Category: Web

  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,...

  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...

  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...

  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.  ...

  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,...