Category: Web

  The American Conservative has had dozens of articles and posts on gay marriage.  The general tenor has ranged from arguing that gay marriage is inevitable to criticizing opponents of gay marriage to arguing that support for gay marriage is the conservative position.  What has largely been absent is any opposition to gay marriage. There is, of course, nothing conservative about support...

In recent decades, the public profile of Easter in the United States has diminished.  Americans now spend more on Halloween than on Easter, and the public attention Easter receives is largely negative.  Google observed Easter Sunday by celebrating Cesar Chavez’s birthday, and public references to Easter are often excised, just as “Christmas” is often replaced...

  A great deal of ink is being spilled on the two Supreme Court cases taking up same-sex marriage, but the effect is rather like the ink released by a cuttlefish to cloud the vision of its enemies.  To anticipate my conclusion, let me go on record as saying that family-values conservatives have done vastly...

  Arrayed against the Earps in Tombstone was a loose and constantly shifting set of alliances known as “The Cowboys.”  Eastern journalists, looking for sensational material, followed the Cowboys’ enemies and rivals in describing them as an organized gang, but no one could quite figure out who the gang’s leader was—Ike Clanton, Bill Brocius, or...

On Saturday night, my wife and I were guests of our friends Jim and Betsy  Easton, at a performance of Handel’s Messiah.  The concert was a joint production of the Rockford Symphony Orchestra and the Mendelssohn Club chorus.  The four professional soloists from out of town sang beautifully, but it was the orchestra and chorus that made  greatest...

  One variant of a well-known law of bureaucracy says that the amount of time spent discussing a budgetary decision is inversely proportional to the magnitude of the budget in question. Judging by what I witnessed on March 20 at the European Parliament—at the Committee on Budgets’ hearing on the “Financing of the Eastern Partnership”—the...

  Just when I was beginning to think the neoconservatives had reached the nadir of ignorance with people like Jonah Goldberg and David Frum, along comes Harvard grad Bill Kristol to flaunt his ignorance.  Bill was so thrilled that someone had put up these mock lyrics to a Harvard Fight song:  Illegitimum non carborundum that...

  Here is poor David Frum pretending to have second thoughts about the Iraq War for which he shilled.  Obviously, the only people who are capable of having  second thoughts had to have first thoughts, and there is no sign that Frum has ever done anything but pound a keyboard and recycle other people’s lies....

  Wyatt Earp, saloonkeeper, professional gambler, profligate, and alleged procurer of women, was for all his faults a great American hero. Earp was born in Monmouth, Illinois, home of Monmouth College, the  alma mater of our friend and colleague, the late James Stockdale.  Living in Iowa he was repeatedly in trouble, principally for keeping a...

  Contrary to popular belief, Brussels is not the only major European capital which is away from the seacoast as well as devoid of a river. The Senne is a far cry from the similar-sounding Seine further south, however: it is a nasty, brutish, mercifully short waterway. By the mid-1800’s it had become so putrid and unstable that the city elders decided to cover...

  Ten years ago today, U.S. air, sea and land forces attacked Iraq. And the great goals of Operation Iraqi Freedom? Destroy the chemical and biological weapons Saddam Hussein had amassed to use on us or transfer to al-Qaida for use against the U.S. homeland. Exact retribution for Saddam’s complicity in 9/11 after we learned...

  Last Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul rose on the Senate floor to declare a filibuster and pledge he would not sit down until either he could speak no longer or got an answer to his question about Barack Obama’s war powers. Does the president, Paul demanded to know, in the absence of an imminent threat,...

  Many of us non-RC traditionalist all over the world had awaited the news from Rome with some trepidation. In the end it turned out to be rather good. Pope Francis, the first non-European Bishop of Rome since Gregory III (d. 741), is universally described as “modest” and “moderate”—which is much preferred to the dreaded...

  That stalwart set at National Review known as “The Editors” has done what it always does to a genuinely conservative display in the halls of power.  Far from a radical denunciation, which may invite a more thoughtful reading of events and sentences, they’ve taken to light pooh-poohing.  Rand Paul is providing “great entertainment,” and “We salute his...

  Two years after the beginning of the Syrian insurgency, three facts are clear: The rebels are unable to bring down the government of President Bashar al-Assad, foreign political support and military supplies notwithstanding; Bashar’s forces are unable to defeat the rebels and reestablish control over the entire country; and continued third-party advocacy of either...

  Morally responsible people sacrifice in the present to invest in the future.  Irresponsible people impoverish the future to enjoy more of the present.  Which describes the United States today? Voting decides nothing.  It does not prove that the people rule.  It merely makes a selection of which politicians will get the opportunity to pursue...

  I said at the beginning that man is a mammalian species.  From this one simple fact flow many important consequences for the human race.  As the word “mammal” indicates, our females nurse their young, which requires diversification of the roles played by males and females, but even those words males and females tell us...

  Does the Left-Wing Christian really exist?  I think not, if we mean someone who equates leftism with Christianity.  People like Garry Wills are not now and probably have never been Christian in any meaningful sense of the term. They simply put a veneer of Christian imagery on the banalities they have picked up from...

  I have been arguing for decades that any conservative point of view, to be usable or even defensible, has to be grounded in an understanding of human nature derived from observation of man’s nature and history.  In an age where a Church may dictate morality, this understanding may be less necessary, though it must...

  Americans seem to think that they are citizens of a self-governing democracy.  Actually, democratic self-government is not possible in a regime where immense wealth and influence are concentrated in a few hands an unelected, irresponsible, and heavily biased mass media control public discourse the political process is dominated by advertising men the population is...

There has been considerable discussion lately about the  federal government’s potential use of the U.S. Army against American citizen civilians.  It might be worth a moment to pause and remember February 17, 1865.  On that winter day, the U.S. Army, with malice aforethought,  robbed, raped, and burned out the white and black people of the...

  Last week I testified, for the third time in a decade, before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague. I appeared as a defense witness in the trial of Radovan Karadzic. Just like on the occasion of my previous testimony, the prosecutor paid scant attention to the substance of my statements. He...

“To govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.” With those brave, wise, simple words,...

I have not had the time or the inclination to wade through the commentary on Pope Benedict’s unexpected resignation, but I assume that much of it is angry, vituperative, and dismissive, because such commentary is one of the hallmarks of our degraded age.  I wanted instead to offer a brief note of gratitude for Benedict’s service as...

Dubious ideas that are taken for granted as true in American public discourse: Government and Big Business are enemies. The U.S. practices a free-trade policy. Wars are bad except those carried out by the U.S. because our intentions are always benevolent. It is good that our daughters now have equality with our sons in the...

Eighty years ago today, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Germany’s Chancellor. The old Marshal, a Junker through and through, did so unwillingly. He disliked “that Austrian corporal”—he seldom uttered Hitler’s name—from the moment they first met, in October 1931. The antipathy was mutual, with Hitler often referring to Hindenburg—in private—as “that old fool.”...

  Probably all societies work better with a certain quantity of comfortable delusions, but America seems to operate with nothing but delusions.  Large policies have been and continue to be based on an imaginary view of the world which trumps common sense: • You can have a First World economy and military with a Third...

  Last week’s attack on the Algerian gas facility at In Amenas was the most elaborate jihadist assault ever conducted on African soil. It was also the most spectacular action of its kind since November 2008, when Islamic terrorists carried out a series of coordinated shooting and bombing attacks in Bombay (aka “Mumbai”), India’s largest...

Yesterday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the Pentagon was largely eliminating restrictions on women serving in combat units.  This is perfectly consistent with the egalitarian ideology to which the Obama Administration is committed.   However, it ignores the reasons why Western armies have never included women in combat units, apart from a few exceptional circumstances. ...

  On January 16 Islamic militants staged an audacious attack on a major natural gas complex in southeastern Algeria, 800 miles southeast from the capital. A jihadist group calling itself the Masked Brigade—led by Moktar Belmoktar, the fierce one-eyed veteran of the Afghan war and a senior commander of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)—claimed responsibility...

  What is the alternative to respect for responsible authority?  If we assume that all foods, recreations, forms of music, and manners of life are equal, then Liberals are right to demand social, political, and tax neutrality on traditional sauerkraut and on every other issue that might involve government control, including same-sex marriage, abortion, and...

  I’ve just returned from Albania, almost 22 years after visiting that country for the first time. In July 1991 I went there on an assignment with U.S. News & World Report, only weeks after the country’s borders were finally opened to foreigners after 45 years of hermetic isolation. I have visited many countries over the years,...

  The most important foreign event in the final days of 2012 was the ramming through of Egypt’s new, Sharia-based constitution by President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood allies. The cultural, demographic and geographic center of the Arab world is now set to become an Islamic Republic. Egypt’s transformation, after 60 years of secularist...

  Peter Brimelow has written a discussion of the War on Christmas for VDARE.com that is well worth reading.  In it, Peter puts me in the unusual role of optimist.  There are still many people in this country who want to suppress the public celebration of  Christmas, and the situation in the schools, where culture is formed...

  I met Judge Robert Bork once, in the summer of 1989, when I was interning at Accuracy in Media. I was working on a feature story for the Washington Inquirer, AIM’s weekly newspaper, about the Smithsonian Institution’s use of tax dollars to fund the performance of Santeria and Palo Mayombe rituals on the Mall in...

  I endorse enthusiastically my friend and colleague Tom Piatak’s defense of Christmas.  As a curmudgeon, however, I am inclined, this time of year, to gloomy reflections. Perhaps they go back Herbert W. Armstrong’s annual diatribe against Christmas, which I never missed in my teens.  Armstrong, the founder of The Worldwide Church of God (and...

  Today brings the sad news that Robert Bork has passed away.  The sadder news for America, though, came in 1987, when the Senate unjustly rejected his nomination to the Supreme Court.  There is no doubt that, had Bork been confirmed, Roe v Wade would have been overturned in 1992 when the Supreme Court decided Planned Parenthood v...

  One of the signature features of Western politics in the last few decades is the rise of the cultural Marxism known as “political correctness.”  As advocated by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, leftists have worked their way through the institutions of the West, leaving a trail of cultural devastation in their wake.  A hallmark...

  Let us develop this point a bit.  Classical liberals like to complain about federal subsidies to agriculture.  They are quite right to denounce programs whose effect is to reward agribusiness while harming smaller farming operations, as if it were the government’s business to pick the winners in advance.  But they are equally opposed to...

I do hope someone will remember that I suggested that the threatened nomination of Susan Rice might have been a trick to lure gullible Republicans  (a redundant expression) into breathing a sigh of relief when she withdrew.  They are now leaping on the John Kerry bandwagon.  For the honor of the country which some of...

The power of Christmas (and Christianity) shows through even in unexpected places, such as Saturday Night Live.  When the producers of the show, in the wake of the horrific school shooting in Connecticut, were looking for something with beauty and emotional depth, they chose a song about the true meaning of Christmas, not a secular Christmas song or...

  Reasons for voting Democrat: More freebies, welfare, government jobs, grants; satisfaction of leftist ideological malice; if you are a minority, the pleasure of sticking it to Whitey. Reasons for voting Republican: Unless you are a big capitalist, a defense contractor, an employer of illegal immigrants, or a politician hoping for the perks of office,...

  Srdja Trifkovic’s talks to Rev. Todd Wilken on Issues, Etc.  Transcript of live interview broadcast on December 12, 2012. Joining us to talk about the ongoing plight of Christians in Egypt is Dr. Srdja Trifkovic.  He is Foreign Affairs Editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture . . . Are we seeing a reenactment of what happened with...

  Property is the broadest term and the one most likely to be misused.  In English, we can use property to refer to everything we possess, including our personal characteristics, or more narrowly as the things we own, such s real estate, or to the more abstract notion promoted by Locke, that as human beings we...

  Speaking in Dublin last Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that a new effort was under way by “oppressive governments” to “re-Sovietize” Eastern Europe and Central Asia. She took a stab at Russia and her regional allies for their alleged crackdown on democracy and human rights, only hours ahead of meeting Russia’s foreign...

  Last night, my wife and I attended the vigil Mass for the Immaculate Conception at our parish.  We sat immediately behind a family I had often seen but never sat by before, a woman in her forties with Down syndrome and her father.  I could not help being moved by what I saw.  During Mass,...

  Even before Barack Obama’s second inauguration, the impending retirement of Hilary Clinton is providing Republicans with their first opportunity to challenge the President. It appears to be no secret that the shortlist of candidates the President is considering for his next Secretary of State includes John Kerry and Susan Rice.   Can the President...

  RT: We are joined now live by Srdja Trifkovic, foreign-affairs editor for Chronicles magazine. A Washington spokesman has called the latest Israeli action “contrary to U.S. policy.” What about the state of relations between the two countries? ST: This Administration is widely perceived as the least pro-Israeli administration in history. The problem is that Netanyahu is...

  Democracy could “work” if it was a democracy of and for and by the right people, but that model is fit only for the Post-Raptorial Republic of Angels. In a non-Utopian world it cannot work because “We the People” is a corrupt mélange of mostly coarse individuals pretending to be Gods. Democracy has duly ruined the...

Slovakia’s plan to issue a two Euro coin commemorating the 1150th anniversary of the arrival of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Great Moravia, of which Slovakia was a part, has run afoul of Christophobic Eurocrats.  It seems that the Slovaks want to show the Apostles to the Slavs with halos, and wearing pectoral crosses.  The Eurocrats say no,...