In one of the most memorable lines in American political history, Joseph Welch, the patrician Boston lawyer, asked Sen. Joseph McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency?” Traditional conservatives should be asking the so-called neoconservatives if they have no sense of shame. In the pages of Vanity Fair, on various television interviews, and in other...
10957 search results for: Post-Human Future
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Russian Reset in Peril
For all its many faults, the Obama administration has scored one notable success: It has done significantly better than its recent Republican and Democratic predecessors in normalizing relations with Russia. Washington’s visceral antagonism toward Moscow needed to be replaced by a more pragmatic, mutually beneficial relationship. The “Reset” has been imperfectly applied, but its conceptual...
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Debt Money and the Federal Debt
In 1985, I was a resident of Rancho Sante Fe, California, and a member of the prestigious Rancho Sante Fe Golf and Country Club. I often played golf with “Jack” (not his real name), who was listed in Forbes magazine as one of the 400 richest people in America. On one occasion, as we were...
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Tea Party Tory
Before the Tea Party philosophy is ever even tested in America, it will have succeeded, or it will have failed, in Great Britain. For in David Cameron the Brits have a prime minister who can fairly be described as a Tea Party Tory. Casting aside the guidance of Lord Keynes—government-induced deficits are the right...
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Who Needs Islamic Fundamentalism?
After almost a century of dealing with international terrorism—since communism, in practice as well as in theory, is hardly anything more complex than terrorism on a global scale—Western democracies should have caught on to the fact that all social movements, particularly those perceived as spontaneous, are invariably organized, manipulated, and directed by those whose interests...
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The World Cannot Afford an Unserious America
The world, and U.S. citizens in particular, need a serious America. But thanks to our government’s refusal to secure our border, the idea of America being a serious country is a relic of a bygone era.
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Indian as Ecologist
Most of us learned in grammar school, if not before, that the American Indian had a special reverence for nature. He was a kind of proto-ecologist who conserved natural resources, be they trees or beasts, with a religious devotion. I cannot recall the number of times I heard someone repeat, mantra-like, that “The Indian used...
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Italian Artworks Targeted by Muslims
When the Taliban in Afghanistan were busy destroying ancient gigantic stone statues of Buddha, some commentators asked: What’s next? Now, a fundamentalist Muslim group known as Unione dei Musulmani d’Italia (Italy’s Union of Muslims) has demanded that a priceless 15th-century fresco, which they call “obscene and blasphemous,” be removed from San Petronio, the 14th-century cathedral...
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Fall Tour
President Clinton’s fall tour of South America raised an important question: What has happened to the adversarial role of White House television journalists? ABC’s John Donvan reported that the President’s photo-op tour of Caracas left Venezuela glowing. He said the President was greeted warmly and that his speech was an overwhelming success. There was a...
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End of Empire, End of Manners
The imperial world offered an elevated ideal that has been lost, along with good manners.
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Tom Roeser, R.I.P.
Tom Roeser was perhaps Thomas to his parents and teachers and those who never met him. But for those of us fortunate enough to have glided within his ambit—even for a few moments—he was “Tom.” There was no pretense about him. There was no standing at one or two removes from him. He was warm...
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Not Communism But Feminism
News of strange doings up north has begun to travel south of the border. Last year, a University of Toronto mathematics professor was convicted of “sexual harassment” for allegedly staring at a part-time female student in the university pool. In Weak Link, Brian Mitchell reports that the Canadian military is now 9.2 percent female, barely...
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HUD Strikes Again
It may not be the start of the Great Middle American Revolution, but the reaction of residents in Lima, Ohio, to a heavy-handed public housing plan shows that some Americans are still willing to stand up for their communities. A declining industrial city of 45,000, Lima has seen its share of hard times in recent...
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Ireland’s Forgotten Genocide
Despite much handwringing about British colonial misdeeds in Africa and the Caribbean, the systematic, purposeful extermination of more than a million Irish during the potato famine of the 19th century gets little attention.
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Lobbyist Alleges Cato Institute ‘Mercenaries’ Are Paid to Push Pro-Immigration Studies
Pro-immigration research papers published by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, are not independent, but designed to meet the needs of lobbying clients, according to allegations in a Telegram message obtained by Chronicles. Aman Kapoor, president of the advocacy group Immigration Voice (IV), alleged that Cato Research fellow David Bier was paid by IV...
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Dancing at LaRue
The stars of the dance floor, a bantam couple, whirl to the “EE-II-EE-II-OO Polka,” a tune that would be obscure to almost anybody but the Mellotones. Their feet, tiny to start with, push each between the other’s with the precision of a sewing-machine needle working a button foot. Around and around they twirl, not with...
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Capture the Flag, Part II
We have it on good authority that the peacemakers are blessed, and that’s only fair, because we sure catch hell in this world. Not long ago I suggested that most Southerners who display the Confederate flag are not bigots and got some hate mail to the effect that only a bigot could believe that. Last...
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Exiting Iraq: The Least Undesirable End
When a patient is diagnosed with lung cancer, it is tempting but not useful to harangue him on the evils of his three-pack-a-day habit. But when he refuses to kick that habit, or to accept its link with the disease, or even to acknowledge the seriousness of his condition, it is reasonable to assume that...
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What is History? Part 38
A meddling Yankee is God’s worst creation; he cannot run his own affairs correctly, but is constantly interfering in the affairs of others, and he is always ready to repent of everyone’s sin, but his own. —North Carolina newspaper, 1854 Powerful ornary stock, George, powerful ornary. —”Sut Lovingood” on the Puritan Yankee If a person lives...
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The Protection Election
Right wing politicos should focus on protecting alternative networks and institutions from the current, corrupt regime. As for scaling down or ousting said regime, that's not happening.
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Finding Cheer in a COVID Christmas
When the Civil War interrupts the Christmas plans of the March sisters in Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women, the four lament their reduced prospects for a happy holiday. “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” Jo says. Many of us likely feel similarly to Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy as we reach the end of...
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JASTA: Usual Suspects Get Ready to Gut Law Letting 9/11 Families Sue Saudis
You’d think that after three and a half decades’ working in Pergamum-on-the-Potomac, not to mention over 17 years’ service with the U.S. Senate, one’s capacity to be scandalized would have been exhausted. But even this jaded observer can’t help being a bit shocked by the sheer sleaziness of the Obama Administration, Congressional leaders of both...
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Polemics & Exchanges
On Weapons of Despair by Brian Murray In his February review of Kosta Tsipis’s Arsenal and Freeman Dyson’s Weapons and Hope, Professor William Hawkins rightly reminds us that both geopolitical rubes and hard-core leftists are well represented in the “no nukes” movement that has in recent years received considerable, not unfavorable, attention in the Western...
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Will Europe Survive?
The recent emergence in Western Europe of increasingly successful political parties based on opposition to Third World immigration and the utter failure of such parties to appear in the United States raise the question posed in the headline of this column. Most Americans of sensible political views have assumed for the last century that Europe...
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It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over
“I did it my way,” crooned Sinatra. Donald Trump is echoing Ol’ Blue Eyes with the latest additions to his staff. Should he lose, he prefers to go down to defeat as Donald Trump, and not as some synthetic creation of campaign consultants. “I am who I am,” Trump told a Wisconsin TV station, “It’s...
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Letter From Minnesota
American and British negotiators of the Treaty of Paris, attempting to set the northwestern boundary of the new United States, agreed on a line following Rainy River “to the Lake of the Woods, thence through said lake to the most northwestern part thereof.” Another 60 years would pass before an accurate map, astronomical calculations, and...
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Obama Versus the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court’s power has become virtually unchecked: Amending the Constitution to reverse an erroneous Supreme Court decision is nearly impossible, and Congress has proved too timid to use the other weapons the Constitution provides to check the Court, including its power to restrict the jurisdiction of the federal courts. As a result, the Supreme...
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Why Are Americans At Each Other’s Throats? Ask Barack Obama
The man many Americans hoped and expected to be a unifier, from the beginning of his presidency until its end, played one race card after another.
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Gay Marriage in the Dock
In the 2012 election, same-sex marriage made gains at the ballot box for the first time—however narrowly—in all four states where “marriage equality” was presented to the voters for decision. Have the American people been successfully fooled? Maybe the more germane question is, Are large numbers of the American people self-deceived about homosexuality? We must...
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Detroit Shakedown
Stevie Wonder wants to become mayor of Detroit. He’s had some trouble determining precisely when the election will be held, but no matter. He believes that he can be the mayor of Motown in the 90’s. Now, this is no Sonny Bono and Palm Springs. Bono is decidedly a working-class stiff compared with the Retin...
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Are the Good Times Over for Biden?
Are the Democrats headed for their Little Bighorn, with President Joe Biden as Col. Custer? The wish, you suggest, is father to the thought. Yet, consider. On taking office, Biden held a winning hand. Three vaccines, with excellent efficacy rates, had been created and were being administered at a rate of a million shots a...
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What We Are Reading: August 2023
Immigration proponents make obvious contradictory claims. They repeat endlessly that recent immigrants are integrating just as fully as earlier immigrants did. Yet they also want to turn the idea that “America is a melting pot” into a prohibited microaggression. If it really is happening, why is it a moral crime to mention it? They lose...
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WASHINGTON AND JERUSALEM—December 2007
PERSPECTIVE Freedom of Conscience by Thomas Fleming Politics and ancient traditions. VIEWS With Malice Toward Many by Tom Landess Washington, Lincoln, and God. The Conversion of a Culture by Harold O.J. Brown Crisis and revolution. Dobson's Choice by Aaron D. Wolf Politics and the spirit of martyrdom. Throne and Altar by Hugh Barbour, O.Praem. Imposing ...
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What Kohl Mined
The recent German federal election brought the remarkable defeat of Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and the establishment of the most leftwing parliament and government in the 50-year history of the Federal Republic of Germany. The drag of incumbency—Kohl had spent 16 years in office—does not provide the essential...
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Remembering Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) was the most substantial intellectual to reach high political office in the United States since Woodrow Wilson. Thus his life, writings, policy deliberations, and political efforts, and the effects of these, deserve the most careful and respectful attention. If the apocalyptic era of European history began with the outbreak of World...
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Latest Rallying Cry
“Remember Jonesboro” is the latest rallying cry of the “If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere” crowd. In one sense, of course, they’re obviously correct: no town is immune to the evil influences that convince an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old to shoot and kill their fellow students. But the Jonesboro groupies are disingenuous:...
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Beyond the Norm and Back
Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert; G.P. Putman’s Sons, New York. While waiting for the cinematic spectacle of Dune, we decided that a bit of exploratory work was in order, so we attended to Frank Herbert’s world –– nay, universes –– of Dune. That was no small feat, as it is a trek into Dune,...
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Quo Vadis Fidel
That enormously talented and courageous woman, Yoani Sanchez, summarized the meaning of the forthcoming April 2011 Conference Guidelines for the Communist Party’s Sixth Congress in her biting blog called Generation Y (November 9, 2010): not a single line refers to the expansion of civil rights, including the restrictions suffered by Cubans in entering and leaving...
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Standing Athwart History Spouting Profanity
There was a time when National Review had standards and vauled decorum. No more. In his zeal to take down Ron Paul, David Frum has approvingly cited and linked to a piece describing Ron Paul as
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Just How Monarchical is Monsieur Mitterrand?
Ever since Machiavelli, and probably long before that, successful statesmen have known that a plentiful stock of mendacity, as well as guile, are essential for anyone wishing to get ahead in politics. But what many of them may have forgotten during their arduous climb to the summit is that the often bitter accusations they level...
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Passage Back from India
Identifying the patterns of life, tracking the process of modern thought and action, requires an author who knows a big idea from a little one, a tall order in a day of moral relativism and cultural confusion. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala appears to be such a writer. She is German born, of Polish-Jewish descent, British educated,...
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Functionally atheist government schools
A couple of times in my writings for Chronicles I’ve mentioned “functionally atheist government schools.” That’s what they’ve been since the early 1960s, when several U.S. Supreme Court edicts effectively banned any mention of religion, or anything approaching religion, from public schools. I remember sitting in my 6th grade class at Elliott Elementary School in...
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A Failure of Intelligence
“Al Qaeda is on the run, Osama bin Laden is dead,” President Obama announced at a rally in Des Moines on the eve of last year’s presidential election. Less than a year later it is evident that, contrary to Obama’s assurances, Al Qaeda is alive and well, along with other Islamic terrorist networks. The jihadists...
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Scandalizing Uncle Ez
The Roots of Treason: Ezra Pound and the Secret of St. Elizabeths by W. Fuller Torrey, McGraw-Hill; New York. Without doubt, Ezra Pound was a remarkable poet. His best verse is beautifully cadenced, delicately chiseled. Herbert Read described him as “an alchemist who transmuted the debased counters of our language into pure poetic metal.” Deferentially, T. S. Eliot called him...
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Sleepwalking in America
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....
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An Ambiguous Victory for Wilders
The news just in that Dutch prosecutors have changed their mind about prosecuting Geert Wilders for the Orwellian crime of “discriminating against Muslims” and “inciting hatred” is prima facie a victory for free speech and all that. In fact it is not nearly as good as it may ...
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Barack Obama, Outside Agitator
In his U.N. address, President Obama listed a parade of horrors afflicting our world: “Russian aggression in Europe,” “terrorism in Syria and Iraq,” rapes and beheadings by ISIL, al-Qaida, Boko Haram. And, of course, the Ferguson Police Department. That’s right. The president could not speak of war, terrorism and genocide without dragging in the incident...
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Our Immigration Debate Needs to Get With the Times
The debate over illegal immigration has become more about entertaining people than solving problems, as both the right and the left tee up tired, old arguments that miss the point.
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Time and Tide
I should like to live in a different time. Not in the sense of being corporeally present in an earlier epoch, with all its physical plant, its local color, and a bustling mise en scène, but in that metaphysical sense, akin to tempo in music, which previous epochs never neglected to set. Our own time...
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The Study of Wisdom
The second half of the life of Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) is not nearly as interesting as the first, when Russell did his major work in philosophy and mathematics and, through close contacts with the Bloomsbury Group, knew all the major writers of his time. In this second volume, Ray Monk picks his way through the...