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  Join us for an evening of inspiring and edifying discussion . . . Taking Christmas Back with special guest Tom Piatak contributing editor to Chronicles Thursday, December 6, 2012, 6:00 P.M. at The Rockford Institute 928 North Main Street, Rockford, Illinois A festive reception will follow the discussion. Admission in advance: $15.00 per person $25.00 per couple $5.00...

  “What the president’s campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote, and that strategy worked.” Thus did political analyst Mitt Romney identify the cause of his defeat in a call to disconsolate...

  It is conventional to refer to the great tycoons of our own and earlier times as capitalists.  The term has a complicated history, heavily influenced by Marxist diatribes against the accumulation of wealth and the influence of those who possess it.  Today, though capitalism is defended stridently by neoconservatives, the first generation of neocons...

  After the election, Al Cardnenas, head of the American Conservative Union, complained that the Republican Party was “too old and too white and too male.”  One wonders what Mr. Cardnenas would say about the Continental Congress or the Constitutional Convention.  Of course, if Mr. Cardenas is upset at the thought of living in a country founded...

  The conventional wisdom is simple: when there is an uninspiring incumbent and a lackluster challenger, the people will opt for the incumbent. The formula is unsatisfactory in this case, however. Obama was not just any incumbent. He is the embodiment of an anti-America–culturally, spiritually and morally—that is hell-bent on destroying the surviving vestiges of...

  Four years ago I wrote, “if Republicans want the joke to be on them, they can listen to  [Rich]Lowry [of National Review], line up to  damn the American auto industry, and look forward to losing the Great Lakes  states year after year after year.”  Tonight, I am sure that Mitt Romney regrets writing the op-ed piece the New York...

  Questions for people of my venerable age or even younger, down to about 50. Did you ever think you would see . . . Arrogant or sullen foreigners swarming everywhere you look in your own hometown? Obscenity and vulgarity beamed into every home 24 hours a day? Large numbers of people walking and driving...

  “Prominent conservative” Dinesh D’Souza resigned his post as president of a small Christian school in New York City on October 17. Two days earlier World, an evangelical Protestant publication, reported that while attending an evangelical conference in South Carolina last September D’Souza had checked into a motel room with a woman he introduced as his fiancée, despite...

  Immigration is enriching our American economy and culture.  The falsity of this proposition has been demonstrated so often and so conclusively that it belongs in the same category as 1) Islam is a religion of peace, 2) politicians don’t lie and steal, and 3) Elvis is alive and well in a monastery in Bolivia.  It...

The Minnesota Timberwolves will be fielding a team this year that is only one third black.  That means that the Timberwolves will have a much higher percentage of blacks than the general population, though a far lower percentage of blacks than any other team in the NBA.  And this prospect is quite upsetting to Ron...

  The Price of Free Markets One point on which Old Right and traditional conservatives could generally agree with Libertarians is the high value they put upon economic freedom and a deep distrust of government regulation. In our free-wheeling discussions, Rothbard and I struck a bargain. Since we agreed on eliminating about 90% of the...

  Recently, Dan McCarthy of the American Conservative had a piece asking, “How Does A Traditionalist Vote?”  I would submit that an answer to that question can be gleaned by viewing this ad for Barack Obama, brought to my attention by one of America’s leading traditionalist thinkers, Chris Kopff.  In it, a tattoed college age woman implicitly compares voting for Barack...

  “Obama and Romney Bristle From Start Over Foreign Policy,” says The New York Times. The illusion that on Monday night a vigorous foreign-policy-centered debate took place in Boca Raton is being perpetuated by countless mainstream media outlets from coast to coast. We were treated to a choreographed, scripted conversation instead, with President Barack Obama and his...

  The Pernicious Myth of the Individual Part and parcel of the counter-factual theory of natural liberty is the myth of the individual.  If man were in fact naturally free, it would be because he is his own person, because, as some libertarians say, he owns himself.  Pure and utter hogwash that only a self-blinded...

  Today, Pope Benedict XVI canonized Mother Marianne Cope, the second canonized saint who worked at the leper settlement on the island of Molokai.  Cope, who was born in Germany and grew up in New York, answered a call from the King of Hawaii to work with the sick in Hawaii and ended up succeeding the heroic Father Damien in Molokai.  Shortly after...

  Usually, not always, the peace party wins. Gen. Sherman’s burning of Atlanta and March to the Sea ensured Abraham Lincoln’s re-election in 1864. William McKinley, with his triumph over Spain and determination to pacify and hold the Philippines, easily held off William Jennings Bryan in 1900. Yet Woodrow Wilson won in 1916 on the...

  Classical Liberalism and its stepchildren—socialism and libertarianism—are founded on error, and no error of the liberals is more manifest than their credulous faith in individual liberty.  It is summed up in Rousseau’s famous declaration (which begins The Social Contract) that “man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Any normal person who has...

  Defenders of Bill Bennett and George W. Bush had only one real counter-argument:  Big government and deficit spending may be bad, but sometimes they can be put to good uses, so long as good people, i.e., “one of our guys” is making the decisions.  Though conservatives of this type are fond of pretending that...

This morning the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an important opinion piece by Alan Tonelson of the redoubtable United States Business and Industry Council on manufacturing and the presidential election.  (The piece appeared earlier in other Ohio papers).  In his piece, Tonelson highlights the importance of Ohio in the election and the importance of manufacturing to Ohio.  Tonelson also explains why neither President Obama’s policies nor Romney’s are likely to...

  The American Tradition As Americans we owe much of what we are to the ancient, Medieval, and post-Renaissance Europeans who proceeded us.  Nonetheless, we are not simply generic Europeans.  We have our own peculiar traditions, some of which go back to Britain or even to the Anglo-Saxons, while others are more uniquely American.  ...

  Yesterday and today (October 14-15) I’ve been taking part in an interesting conference at the Patriarchate of Pec, in the occupied Serbian province of Kosovo. Organized by Bishop Jovan (Culibrk), an old friend of Dr. Fleming’s and mine, The Balkans and the Middle East Mirroring Each Other marks the centenary of the First Balkan War and...

    ”Fighting does not solve anything.”  A saw made up to persuade people toward pacifism.  In fact, the only potential virtue possessed by fighting is that it sometimes does solve things.  Did the Americans and their allies fighting from D-Day to Berlin not solve the problem of European fascism, at least for the time?  Do...

  This added section, which goes between the discussion of Machiavelli and the discussion of reason and tradition, is intended to sketch out a few operating rules for how conservatives should approach a question. 2B  Coherence and Casuistry Most conservative movements and initiatives fail and fail badly…   Failure is often the result of betrayal,...

  Horace Odes II.10 translated by Maria Frances Cecilia Cowper Horace. Book II. Ode 10 Sail not too rashly out to sea, My friend, nor, fearful of the roar Of winds and waters, hug too close The rocky shore. Who loves the golden middle way, Escapes the poor man’s wants and cares, Escapes the envious...

Yesterday’s Washington Post reported that, according to a recent Pew Center study, 19.6% of Americans now describe themselves as having no religious affiliation.   They are the new foot soldiers of the Democratic Party:  68% of those with no religious affilation lean Democrat, a number that increases to 73% among self-described atheists and agnostics.  According to the Post, the religiously...

  There is nothing irrational about accepting the moral, political, and cultural traditions that have been handed down to us as part of the conditions of life in the European-American world.  Many of these traditions—washing before eating, respecting parents, working for a living—have been tried and tested for thousands of years, while the opposite—bad hygiene,...

  A week-long visit to Tunisia, in the course of which I covered some 2,000 miles by rental car, bus, SUV, and a powered hang glider, has confirmed that of faraway places we often assume to know more than we do. The first country affected by a wave of popular discontent known as the Arab Spring was full...

  Mitt Romney on Wednesday night turned in the finest debate performance of any candidate of either party in the 52 years since Richard Nixon faced John F. Kennedy, with the possible exception of Ronald Reagan’s demolition of Jimmy Carter in 1980. But where Reagan won with style and quips—”There you go again”—and his closing...

  3. Reason, Sentiment, and Tradition Skeptical of propaganda and the sentimentalism of human rights and progress, palaeoconservatives might be attacked for their cold-blooded rationality.  Instead, they are more typically criticized for their supposedly romantic attachment to tradition and for their rejection of the “science” of politics preached by the highly unscientific followers of Leo Strauss...

  Yesterday’s New York Times carried a piece by Michael Shear and Ashley Parker stating that the Romney campaign was going to stop running a campaign focused solely on the economy:  “Instead, Romney intends to hit the White House with a series of arguments–on energy, health care, taxes, spending and a more direct attack on Obama’s foreign policy...

  Some Themes in Palaeoconservative Thought In subsequent chapters I will take up, one by one, some of the main principles and arguments of palaeoconservatism, but in concluding this preface I should, if only to entice readers to continue, sketch out some of the principle themes to be found in palaeoconservative writers.   1) Objective Anthropology....

  If we can believe most pollsters, President Obama has the election sewn up and in the bag. He is leading in most of the crucial swing states, and, insiders are saying, Governor Romney’s only chance is a knock-out blow in one of the debates.  Given Romney’s rhetorical clumsiness, this is unlikely. Obama is not...

  That afternoon, as Paul and I were gassing on about the evil neocons, one of us said something like, “”If they are neoonservatives, what are we then, paleolithic conservatives or palaeocons?”  In my recollection, I was the first to utter the word, though I believe Paul also claims credit.  I won’t dispute the point....

  Today brings news of the death of Andy Williams at the age of 84.  I suspect most of those saddened by this news are near Williams’ own age, but I liked Williams’ singing and more generally have always enjoyed the American popular music that preceded and for a while coexisted with what became rock music. ...

  Chapter One: Some Basic Concepts, Part One I have never been very good with dates, but it was some time in the mid 1980’s.  Paul Gottfried, who was teaching at Rockford College, had come to my office, and we were discussing, as was our wont, the sad state of conservatism.  (I do not recall...

  Chronicles‘ distinguished foreign affairs editor has a way of exciting controversy. Often the cause is his view of Islam.  Despite the fact that he has declared, over and over, that he opposes the aggressive policies and measures taken by the US against Iraq and Afghanistan, his historical critique has been sufficiently on-target to create...

  For Americans of the Greatest Generation that fought World War II and of the Silent Generation that came of age in the 1950s, the great moral and ideological cause was the Cold War. It gave purpose and clarity to our politics and foreign policy, and our lives. From the fall of Berlin in 1945...

  Getting some play today is a news story from Cranston, Rhode Island, about a ridiculous decision by the Cranston school board banning father-daughter dances.  It’s the old pattern.  A girl felt left out because she had no one to take her to the father-daughter dance.  Mom called the ACLU.  The ACLU, which couldn’t care...

If you’ve got a Facebook or Twitter feed (or a friend who mass-emails) you’ve probably heard that, according to the New York Times and Harvard, Jesus Christ had a wife.  Proof came recently in the form of a tiny scrap of papyrus, written in Coptic and dated to the Fourth Century of the Common Era.  (I’m still not...

  For Southerners, the hatred of so many of their “fellow Americans” comes so steadily and predictably that it is usually best simply to ignore it and let the heathen rage. We are an easy-going, non-ideological, and Christian people, so most of us don’t even notice. However, the Washington Times has usefully exposed a particularly egregious example, an...

  Anti-American protests have continued to spread across the globe, though the fires of passion are predictably burning out.  People do have jobs to go to, children to feed, lives to lead. Even violence-prone jihadists can’t always be breaching embassies or murdering diplomats. Note: This is a slightly improved version of my latest Daily Mail column....

Breaking news from CBS.  A study of 2000 American teens revealed the astonishing news that kids who sext are more likely to be having real sex than kids who don’t send obscene photos of themselves to their friends.  What’s next?  A study revealing that people who eat three meals at McDonalds are more likely to...

  Click here to see the Facebook page for Chronicles Unbound, the weekly live radio show and podcast of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Today, Srdja Trifkovic joins us live from Belgrade to talk about the surge of anti-Americanism in the Middle East and the killing of an American diplomat.

  It is the nature of men to create monsters, says virtual counter-hero Harlan Wade of F.E.A.R., and it is the nature of monsters to destroy their makers. Mary Shelley and the Golem come to mind, but what happened in Benghazi on Tuesday is more reminiscent of Bram Stoker. U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens did not create it, but he was...

Yesterday brought the shocking news of the murder of the US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, by a Moslem mob in Benghazi, Libya.  The site of the murder is significant:  Benghazi was the stronghold of the rebellion against Moammar Khadafy, a rebellion that succeeded only because of help from the United States.  Stevens’ murder brought...

  Yesterday the AP had a very interesting story on newly declassified documents that support the view that FDR and Churchill knew that the Soviets were responsible for the massacre of over 20,000 Polish prisoners of war at the same time they were publicly following Stalin’s lead and blaming the massacre on the Nazis.  Later on, of...

  Christian conservatives in Florida are all het up over remarks made by Mark Alan Siegel, the Palm Beach County chairman of the Democratic Party.  Siegel, it appears, was not happy with his party’s decision to reinsert the word “God” into the platform.  Evangelical Republicans had spent a good 24 hours damning the godless Democrats...

  This Friday, September 7, 2012, we’ll begin the show with some economic and business questions.  Both parties say they are courting the “middle class,” but what does that mean?  I know rich doctors making $1 million a year who say they are middle class, as does everyone who has dug a ditch for the...