“Behold,” said the Lord, “I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.” With this statement and by the Testament of His Own Blood, Christ inaugurated the Age of Martyrs—the first 300 years of the Christian era during which, in Jesus’s words, “They will deliver you up to the councils, and they will...
For Englishmen, the Roman Forum was nearly as much a part of their political heritage as the Tower of London or Westminster Abbey. Since Colonial America was a part of British culture, educated American colonists shared in the British reverence for antiquity. Eighteenth-century Englishmen (and those Americans who could manage it) traveled to Italy—Rome in...
In the summer of 1943, as Allied forces reached Italy, U.S. Army counterintelligence warned GIs, “You are no longer in Kansas City, San Francisco, or Ada, Oklahoma, but in a European country where espionage has been second nature to the population for centuries.” That “second nature” extends all the way back to early Rome and...
Somewhere deep in their bones, Americans recognize that property is the paramount civil right—perhaps the paramount human right. Anyone who seriously studies American history, particularly that of the late 18th century, will discover that property, along with virtue, provided the foundation for American government. Indeed, the preservation of properly is arguably the chief reason we...
The interplay of race and economics in America has produced a new variant of political economy that we might call “multicultural capitalism,” a system in which property is, for the most part, privately owned, but its ownership is conditional on the race, sex, and—in some cases—the sexual orientation of the owner. In the pursuit of...
Tom Ditzler, a veteran, buys 30 acres of rural farmland. For 50 years, he and his wife, Jan, live there, rearing two children, Cassandra and Christina. Tom comes to know the contours of his property by heart—the creek that runs across his land, the wetlands surrounding the creek, the hills and woods that rise up...
Any conversation about conspiracy theories inevitably turns to “the Jews.” On one hand, the critics of “international Zionism” claim that U.S. foreign policy (or the world’s resources) are being devoted to promoting Israel’s interests; on the other, there are those who warn against an “international Jewish conspiracy.” The second group can be traced at least...
There are many conservative, intelligent people who will happily tell you that there is no such thing as the absolute truth of history, only different, mutually complementary versions. History, they will say, is a mutable, fluid continuum, whose multiple truths are constantly undergoing revision and revaluation in one another’s reflected light, as well as in...
The pro-Gore bias of the American media during the five weeks of post-election legal and political wrangling was as unsurprising as it was obvious. Most foreign media were even less restrained. On December 14, BBC commentator Brian Barron told British television viewers that George W. Bush’s “mandate is all but invisible.” Radio 4 network commentator...
Once, before giving a speech in Cincinnati, I met the chairman of the history department at Xavier University. I told him that I was going to talk about the sexual revolution and how it had been used to destroy Catholic political power in the period following World War II (the thesis of Part III of...
Our common European civilization—of which the old American Republic is an integral part, or else it is nothing —is rooted in “the glory that was Greece.” Our spiritual and intellectual mentors are to be found among Greek thinkers, scientists, and artists. This inheritance is reflected even in the way we repeat the political follies of...
The world is breathing a sigh of relief now that the American electorate has found the cure for the mad-cow disease that has afflicted U.S. foreign policy for so many years. Still, her memory lingers in world capitals, where they continue to tell Madeleine Albright stories—for example, of her repeated unsuccessful attempts to procure an...
“Target: America,” screamed the headlines following last October’s attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Aden. The nation was supposedly outraged. But Joe Sobran gave us a more accurate reading. “Nobody really cared,” he wrote; ordinary Americans know perfectly well that they weren’t the targets: A warship, allegedly “their” warship, was. They are vague about why...
In a classic book of humor entitled The Experts Speak, we find an impressive collection of failed prophecies and wildly inaccurate predictions: Television would never catch on, nobody needs a personal computer, and so on. I occasionally think there might be a place for a parallel volume of religious forecasts gone stunningly wrong. Such an...
Historian Christopher Dawson writes that “It is clear that a common way of life involves a common view of life, common standards of behavior, and common standards of value, and consequently a culture is a spiritual community which owes its unity to common beliefs and common ways of thought far more than to any unanimity...
As Slobodan Milosevic fought for his political life in Belgrade, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright condemned him and expressed support for his opposition—while at the same time acting as if the State Department would do everything in its power to help Milosevic survive. “Kostunica not Clinton administration’s man,” reported UPI’s Martin Sieff on September 25,...
“Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?” (Matthew 15:3). Jesus had many negative things to say about the dangers of placing excessive emphasis on tradition; in the passage quoted above, he goes on to cite the prophet Isaiah, “In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of...
For the third time in our generation, independent voters could be the balance of power in this year’s presidential election. In 1968, Alabama Gov. George G. Wallace, standardbearer of the American Independent Party, received 13 percent of the popular vote, a sum greater than the difference between Hubert H. Humphrey and the victor, Richard M....
Pat Buchanan has taken more punches than Chuck Wepner, hut unlike the Bayonne Bleeder, Buchanan has a good right hook (or is it now a left?) of his own. The year began with Buchanan defending his feisty anti-interventionist manifesto A Republic, Not an Empire: Not since the days of Arkansas Sen. William Fulbright, the one...
In light of the vital importance of the Middle East to American interests, it is curious that our media have chosen not to report Arab reactions, which have been uniformly negative, to Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s vice-presidential candidacy. From America’s friends in the Persian Gulf and Egypt to its foes in the Levant and North Africa,...
Sir John A. Macdonald, the first prime minister of Canada, was a Conservative. He is remembered chiefly for his love of alcohol and his hatred of free trade. Brian Mulroney, the last elected Conservative prime minister, foreswore alcohol when he reckoned (correctly) that he could surmount the greasy pole (just like George W. Bush) and...
For sheer incoherence, incomprehensibility, and outrageousness, nothing beats the United States Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence. The First Amendment is a fairly simple piece of constitutional law: It forbids the federal legislature from restricting freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, or from establishing a national religious sect. Unfortunately, in the 20th...
Connoisseurs of the odd byways of law rarely find rich materials in the U.S. Supreme Court, where the deliberations usually proceed with dignity and common sense. For truly asinine judicial misbehavior, we normally have to look at state courts. Yet this past March, the Supreme Court had before it a case that delighted the late-night...
In recent years, American politics has been preoccupied with moral questions, or what are now called “social issues”: sexual immorality, sodomy, abortion, pornography, and recreational drugs. Some conservatives want the federal government to play a role in opposing these evils. Many libertarians, on the other hand, want the government, state and federal alike, to treat...
The anti-Christian and anti-European bias of the United States’ elite is nowhere more apparent than in its decades-long, love affair with Turkey. President Clinton argued in Ankara last November that Turkey will not only bridge “the gulf between the West and the Islamic World” but is also slated to become “fully a part of Europe,...
Homeschooling parents are all too aware of the hazards they face in signing up a beloved child for four years at Ivy U, Good Old State U, or even Used-to-be Christian College. Even if the institution in question does not hand out condoms like candy during orientation week and does not require courses that indoctrinate...
The smog of political correctness hangs heavily over most American colleges and universities. Since the politically correct are intolerant, support only their own style of research, and hire and tenure only their own kind, this condition may well he with us for two generations. This has led some to despair over the fate of higher...
The parking lot of a shopping mall in Biloxi, Mississippi, was packed with young blacks in town for an event called Black Spring Break. Suddenly, a shout went up from several male voices: “There’s a white girl! There’s a white girl!” Seconds later, the girl was under attack. The mob pressed in, hands clawed at...
When C.S. Lewis wrote that there was more distance between us and Jane Austen than between Jane Austen and Plato, he was remarking on a cataclysm that colleges and universities had not escaped. The charters of colleges founded before the Age of Jackson reiterated the claim that the purpose of an educational institution was always,...
Many Americans would be horrified at the thought of discussing Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Benito Mussolini as anything but moral and political antipodes: democrat versus dictator, peacemaker versus aggressive bully, good versus bad. Fifty-five years of bipartisan hagiography have placed FDR in the pantheon of American saints, roughly at number two between Abraham Lincoln and...
I live in Italy—in Venice, which I have on occasion described as Italy’s Italy—for the deceptively simple reason that it is the only place in the world where I do not feel the urge to play roulette after dinner. I have actually thought long and hard about this opening sentence of mine, trying to decide...
In the United States, liberation from foreign domination and liberation from the past (the republican and democratic features of government) were largely the result of the American Revolution, which was spontaneous in origin, successful, moderate in its outcome, and—above all—supported by a considerable part of the population. This fortunate historical experience may lead many Americans...
Most American conservatives are aware of the close connection between Al Gore’s family and the late, unlamented Armand Hammer, one of the most appalling figures in the 20th-century American rogues’ gallery. But in order to read about that connection in a major daily newspaper, they have to look abroad—to England, where the Independent has published...
“At present, the United Nations closely resembles the American nation under the Articles of Confederation (1781-1789). The inherent problems with that system demonstrated the need for ‘a more perfect Union,’ which was duly accomplished with the signing of the United States Constitution. And just as Confederation led to true American federalism, so the UN is...
November 9, 1989, marked the end of the old politics and the old alignments; on that day, as the Berlin Wall fell, so did the political categories and alliances of half a century. The end of the Cold War meant a lot more than the end of communism as a viable ideology. It meant more...
While we yield to no one when it comes to disdain for Fidel Castro and contempt for Bill Clinton, we also believe in the rule of law and in the right of parents to take care of their children. From the notion that parents’ rights depend on a child’s “best interest” as determined by a...
Foreign policy, the elites of both Beltway parties tell us, is not an issue in this election year. By that, they mean it is off the table, a matter already decided upon and settled by those who know what is best for America. So they, and their media auxiliaries, redirect our attention away from foreign...
Foreign aid, like other forms of aid, is a subsidy that distorts choice. The distortion takes many forms; for example, aid is sometimes put to uses unintended by the giver; it also lets the recipient pursue activities below their real cost. Since President Harry Truman launched the foreign-aid crusade, U.S. economic aid to developing nations...
A decade after the ostensible end of the Cold War, we are witnessing the emergence of anti-Americanism in places where it had never existed before—notably, among the peoples of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton’s misnamed “national security team” have succeeded where Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev failed. “If...
Last year, President Clinton, who has rarely found a conflict that lie did not want to join, complained to the Veterans of Foreign Wars that Congress was cutting foreign aid, “the very programs designed to keep our soldiers out of war in the first place.” He threatened to veto the foreign-assistance appropriation hills passed by...
I like reading about hate crime: It is such a cheering feature of American life. And while I am always happy to see the excellent news about this kind of offense—ever-rising numbers, more and more crimes in ever-broader areas of the country—I wish we could get those statistics even higher. The reasons for mv satisfaction...
For a quick fix on how a particular organization sees itself and its purposes, inspect its official name, especially if the organization dates from a more forthright and transparent time, when assorted reformers wore their hearts on their letterheads. The purpose, the raison d’être, of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded...
The nostalgic should derive some comfort from the knowledge that, in one respect at least, the 1930″s are back: Dr. Joseph Goebbels is alive and well, and living in Atlanta. According to the Dutch daily Trouw (February 21), CNN employed military specialists in “psychological operations” (psyops) disguised as journalists during the Kosovo war: “Psyops personnel,...
As an academic trained in the study and appreciation of literature, I have spent the better part of my life staunchly defending the ramparts of literary endeavor against the slings and arrows of outrageous pop-fiction lovers. I have steadily despaired of those who read Stephen King, Terry C. Johnston, Mary Higgins Clark, Danielle Steel, and...
A writer, asked during a literary party what her new novel was about, turned on the questioner with an expression combining irritation, indignation, and pity, and replied, “My novels aren’t about things!” Some time later, this same writer would denounce Stephen King in print for hogging the marketplace and for his alleged role in censoring...
The fruits of NATO’s splendid little war in Kosovo are becoming apparent. Russia has revised its defense doctrine to make it easier to press the nuclear button. The new national security strategy promulgated by Acting President Vladimir Putin calls for “expanded nuclear containment” while pledging to resist Western attempts to dominate the globe. This policy...
When two heterosexuals murder a homosexual, it is a “hate crime” to be splashed over the nation’s front pages for weeks on end. When two homosexuals brutally rape, torture, and murder a 13- year old boy—as they did last September in Arkansas—it is news unfit to print. A 13-year-old named Jesse Dirkhising was killed on...
Ideological assumptions that but two generations ago would have been deemed eccentric, if not utterly insane or even demonic, now rule the “mainstream.” The trouble is that normal people do not take madmen seriously enough. This works to the advantage of politicians—an inherently insane breed—and their subjects’ attitude of “they can’t be serious” allows them...
Greetings from New York, where a new hate crime is taking shape: It is called “place-ism,” and it will be defined in the criminal code as the belief that a particular place, be it a neighborhood, village, city, or state, is superior to any other place, and that the residents of this place have a...
With Republicans increasing social spending and Democrats upping military outlays, Washington is devoid of serious debate over any important issue. Despite the President’s attacks on GOP “isolationism,” both parties largely favor foreign intervention. As a result, America finds itself entangled in almost every international conthet and potential conthet: Bosnia, the Caucasus, China, Colombia, East Timor,...