If Obama is not elected will there be riots? If Obama is elected, will there be riots? Are Americans capable of recognising and electing good leaders? (We can't know because it has been so long since they have seen one.) What would happen if a ...
10957 search results for: Post-Human Future
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Letter From Virginia The Old Dominion Meets Sploge
What poses the greatest threat today to the Old Dominion—mother of Presidents, a state secure and renowned for precious memories and aspirations? No person or foreign power, but a vast impersonal force already despoiling cities and states around the globe, a force that I call “sploge”: unregulated, unchecked growth, fueled by the three G’s—Greed, Glitz,...
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Those Real Estate Blues
The Descendants Produced by Ad Hominem Enterprises Written and directed by Alexander Payne Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures Young Adult Produced and Distributed by Paramount Pictures Directed by Jason Reitman Screenplay by Diablo Cody (Brooke M. Busey) The Descendants and Young Adult are dark satiric comedies that insist on an unpopular thesis: Sexual misbehavior...
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Guerrillas In Our Midst: The L.A. Riots Remembered
Grappling with the meaning of the L.A. riots, wondering with Rodney King why we can’t get along, I muse about days long ago when I was a terroristette for the women’s movement. I cared so much about violence against women that, with a group of my sisters, I participated in a rampage of window-smashing, targeting...
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A Sicilian Visit
In Dürrenmatt’s The Visit, an aging billionairess returns to the provincial town where she was born and announces to the townsfolk that she will leave them all her money, on one condition. They must kill the man, himself now aging, who deceived her years ago. The townsfolk noisily reject the lady’s proposition as immoral, but...
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The Consent of the Governed Revisited
Americans have lost the habit of constitutional government. Judges hand down commands derived from their own personal revelation, in the teeth of law and majority rule, and are tamely obeyed by millions. A President, recently sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States, announces his intention to commit the blood and treasure of the...
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Richard Holbrooke: An American Diplomat
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 ...
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The Post-Assassination Goodwill Is Over: Back to Basics
When the dust settles after the defenestration of Biden and after the glow of Kamala “to the rescue” Harris dims, we return to basics. Are you better off now than you were nearly four years ago?
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Jean Raspail’s New Warning
Forty years after publishing his prophetic dystopia Jean Raspail is still with us, ever more resigned that our civilization is on the “road to disappearance.” As he explained in an interview published in Valeurs Actuelles on October 25 (transl. by ST), he has no desire to join the big circle of intellectuals who spend their time debating immigration...
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Kings Row Revisited
The first paragraph of the first chapter of John Lukacs’s Confessions of an Original Sinner (1990) concludes, “A conservative will profess a preference for and a trust in Ronald Reagan; a reactionary will not, and not because Reagan was a Hollywood actor but because he never stopped being one.” The reactionary in me agrees with...
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Books in Brief
Against Democracy, by Jason Brennan (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press; 288 pp., $29.95). I found this a disappointing book, as the subject is a critical one in the 21st century. Brennan begins with Schumpeter’s well-known assertion that The typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters...
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We’re All Extremists Now
The timing of Omar Mateen’s shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub was rotten for the Obama administration, because Secretary of State John Kerry had just published his carefully worded Joint Strategy on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), in which the word religion or religious appears nine times, but Islam, Islamist, and Muslim appear nary a-once. The administration’s...
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My Ground, Myself
To a woman who has spent several decades of her life in New Orleans, a city that lies mostly below sea level, any trip out is a journey to higher ground. And so Catharine Savage Brosman’s title works for a book of essays mostly about journeys away (though she includes a nice piece on New...
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Steeped in Islamic Orthodoxy, Hamas Is Israel’s Permanent Enemy
It is necessary to be aware of the ambitions of political Islam and to harbor no illusions about its goals.
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Problems in Democracy 01
The House Ethics Committee has changed reporting requirements for members who receive free travel from a variety of groups. The travel will still be reported but only on the House Clerk’s website, making it less likely for watchdog groups—aka paid snoops—and journalists—aka professional liars—to keep track of their indubitably corrupt activities. To answer Nancy Pelosi’s...
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Openings and Closings
Raphael Israeli examines one of the most difficult political problems of our time: The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. He approaches the subject by presenting and analyzing research on the conflict by earlier Israeli historians (the so-called Old Historians), by more recent Israeli historians (the so-called New Historians who coined the label Old...
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There’s No Place Like Home
Every school has a playground for its pupils; English schools provide a playground for politicians, too. Children seek security, regularity, and continuity: The games they play in the schoolyard observe rules that do not change. Change, though, is the contemporary politician’s reason for existence: He seeks not to hold fast to that which is good...
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Temporizing on the Thames
It is one of the chief distinguishing features of the philistine that he thinks himself, above all things, “openminded.” While the converse of this proposition is untrue, modern culture having witnessed an explosion in the doctrinaire varieties of philistinism, it is nevertheless a fact that the trueblue, classic philistine, of the kind described by the...
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Using Howard Stern to Build Hillary’s Dream
As I sit down to write this, on the Sunday afternoon before the second presidential debate, the media feeding frenzy over remarks made by Donald Trump 11 years ago continues unabated. The content of those remarks reminded me of one of the more interesting pieces I’ve read about the improbable rise of Trump, an article...
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Croatian Generals Sentenced at The Hague
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Zagreb and other Croatian cities over the past week to protest the conviction of two Croatian generals by the UN war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. The ICTY sentenced Ante Gotovina to 24 years in jail and Mladen Markac to 18 years for their role...
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The Grass in American Streets
During his debate with Citizen Perot, Vice President Al Gore joined a distinguished list of misinformed public officials when he bashed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. Senator Reed Smoot and Congressman Willis Hawley “raised tariffs,” Gore said, “and it was one of the principle causes . . . of the Great Depression.” Predictably, the national press jumped...
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What is History?
Quite a while back I annoyed the readers of this site with a long series of quotations: “What is History?” My intent was to provide thought on the vast and complicated question of how we understand and best make use of the past. As a kind of belated conclusion to that series, I quote myself—with...
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On ‘Islam’
Tomislav Sunic’s (“The Gulf Crisis in Europe,” May 1991) proposal of an Islamic conversion for neo-pagan Western Europe as some type of alternative cultural synthesis is an eyebrow raiser. But to state that the Moslem religion’s “record of zeal and intolerance is no worse than that of other monotheistic beliefs” is a denial of the...
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Leopold Tyrmand, 1920-1985
I am honored by the invitation to reflect with you on the life of our friend and colleague Leopold Tyrmand. There are those here who knew Leopold longer and better than I. But in the last several years I came to know him well enough that I am not surprised by the remark of one...
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God Bless America
Every president since Ronald Reagan has employed this invocation to punctuate the conclusion of a major speech. Coming from Reagan, it was sort of a tip of the hat to the official pieties of the World War II generation. In the mouth of Bill Clinton it was a blasphemy. Now, the phrase is on the...
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What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
When a politician stakes his campaign on a demonstration of how thorough, consistent and philosophically pure he is, he might impress conservative journalists and policy wonks, but they don't pick the nominee.
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Practical Items
School decentralization was one of the few practical items on the New Left’s agenda of the 1960’s. It was a genuinely radical idea, since the entire history of public education in the US has been the steady progress of consolidation and centralization. Small districts were merged, time after time, into larger consolidated units, and power...
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The President’s Painted Corner
A prudent power will always seek to keep open as many options as possible in its foreign-policy making. An increasingly rigid system of alliances, coupled with mobilization blueprints and railway timetables, reduced the European powers’ scope for maneuver in the summer of 1914 and contributed to the ensuing catastrophe. The United States, by contrast, entered...
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What Was a Chaperone?
From the July 2002 issue of Chronicles. I confess it: My television is always on. I seldom watch the news, the talking heads, the public-spirited uplift, Masterpiece Theater, or the educational stuff. No, I watch old movies. Constantly. I watch them because they bring back the good old days. I think, for instance, of a film...
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Chronicling the Fall
“Folly is often more cruel in the consequences than malice can be in the intent.” —Halifax The correspondence of Edmund Burke, whose letters help to illuminate his published works, was not available in a complete edition until 1978. Today, however, it seems that every aspiring journalist begins saving his correspondence even...
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Neither Law Nor Justice
A few weeks ago, I was listening to Radio Moscow’s Joe Adamov answering mail-in questions from his North American audience. One query came from somebody in Nova Scotia: How important was Stalin to the Soviet victory in World War II? Adamov’s answer went like this: Stalin’s contribution to the war effort had been nil. Before...
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Alienated & Radicalized
In the brief age of Obama, we have had “truthers,” “birthers,” Tea Party activists and town-hall dissenters. Comes now, the “Oath Keepers.” And who might they be? Writes Alan Maimon in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Oath Keepers, depending on where one stands, are “either strident defenders of liberty or dangerous peddlers of paranoia.” Formed in...
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Mayday
“Revolutions often succeed,” wrote historian Lewis Namier, “merely because the men in power despair of themselves, and at the decisive moment dare not order the troops to fire.” For four days in May last spring, revolution or something frighteningly close to it rapped hard on America’s door. Not only did the “man in power”-namely, President...
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Christian Nationalism Is a Political Fantasy
Without unity among Christians, there can be no Christian state.
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Aid and Comfort to the Enemy, Part II
In last month’s American Proscenium, I focused on the news that Washington is reaching out to various Islamist activists opposed to the secularist regime of Bashir Assad, and notably to the supposedly “moderate” elements of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. The editorial, entitled “Aid and Comfort to the Enemy,” concluded that such policies reflect either...
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Books In Brief: June-July 2024
Short reviews of The English Experience, by Julie Schumacher, and The Novel, Who Needs It?, by Joseph Epstein.
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Along for the Ride
I thoroughly enjoyed Roger D. McGrath’s account of the Southern California Norton Owners Club journey along Old Route 66 (Correspondence, September). He mentions that his home is near the Rock Store, which immediately brought up memories of my old stomping grounds. I grew up in the west end of the San Fernando Valley, in Woodland...
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Boris Johnson’s Blood Sports
“The washing of the spears,” was the Zulu term for victory in battle. The latest phase in the Tory civil war has seen a brutal triumph of the Brexiteers, with no quarter extended to the vanquished. Of Theresa May’s Cabinet of 23, 16 have fallen as in an Elizabethan Revenge tragedy. It turns out that...
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Are You Smarter Than a Terrorist?
The idea that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) can stop terrorist attacks by means of its now-infamous “porno scanner,” or by forcing Americans to undergo intrusive body pat-downs as if they were inmates in a correctional facility, is utter nonsense, and everybody knows it—including our government officials. The scanners cannot detect explosives that are secured...
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You Gotta be a Football Hero
The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things—bread and circuses. —Juvenal, Satires Except that instead of circuses we call them football games—a term linked indissolubly with the mess at Penn State: NCAA fines and penalties, disappearing statues of head coaches...
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Sports and Local Sovereignty
Since 1940, the Batavia Clippers have played baseball in the lowest of the low minors, the Class A (formerly D) New York-Pennsylvania (nee PONY) League. The ballpark, Dwyer Stadium, named for the shoe store owner who served as club president for decades, is just one block from my parents’ house, so I’ve spent many hundreds...
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An Adversarial Culture
Following the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, John Walker Lindh, also known as Suleyman al-Faris and Abdul Farid, got his 15 minutes of fame the hard way. Or perhaps it is more proper to say that he was the object of a Two Minutes Hate by many on the right, even as his arrest...
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Killing Money
“I simply find it hard to believe,” a Moscow friend of mine yells into the telephone a respectable number of minutes before asking me to lend him some trifling sum just this once, “that, with everything going on in London, roulette is all you can write about!” He is young, an actor, insubstantially hopeful as...
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Government for the People
“I owe you an apology, compadrito,” Héctor Villa was telling his friend, Jesús “Eddie” Juárez. Jesús “Eddie,” who hadn’t the foggiest idea what his friend was talking about, nodded his head and attempted a forgiving smile anyway, on the off chance it might prompt Héctor to clinch his apology by offering to buy another round....
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Realism and the Spirit
The following is the text of M. Ionesco’s address at the 198S Ingersoll Prizes Awards Banquet: I am extremely proud and honored to have been awarded the very prestigious T. S. Eliot Prize, which has been given to such persons as Jorge Luis Borges and the novelist Anthony Powell, artists who exemplify the prime values...
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A Triumph of Terrorism
Western media are declaring the million-man march in Paris, where world leaders paraded down Boulevard Voltaire in solidarity with France, a victory over terrorism. Isn’t it pretty to think so. Unfortunately, the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, its military-style execution, the escape of the assassins, and their blazing end in a shootout Friday was a triumph...
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Middle American Gothic
The bad weather of 1993 eliminated my usual fishing trips to northern Wisconsin, but the other day in Madison, where I go to use the library and relive the 60’s, I saw a sign for an instant oil change and lube: “Faster than an Illinois tourist.” Most people in Wisconsin are happy for the dollars...
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Confessions of an Ex-Marine
“Left! — — Left! — — Left! Right! Left!” The drill instructor inside of me had successfully surfaced and was now exulting in command. We were approaching the corner of the parade field, and I was getting ready for “To the left! ! March!” when it suddenly occurred to me that it might be amusing...
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The Madness of Art
“In relation to Gauguin, Van Gogh and Rimbaud, I have a distinct inferiority complex because they managed to destroy themselves. . . . I am more and more convinced that, in order to achieve authenticity, something has to snap.” —Sartre In “Resolution and Independence,” Wordsworth lamented that “We Poets in our youth begin in gladness,...
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A Multicultural Mugging of Uncle Joe
In his opening statement at Wednesday’s Democratic debate in Detroit, Joe Biden addressed Donald Trump while pointing proudly to the racial and ethnic diversity of the nine Democrats standing beside him. “Mr. President, this is America and we are strong and great because of this diversity, not in spite of it. … We love it....