Beirut’s occupation in 1983 by U.S. Marines may provide a small-scale sample of what a prolonged U.S. occupation of Iraq could be like, should the Pollyannaish postwar scenarios of some members of the War Party fail to materialize. Of course, the two situations are, in some ways, very different. Beirut, for instance, is just a...
621 search results for: Forgotten History
What the Editors Are Reading
It’s easy in this business to read too much journalism at the expense of books. Every morning I go through the New York Times (faster and more selectively with each week that passes), the (London) Daily Telegraph, and Le Figaro (it has some strong conservative writers, like Luc Ferry, and interesting essays and well-done interviews...
Forgetting China
I am unusual among American conservatives in feeling quite positive about the rise of a strong and prosperous China. Not long since, I was exploring Beijing’s thronged Wangfujing Street, which is consumer heaven, and it was sobering to realize that the ancestors of virtually all those prosperous customers would have been permanently hungry peasants who...
A Jolt from the Slumber of the Self
Werner Herzog, in his new memoir, turns his attention to himself, and singles out essential elements of his life that have given birth to ideas, perceptions, and films.
Five Plays in Search of a Character
In recent years Actors Theatre of Louisville’s artistic director Jon Jory has come under fire for the relative weakness of his new play festival. He should be happy that this year’s season was stronger. Like any other genre, playwriting is a craft, and if nothing else was evident, it was clear from the eight plays...
Lizzie Borden’s Mama Was No Writer
“One bates an author that’s all author.” —Lord Byron The line between the Old America and the New is closer than most of us think. A single generation separates not only the Western pioneer from the St. Louis suburbanite, it separates the New Woman from the Old. Rose Wilder Lane, child of westering parents, was...
Reviving the Merchant Marine
In the years following World War II, the merchant marine of the United States went from being the greatest in the world to its present virtual nonexistence. From 1935 through World War II, the United States built some 6,500 merchant ships. When the guns ceased firing, the United States owned the largest merchant fleet in...
Trick or Treat?
During my first semester as a graduate teaching assistant, I was fired from my job at a coffee shop for mv inability to act phony. Anyway, this is what I suspected my particularly phony employer meant by a “bad attitude.” I quickly found that, despite the incredibly high taxes in Illinois, my state-university stipend was...
A Future for Critical Theory?
A questionnaire about future needs recently sent to a department of literature provoked at least one interesting reply: “We do not need a new post in Critical Theory. Theory is Old Hat.” An old hat, they say, is better than a bare head, and there can be no quarrel with the view that critical theory...
The Forgotten Secret War
This past December, the United States commemorated the 75th anniversary of Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Most commentators rightly played down any conspiratorial suggestion that Franklin Roosevelt had deliberately provoked that particular attack, although they agreed that the U.S. had been putting heavy diplomatic pressure on Japan in the months leading up to it. ...
Back to the Stone Age: a Primer for Palaeoconservatives 1
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...
A Tale of Two Cities
Visits in the space of ten days to Toronto, Ontario, and then Tifton, Georgia, demand reflective analysis for stronger reasons than the compelling force of alliteration. The city and the town are so different that the visitor to both is driven to look for the faintest similarities. Once that effort is made, however, sweeping conclusions...
How Aussies Lost Their Pride of Erin
“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” “That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes. —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “Silver Blaze” Some recent Australian cultural trends—massive Islamic immigration, for instance—are ...
Paint It Black
If you live long enough junk becomes antiques, and cast-offs are classics. It’s pleasant to think that the popular culture of only a few decades ago is now revered, but it’s also scary. A recent visit to a clothing store flashing lime-green and neon-yellow polyester revivals of the 70’s was enough to remind me that...
Betrayed by Britain
“And hung my head and wept at Britain’s name.” —Samuel Taylor Coleridge If there be monsters, they yawn from within. It is hard not to see justice in the story of an empire, brought low by its unwillingness to defend itself. “This book is in part a penance for unquestioningly accepting the Titoist bias shared...
Live Right, Think Left
“Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy” is a famous phrase, and in January 1996, Harriet Harman, Labour spokesman for health in the British House of Commons, became an object of scorn on both sides of the House by sending her 11-year-old son to a school outside the public sector, chosen by entrance examination. She was later, after 1997, a...
Fuzzy Focus & Clear Vision
Every now and again a book appears which, despite its pervasive deficiencies, is destined to become a minor classic simply because it epitomizes the delusions of an epoch. Such, for example, were the bogus Sir John Mandeville’s Travels, a compendium of medieval credulity about men who walked on their heads or had eyes in their...
On Pleading Insanity
Janet Scott Barlow missed the point completely in her article about the Houston woman who drowned her six children in June (“Hearing More, Feeling Less,” Vital Signs, September). She interpreted the woman’s husband’s matter-of-fact, emotionless demeanor in front of the press the day after the killing as a byproduct of “an explosion of coverage.” Thus,...
William Lundigan
Of our 20th-century wars World War II stands alone. In a sneak attack early on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, Japanese naval forces bombed Pearl Harbor. As reports were broadcast throughout the day American shock turned to anger. The following day Congress, with but one dissenting vote—pacifist Jeannette Rankin—declared war on Japan. We were a...
The Good Things in Death
It has been argued that, of all human deeds, only the act of conception is selfless, since, for the briefest of instants that consummate it, neither the man nor the woman ever thinks of himself or herself, but always of the other. And it can further be said that this is precisely where our lifelong...
Rediscovering the French in Early Florida
Long-forgotten is the early struggle between the Huguenots and the Spaniards for colonization of Floridian territory, where the Timucuan Indians dwelt.