been under legal assault by...

In 1492, “Columbus sailed the ocean blue” and discovered the New World. And Oct. 12 was once a celebrated holiday in America. School children in the earliest grades knew the date and the names of the ships on which Columbus and his crew had sailed: the Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria. They knew his...

Do the states have the right to outlaw same-sex marriage? Not long ago the question would have been seen as absurd. For every state regarded homosexual acts as crimes. Moreover, the laws prohibiting same-sex marriage had all been enacted democratically, by statewide referenda, like Proposition 8 in California, or by Congress or elected state legislatures....

There has never been a war in American history so strategically ill-conceived as the one currently developing against the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. The Mexican war of 1846-47 was essentially an aggressive operation to take Alta California and New Mexico, and to cement the status of Texas. It was limited in its...

Manlio Orobello, one of my oldest and truest friends in Sicily, has dictated his memoirs to me. The result is a book of some eighty stories, written in English and entitled From Round Here: Lays of a Sicilian Life. It occurs to me that it may be diverting to publish, at some future juncture, two...

In Chronicles two years ago I defended the American Legislative Exchange Council against assaults by George Soros-funded groups seeking to shut down debate. ALEC works with local and state legislators to craft “model legislation,” such as for gun rights and voting integrity, that outrage the Left. Now tech oligarchs so rich they make Soros look...

“The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.” With this citation from Madison, Cong. Walter Jones is calling for a debate and decision on whether America should go to war in Syria and Iraq, when Congress reconvenes after Nov. 4. Last...

Last week I wrote about the tedious process one needs to go through in order to obtain a shotgun/rifle license in the Big Burrito. The passive aggressive bureaucratic roadblocks such as the co-habitant permission requirement, are surely a violation of the Second Amendment, but unsurprisingly, the mayors and the courts upheld them. Only crooks and...

There has been much attention given in the media to the Synod of Bishops that began meeting today in Rome. The focus of most media coverage has been on the the supposed need of the Catholic Church to give its blessing to contemporary culture, particularly those ways in which modern men and women ignore or...

The granddaddy of the “anti-hate” movement is, of course, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has made hundreds of millions of dollars and ruined the lives of conservatives by using innuendo, guilt by association and outright lies to smear anyone it doesn’t like. And that’s just about anyone to right of, say, Che Guevara. One...

Americans are caught up with the Ebola crisis and the Secret Service lapses in protecting the White House and the president’s family. But what is transpiring in Hong Kong may be of far greater consequence. Last weekend, Hong Kong authorities used pepper spray and tear gas to scatter the remnants of a student protest of...

Excerpts from Dr. Trifkovic’s lecture hosted by the Institute for Public Planning’s Russian Debates program in Moscow on September 25, 2014. Some commentators have called the events of the past eight months “a new Cold War,” but they are wrong: the Cold War has never ended, as manifested in two rounds of NATO expansion after...

The Independent Orders of Zhukov, Lenin, and October Revolution Red Banner Operational Purpose Division of Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia – yes, my friends, there is such a thing – has just been given back its old name.  Now it will again be called the Felix Dzerzhinsky Independent Orders of...

For many Catholics of a certain age, Joseph Sobran will forever be remembered as one of the greatest literary defenders of the Catholic Church’s teaching on life over the past 40 years. From contraception to abortion, from euthanasia to just-war doctrine, Joe was an eloquent voice in the popular press for the teachings of the...

In his U.N. address, President Obama listed a parade of horrors afflicting our world: “Russian aggression in Europe,” “terrorism in Syria and Iraq,” rapes and beheadings by ISIL, al-Qaida, Boko Haram. And, of course, the Ferguson Police Department. That’s right. The president could not speak of war, terrorism and genocide without dragging in the incident...

The Big Burrito (formerly known as the Big Bagel) is infamous for its harsh restrictions on legal firearm ownership. To legally own a handgun in the five boroughs, a mere civilian, with no background in law enforcement, needs to jump through the proverbial hoops that include a visit to police headquarters with a stack of...

Srdja Trifkovic interviewed by RIA-Novosti news agency MOSCOW, September 27 (RIA Novosti) – The weapons supplied by the United States to Syrian rebels have reached the Islamic State (IS) militants, while US allies’ position toward IS doubtful, Professor Srdja Trifkovic, Serbian-American writer on international affairs and foreign affairs editor for Chronicles magazine, told RIA Novosti....

Srdja Trifkovic discusses ISIS on RT at the Moscow studio:

The Center for Immigration Studies reports this morning that the number of immigrants, both legal and illegal, in the United States is now 41.3 million, the highest it has ever been. Even as the American economy continues to sputter and many Americans face unemployment or underemployment, an additional 1.4 million immigrants entered the country between...

“Why go to the Greek islands? Why go to Greece? Why not sit for a few minutes under a sunlamp, nip over to the supermarket for a slab of plasticized feta, and get some sirtaki going on your iPod?” The question is not entirely rhetorical, I said to Andreas. With his wife Evagelia, Andreas Petrakis...

I’m starting something new here: Chronicles’ by the Numbers Dept. ™ 1. Branches of government An Annenberg Public Policy Center survey found only 36 percent of Americans correctly can identify the “three branches of government” in the United States. And 35 percent could not name a single branch. But I’m sure Chronicles readers know the...

William J. Quirk, long-time professor of law at the University of South Carolina and a writer very familiar to Chronicles readers, passed away on September 22. Bill was 80 and had been quite active until the last two years or so. Professor  Quirk was a favourite of several generations of law students, who marveled at...

“Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.” Jefferson’s brutal verdict comes to mind in the fierce debate over inversions, those decisions by U.S. companies to buy foreign firms to move their headquarters abroad and renounce their U.S....

“Congress must now vote to support the first steps of what will be a long march toward victory,” said Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Following this clarion call, 71 House Republicans bolted to join 85 Democrats in voting no to U.S. funds to train and arm Syrian rebels. Why the hesitation? Because our strategy in Syria...

I hope I’m not mangling the French in my title, “Vive l’Écosse Libre!” It’s a gloss on de Gaulle’s shout at Montreal City Hall on July 24, 1967, “Vive le Québec libre!” Canadians sure would have been better off if Quebec had separated in 1967. Then the odious socialist and politically correct Pierre Trudeau never...

Vitali Klitschko, former heavyweight boxing champion and one of the Brown Revolution’s Terrible Trio (the other two being Arseny “Yats” Yatsenyuk and neo-Nazi former urologist Oleg Tyahnybok) became mayor of Kiev in June in a quiet, almost unnoticed election, that was overshadowed by bloodshed in Novorossiya. Recently, the opportunistic “Dr. Ironfist” made some waves in...

“French aircraft were due to begin their first reconnaissance flights over Iraq,” France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced on September 15. Britain is already flying reconnaissance missions over Iraq. Several other countries – Arab ones included – say they are willing to support the air campaign. None seem interested in pledging any ground troops, however....

Russians have bragged to themselves about their souls for ages, but for the past hundred years or so – roughly since Nietzsche discovered Dostoevsky, Henry James discovered Turgenev, H. G. Wells discovered Tolstoy, and the assorted Bloomsbury folk discovered Chekhov – other European nations, Britain foremost, have been pitching in as well. The dubious outcome...

No matter how the vote turns out on Thursday in Scotland, either for independence or continued union with Britain, the disintegration of the Old Continent appears almost inevitable. Already the British government has conceded that, even if the Scots vote for union, Edinburgh will receive greater powers to rule itself. Cheering for the breakup of...

My friend, former Canadian ambassador in Belgrade James Bissett, published a noteworthy article in last Tuesday’s Ottawa Citizen (“NATO at the Heart of the New Cold War,” September 9). He starts by reminding us that NATO was born at the mid-point of the 20th century, which by that time had already seen two world wars...

Waist deep in the Big Sandy And the big fool says to push on. Waist deep in the Big Sandy? And the big fool says to push on. Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a Tall man’ll be over his head, we’re Waist deep in the Big Sandy! And the big fool says to push...

Both Dr. Fleming’s column “Thinking Outside the Boxes” in the current issue of the magazine and John Seiler’s “Welcome Back to the Slammer…er…School” blog on our website inspired me to share some of my personal experiences with the 12 years of torment known as school. I began my grade school education in the last months...

“What did you think of the President’s speech” I have been asked more than once only to reply, “Not much, in fact, nothing at all.” “But, surely you’re interested in the details of his plan to stop ISL in its tracks!” The short answer is, “No,” and, though the reasons for my lack of interest...

Over the past week a number of articles have appeared in mainstream Western publications, penned by respectful Western authors, which are (in all likelihood unwittingly, I must add) out-Trifkovicing Trifkovic in their assessment of the tragedy in Ukraine. Having made many of the same points over the past nine months, I am glad to say...

In my childhood there was a soi-disant “Armenian” joke that we used to tell, and it went more or less as follows. Is it true, one Armenian asks another, that Sarkisyan won a million in the state lottery? “Yes, it’s true,” replies the other Armenian, “but it wasn’t in the state lottery, it was at...

President Barack Obama announced on September 7 that he will make public a plan for fighting the Islamic State (IS) militants on September 10. “I’m preparing the country to make sure that we deal with a threat from ISIL,” he said. (“ISIL” – the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – is the old...

American public schools are prisons. They even look like prisons. See the nearby picture of Century High School in Santa Ana. Even hoity-toity schools in Newport Beach look like that, although the facades are ritzier. And consider this Sept. 3 report from my old newspaper, the Orange County Register: “SANTA ANA – Santa Ana Unified...

Back in 2011, President Barack Obama said this about the possibility of using executive action to legalize illegal immigrants: “there are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not...

By releasing the grisly videos of the beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, ISIS has altered the political landscape here and across the Middle East. America is on fire. “This is beyond anything that we’ve seen,” said Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, “ISIL is as sophisticated and well-funded as any group that...

“. . . there are three things that last for ever: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of them all is love.” 1 Corinthians, 13:13 (The New English Bible with the Apocrypha, 1970). On February 7, 2011, Art Livingston posted to this blog a discussion of the early Hollywood talkie, Liliom (1930), based on the...

The beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff by ISIS led to outraged declarations by this country’s leaders. “When people harm Americans, we don’t retreat, we don’t forget. We take care of those who are grieving. And when that is finished, they should know: We will follow them to the Gates of Hell, until they are...

Born in a Cadillac in Beverley Hills Raised on gin and vitamin pills, Robbed him a bank, when he was only three Now he’s locked up in the penitentiary, Willie, Willie Sutton.. Someone taught me this parody of “Davy Crockett,” when I was ten years old, I am not sure I remember the concluding words...

On August 30 The Wall Street Journal published a long and interesting article by Henry Kissinger, excerpted from his new book World Order. The doyen of the U.S. foreign policy establishment argues that the existing global order is in crisis and that America should take a leading role in shaping a new one. His overall...

A problem with having to find “hate” wherever you look, and then blog about it in breathless, apocalyptic prose, is publishing a major gaffe. Thus did the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog offer this gem on Aug. 20 about conservative activist Larry Klayman, the founder of Judicial Watch: Right Wing Watch: Larry Klayman wants...

The defeat in June of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the GOP primary by a conservative challenger with little money was one of the most encouraging developments in American politics in a long time. This week’s announcement that Cantor now has a $3.4 million job with a Wall Street investment bank, however, is a...

In one of my posts earlier this month, Pasternak’s Zhivago came up, a scandal from the late 1950’s that resulted in the poet, by then long extinguished as the once-in-a-millennium genius he had been, receiving the Nobel Prize for a trivial and pusillanimous novel. The other day, coincidentally, a book sent to me for review...

The recent videotaped beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff by the bloodthirsty savages of ISIS bring to mind a story which took place in Lebanon almost 30 years ago. On September 30, 1985, a group of gunmen seized four Soviet diplomats and embassy workers (Arkady Katkov, Valery Myrikov, Oleg Spirin, and Nikolai...

Over the weekend, I caught some of Raymond Arroyo’s interview with Paul Bremer, George W. Bush’s envoy to Iraq after our invasion. Bremer admitted that Iraqi Christians are worse off now than before the invasion, but he maintained that other Iraqis are “much better off.” In support of his claim that Iraqis are better off,...

Having turned 60 last month I should start taking stock of my life, making the reasonable assumption that the best is behind me (infantile baby-boomer assertion that “sixty is the new forty” notwithstanding). Yes, I am doing that, but such musings are not to be shared. A byproduct, which may be of some interest to...