Like most Western children, I was reared partly on fairy tales. Presented in beautifully illustrated Ladybird books, these were as much a part of my early childhood as the house decor, encouraging me to read and arousing inchoate ideas of an ur-Europe of forlorn beauties, wandering princes, vindictive stepmothers, dangerous fruits, fabulous treasures, ravening beasts,...
A book faces me across the room from a bookcase in my office. It has a blood-red and black cover. The author’s name is printed in black down the upper part of the spine and the title in white below that. The title is Io Uccido—“I Kill” in Italian. I’ve meant for some time to...
The sea, warm and quiet, lay in front of me. Dusk was falling, and there was a strong smell of brine and kelp in the air. I was sitting on a piece of a ruined ancient column on the shore of the Black Sea and couldn’t quite believe that just a few hours earlier I...
[This article first appeared in the June 1985 issue of Chronicles.] “Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium et ingens Gloria Teucrorum.” (We once were Trojans, there once was Troy, and the vast glory of the Teucrian race.) -Vergil Peter Ackroyd: T. S. Eliot: A Life: Simon & Schuster; New York. “Ackroyd’s is the most comprehensive full-length critical biography...
“Every virtue is included in the idea of justice, and every just man is good.” —Theognis John Paul Stevens is the only U.S. Supreme Court justice to have graduated from the law school where I teach; Steven Breyer was one of my law-school teachers; David Souter may be the most adept at arcane constitutional-law doctrine;...
It should be a property owner’s dream. Thirteen acres in the heart of America’s largest city, bordered by two of its most prominent streets, Broadway and 42nd Street. Famous shopping and tourist attractions are all within walking distance. Broadway theaters, Fifth Avenue, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, Madison Square Garden. Major transportation hubs like...
Conservatism is usually defined as “opposition to change,” “adherence to the old and traditional,” and so forth. But, of course, in the Bush-Cheney era, we all feel these familiar tags to be seriously inadequate, even wholly beside the point and downright misleading. If these men are conservatives, as the news media insist on calling them,...
Every election cycle, we are told that “this” might be the most important ballot we ever cast. What if this time it turns out to be true? Maybe this election isn’t like the Super Bowl or the World Series, where fans of the defeated team can console themselves with “Wait ‘til next year!” What if...
Time was, when someone used the term American, or Canadian, Briton, or German, you knew what he meant. The man or woman in question was white and had a name such as Smith, Jones, or Muller. Or the American might be black, most likely a descendant of slaves. Perhaps he was an Indian, meaning an...
According to the latest opinion poll, published on July 16, President Putin’s approval rating among different segments of Russia’s electorate has risen to an unprecedented 66 percent. This may change quickly, however, if he comes to be perceived as weak and indecisive in handling the next stage of the Ukrainian crisis – the one that...
A review of an early Blackford Oakes novel referred to Mr. Buckley’s handling of a sex scene as the Hardy Boys go to a bordello. In this, the ninth book in the series, Buckley demonstrates a surer grasp, one might say, of such matters. There is a sense in which Oakes’s missions for the CIA,...
It’s been quite a summer in the United Kingdom. On June 23, we the British people surprised everyone—including, perhaps most of all, ourselves—by voting to leave the European Union. That wasn’t meant to happen. All year, the E.U. referendum polls had shown a consistent advantage for the pro-E.U. “Remain” side. Celebrities and important people spent...
Yawning in the Aisles by Stephen Macaulay Stranger Than Paradise; A film by Jim Jarmusch; Samuel Goldwyn. Stop Making Sense; A film by Jonathan Demme and Talking Heads; Cinecom/Island Alive. All the praise that has been heaped on these films might lead you to suppose that Jarmusch and Demme — and the assembled...
Sir Elton John would like to “ban religion completely” because it stirs up “hatred toward gay people.” Like so many giants of the entertainment industry, Elton John probably does not hate religion per se but only Christianity. Christophobia is the religion of Hollywood. Ask Barbra Streisand; ask the top brass at Disney or DreamWorks. The...
“My opinion with respect to immigration is that, except of useful mechanics and some particular descriptions of men or professions, there is no need of encouragement . . . ” —George Washington “It’s not you, it’s me” has become a popular phrase with which to terminate a romantic relationship. It is considered a more polite...
No admirer of George F. Kennan’s should be surprised by the angry tone of the reviews his recently published Diaries has been receiving. Of the several I have read, in the British as well as the American press, all were, to some extent or another, willfully unsympathetic. That is only to have been expected, Kennan...
Dick’s Sporting Goods is using 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz’s evil act of killing 17 innocents and wounding many others in a child warehouse known commonly as a “public school” in Parkland Florida to boost its flagging sales and brandish its liberal bona fides. On Wednesday, the retailer issued a press release that could’ve been written by...
Our little house of wood, a century old, nestles in the countryside in the county of Lotbinière, somewhat to the south of the city of Quebec. There I live with my husband and our five children. Last fall, as my husband and I piled cords of wood in the cellar of our little house, I...
It’s near the end of October, and the air is crisp and cool. The wind blows hard here on the prairie, the thermometer failing to reflect the chill you feel on your skin and in your bones. A smattering of pinks, reds, and oranges coat the white-cored, cottony fingers floating against the pale-blue morning sky. ...
Excerpts from Srdja Trifkovic’s latest interview with Mike Church on Sirius XM Satellite Radio ST: The decision-makers in the Western capitals do not know history and they do not care about it. They believe that they operate in a totally new environment in which the examples of the past are not relevant to the actions...
A few hours before Richard Holbrooke’s death last Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a group of America’s top diplomats gathered at the State Department for a Christmas party that he was “practically synonymous with American foreign policy.” Her assessment is correct: Richard Holbrooke’s career embodies some of the least attractive traits of...
When Angela Merkel became chancellor of Germany in late 2005, the conservative German newspaper Die Welt admitted that “Nobody knows in what direction she will take the country.” The liberal Berliner Zeitung was equally ignorant, wondering, “What will she be demanding from us citizens?” (In Europe, we have “democracies” of the kind in which politicians...
Seven years before he began writing his post-war masterpiece, 1984, George Orwell published Coming Up for Air, a novel in a different key that presaged the themes of his later book. Forty-five-year-old George Bowling is a character about as different from Winston Smith as can be imagined. Whereas Smith is sour, wan, and forlorn, Bowling is cheerful, hearty,...
All over Britain and Ireland, including the unpleasing town where I live, which is run by a left-wing junta, there are memorials to those who fought in the International Brigades on the Red Republican side in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Even though there are but a few British and Irish survivors of the battles...
Is the U.S., preoccupied with a pandemic and a depression that medical crisis created, prepared for a collision with China over Beijing’s claims to the rocks, reefs, and resources of the South China Sea? For that is what Mike Pompeo appeared to threaten this week. “The world will not allow Beijing to treat the South...
For nearly two decades, homosexuals and their sympathizers have increased their efforts to persuade opinion leaders, educators, clergy, government officials, and the public that their sexual lives, though different, are as normal and natural as the heterosexuals’. Since some heterosexuals also engage in sodomy, the homosexuals have claimed that it is only their same-sex orientation...
A Gloaming Raymond Aron: The Committed Observer; Interviews with Jean-Louis Missika and Dominique Wolton; Regnery Gateway; Chicago. On 17 October 1983, thelight in the world of the intellect and action became dimmed with the passing of critic, scholar, thinker, teacher, journalist Raymond Aron. Aron, of course, left much behind him—40 books, enlightened students, journalism, lectures,...
Only recently, I learned that the community of Columbus, New Mexico, U.S.A., is home to Pancho Villa State Park, which lies immediately south of town. Since I lived in Las Cruces, 80 miles away by road, for two years in the late 90’s and have paid more than one visit to Columbus and the Mexican...
In 1967, The American Challenge by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber predicted that by the 1980’s American multinationals would have virtually bought up European industry. A decade later, there was another big scare—the Arabs were going to buy up all the US farmland (some farmers now wish this had been true, since the price of farmland subsequently collapsed)....
If one were to believe the mainstream media—and who doesn’t believe the mainstream media?—Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th President of these United States this month because over 60 million Americans are unable, and possibly unwilling, to tell the difference between true, objective reporting, filled with facts and designed only to help...
The story of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s plagiarism has elicited a number of responses, most of them disingenuous. Walter Muelder, the former dean of Boston University’s School of Theology, would like to exculpate Boston University’s Jon Westling (see page 4) but only succeeds in making matters worse. Mr. Muelder casually reveals what should have been...
There has always been talk about secession in this country by those variously disgruntled on both the right and left, but, since the last presidential election, which revealed deep-seated divisions in American society over a variety of fundamental issues, that talk has grown exponentially. Such talk is not likely to lead to a dissolution of...
It’s been a while since my last roundup of regional news, so some of these items have a little age on them, but you probably missed them anyway, so they’ll be news to you, right? An implicit theme (not implicit now that I’ve mentioned it, I guess) is that Southern culture is still kicking, even...
Writing in the New York Times on September 26, Paul Krugman insisted that the war against Afghanistan would not be “a war on behalf of the oil companies; not even a war on behalf of SUVs and McMansions.” It was, though, going to be a war “over a natural resource that is more vital than...
Donald Trump’s inaugural address was a powerful, straightforward articulation of American nationalism: “At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens. . . . From this day forward, a new vision will govern this land. From this moment on, it’s going to be America First. Every...
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan Produced by Everyman Pictures Directed by Larry Charles Screenplay by Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham, and Dan Mazer Distributed by 20th Century Fox Babel Produced by Anonymous Content and Zeta Film Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu Screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga Distributed...
“After all, money, as they say, is miraculous.” —Thomas Carlyle The economics profession, like many other branches of the social sciences, long ago had to decide whether to adopt positivist methods, as if its objects of study were organisms of constant and predictable motion, or to account for the infinite variety in human affairs by...
The sensationally miscast Sir Kim Darroch, H.M. Ambassador to the United States, has now gone, followed by a grieving cortège of the Foreign Office. Their clan spirit is that of Macbeth. Even Sir Christopher Meyer, a pretty good Ambassador in his day (his memoir DC Confidential is highly readable), went in hard for Darroch within...
Our aim is to “starve the whole population—men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound—into submission,” said First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. He was speaking of Germany at the outset of the Great War of 1914-1918. Americans denounced as inhumane this starvation blockade that would eventually take the lives of a...
Alan Walker has insisted, at the very beginning of his massive new biography of Chopin, that the composer has today a unique global reputation and appeal. And when we consider the evidence that justifies his claims, we must admit that this evidence is most impressive—and also that some of it is the opposite: doubtful and...
Philip Jenkins’ essay about McCarthyism (“Goodbye, Senator McCarthy,” Breaking Glass, May) was an exercise in retailing received opinions about the Wisconsin senator and his countersubversion efforts. Without offering specific illustrations, Professor Jenkins execrated Senator McCarthy as “a liar and a jerk of the first order” who conducted a “campaign of name-calling, accusations, and smears ....
Democracy is not on the ballot. What is on the ballot is a huge slice of the leadership and ruling class of the national Democratic Party. Democracy has not failed America, the reigning Democrats have failed America.
Overly committed as he was to supposedly universal political ideals and to the spread of American liberal democracy throughout the world, William F. Buckley, Jr., was not my kind of conservative. He could be tactless and cruel, as when he wrote in an obituary for Murray Rothbard that “Rothbard had defective judgment” and “couldn’t handle...
In the late 1980’s, I predicted that by the end of the century, which is also the end of the millennium, “The Soviet Union, or perhaps by that time, Russia, would be Christian, and the United States would be pagan.” The first, hesitant part of that prophecy, Russia, has already been fulfilled. And while Russia...
It is sad to contemplate what the American Melted Pot and Deweyite education have done to the language of Shakespeare—which was also the language of the founders of America—the most beautiful and utilizable of all the tongues of man. In our country in ...
Had Freddie Gray been robbed, beaten and left to die in the streets of his Baltimore neighborhood, no one would be mourning him today. No one would be marching for Freddie. No one would be using Freddie as the new poster child of “Black Lives Matter!” No one would care, three weeks later, but his...
“In the end physics will replace ethics just as metaphysics displaced theology. The modern statistical view of ethics contributes toward that.” —Soren Kierkegaard When the historical sequence of men, of societies, of time and thought failed Henry Adams—sequences that might have yielded him some meaning about life—he remarked in The Education that he found himself...
“Three million years The Spirit, ranging as it will, In sun, in darkness, lives in change. Changed and not changed. The spirit hears In drifting fern the morning air.” —Janet Lewis, “Fossil, 1975” What is it that poetry does and is? We can say that poetry is about why people do things, and about what...
Once a social ideal for many Americans—progressive reformers, labor leaders, enlightened businessmen like Henry Ford, and some New Dealers—”the family wage” has fallen into disrepute in recent decades. Under the spell of egalitarian feminists, America’s political and cultural leaders now reject as hopelessly “sexist” the notion that a man should earn enough to support his...
The priest had just closed the volume by Thomas à Kempis on the bookmark and put away what was left of the bottle of wine when the telephone rang. He answered it reluctantly and recognized Mrs. Corelli’s voice on the line, begging him to hurry and saying that the doctor was already on his way....