“This is really a matter of accountability,” snarled Tom Daschle on Fox News Sunday, “making sure that we can enforce the rights we’re now going to guarantee and that we hold everybody accountable.” In his superbly inarticulate way, Daschle was telling the truth for a change. First, you invent a right—in this case, the right...
10955 search results for: Post-Human Future
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Is a Bond Crisis Inevitable?
With Christmas shoppers out in force and the stock market surging to a two-year high, talk is spreading that the long-awaited recovery is at hand. Perhaps. But gleaning the news from Europe and Asia as U.S. cities, states and the federal government sink into debt, it is difficult to believe a worldwide financial crisis that...
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Octavio Paz, R.I.P.
Octavio Paz, who died m April, was one of the greatest poets of the second half of the 20th century. On the left for most of his life, Paz held convictions that were often more compatible with conservative thought. Paz was not a “progressive.” In fact, he complained that the ethos of progress had no...
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The Israeli Prescription
“Moderation lasts.” —Seneca The American public has fallen victim in recent years to a propaganda assault, launched and coordinated by the Israeli Likud party and their American partners, whose theme is clear and simple: the long-term security of the Jewish state lies in its ability to maintain control over the West Bank and the Gaza...
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Bobby Fischer, R.I.P.
Bobby Fischer, the reclusive, troubled, and often unpleasant chess genius from Brooklyn who single-handedly crushed the myth of Soviet invincibility, died of kidney failure in Iceland on January 17 at the age of 64. Robert James Fischer was born out of wedlock to a prominent Hungarian atomic physicist, Pal Nemenyi, who was involved with the...
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On Saving Private Ryan
Wayne Allensworth, in his poignant and beautifully written review of Saving Private Ryan (“The Face of Battle,” January), focuses on what is right with the film. However, I find much that is wrong, and, for me, the wrong outweighs the right. Nonetheless, Steven Spielberg makes an important contribution to the making of war movies by...
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The Reluctant Candidate
As a conservative undergraduate student during the early 1960’s, I spent many a long night engaged in animated political argument with a close friend whose supercharged IQ was exceeded only by his condescending manner. The fellow never tired of reminding me that, yes, there were a few responsible Republican public officials. He would always tick...
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DeSantis’s ‘Participation Trophy’—Why Good People Don’t Run for Office
Ron DeSantis is a decorated Navy vet who served in a war zone and, among other commendations, earned a Bronze Star. So, how about a little respect?
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The Yuma Amnesty Files
President Bush was back in Yuma, Arizona, in early April, one year after making promises to secure the border in exchange for a “comprehensive” immigration-reform bill that would increase legal immigration, open the door for up to 20 million illegal aliens to remain in the United States, and encourage yet another surge of illegal aliens...
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Books in Brief
Digital Is Destroying Everything, by Andrew V. Edwards (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 232 pp., $34.00). Edwards, a digital-marketing executive, states at the beginning of this book that it was not his intention to write “a rant against all things digital.” Nevertheless, his evaluation of what the digital revolution has wrought comes closer to an...
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The Good Times Ain’t Over for Good
My great-grandparents loved music. When I look through old sepia-toned pictures from hog-killing day—here’s one of my great-uncles dangling a fat pig into a 55-gallon caldron of boiling water—I always see a guitar or two in the background. The natural rhythms of life, of the year, were marked by celebrations. There were luxury items to...
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Anti-Brexit Conspiracy
The outcome of the United Kingdom’s EU referendum on June 23 stunned the London-based elite class. It laid bare the deep chasm between Britain’s political and media machine and the alienated, angry and disillusioned majority of “left-behind” citizens. Thanks to David Cameron’s miscalculation, hoi polloi used the opportunity to express their abiding dislike not only...
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Tethered and Beleaguered
Us Produced by Monkey Paw Productions Written and directed by Jordan Peele Distributed by Universal Pictures Diane Produced by Sight Unseen Pictures Written and directed by Kent Jones Distributed by IFC Films Jordan Peele is the executive producer of the revived Twilight Zone series now streaming on CBS All Access. The original series fascinated him...
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Freedom of Access
Though the “opening” of the Russian archives is supposed to be a blessing for historians, there are plenty of reasons for skepticism. To begin with, “open” is an inaccurate term. What is available is selective, for so much remains closed, many papers are suppressed, others are inaccurate, and some are even doctored or otherwise falsified....
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Further on the Way We Are Now
I find that local radio gives me a good view of the state of American consciousness, or unconsciousness. Just today I learned that the government is studying how to help “ailing mortgages.” Defaulters, it seems, have been struck by an unfortunate epidemic. Anyone can get sick, and sick people have to be helped. I also...
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Poetry You Can Read
“It seemed so simple when one was young and new ideas were mentioned not to grow red in the face and gobble.” —Logan Pearsall Smith In his introduction to the 1962 Penguin anthology Contemporary American Poetry, Donald Hall wrote, “For thirty years an orthodoxy ruled American poetry. It derived from the authority of T.S. Eliot...
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The Midwestern Identity
The distinctive regional "America," composed of Midwestern German and Scandinavian enclaves, lasted barely four decades, dying as a coherent entity sometime in the early 1950s.
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Rare as the Proverbial Hen’s Tooth
A utility corporation that requests a DECREASE in rates Local government that REDUCES property taxes Airport screeners searching someone who actually might be a terrorist. Airport screeners not searching blonde, blue-eyed young women. A government program that requests a decrease in funding. A government poverty program that actually helps anyone who deserves help. An honest...
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Epistles From the Master
What an inspiring book this is! Even though the trials of the literary life are notorious and banal, there are few of us who are sufficiently hardened to the blows that we don’t at least on occasion allow our guard to fall and make the mistake of taking the kicks and pricks personally. Old pro...
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Killer Cops or Malicious Prosecutor?
Who killed Freddie Gray? According to Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby, Freddie was murdered in a conspiracy of six cops who imprisoned him in a police van and there assaulted and killed him. The killer was African-American officer Caesar Goodson, driver of the van, who, with a “depraved heart,” murdered Freddie. This is a summation of...
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We Are the World
In the aftermath of September 11, the chairman of the House International Relations Committee noted that the war on terrorism has revealed the need to overhaul U.S. foreign policy. “Can anyone doubt that the sum of our efforts has been insufficient?” asked Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) on October 10, opening a hearing into the role...
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Healthcare Reformer
The empire was beset by foreign invaders and war in the Middle East. Far-flung wars meant more taxes for the provinces and an increase in poverty. Some men had to choose between feeding their families and paying for medical care. Some couldn’t afford either. In the large urban ...
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Before You Bet Against the Market . . .
“They’re wiping out our industries,” said my southern California friend, staring moodily out across the Pacific ocean beyond which They—the Japanese—presumably lurking even as he spoke. “They’re buying up all our land,” confirmed his wife. “Of course, we’re so stupid, we just let them.” “They need another earthquake over there,” her brother-in-law joked darkly. “That...
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Is ‘Little Rocket Man’ Winning?
As of Dec. 26, Kim Jong Un’s “Christmas gift” to President Donald Trump had not arrived. Most foreign policy analysts predict it will be a missile test more impressive than any Pyongyang has yet carried off. What is Kim’s game? What does Kim want? He cannot want war with the United States, as this could...
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O Comedy, Where Art Thou?
The censorship regime has lowered the bar on comedy so much that it’s not even funny.
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Cromwell’s Climb to Power
From Ronald Hutton’s excellent book, we get not just history but the realization, in this desiccated age, that men such as Cromwell always emerge during great turmoil, rising as if from sown dragon’s teeth.
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Reading, Writing, ‘Rithmetic and War
Twenty-five years ago when I was a schoolteacher in an Afghan mountain valley I came across a book by an English pedagogue called Teaching English Under Difficult Circumstances. I was reminded of that title as I read this informative monograph by Middle East commentator Antony Sullivan. His short book might have been subtitled, “Teaching the...
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We Need a Time Out
The Center for Immigration Studies recently issued two reports that show how transformative mass immigration has been in recent decades. The first study focused on the number of immigrants now living in the United States. Recent data from the Census Bureau show that 3.3 million immigrants, both legal and illegal, came to America between July...
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What, Me Worry?, Part I
During a long and less than spectacular lunch at a tourist joint on the Piazza Brà in Verona today, I could not help overhearing an American couple talking about their trip, their hopes, their dreams. They were dressed regulation Rick Steves, with dangly things around their neck to connect them to their tour guide—this despite...
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Historians Are Either Hedgehogs or Foxes
Illuminating History: A Retrospective of Seven Decades; by Bernard Bailyn; New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2020; 288 pp., $28.95 Great historians must be first or primarily expert storytellers, insists historian Bernard Bailyn in his latest book. But the Pulitzer Prize winning author also declares that historians must be social scientists as well. Yet, if greatness...
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Toward One Nation, Indivisible
It is time we looked at the world from a new perspective, one of enlightened nationalism. Cliches about a “new” global economy aside, there has always been an international economy—ever since Columbus stumbled onto the Western Hemisphere while seeking new trade routes to the East, in the hire of a nation-state, Spain. The Dutch East...
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The Cobbler’s Sons
The cobbler’s son goes barefoot. This English proverb could almost serve to illustrate the entry for “paradox” in a dictionary of philosophy. The paradox of capitalism is that, instead of selling their souls to the devil, its adepts give them away for free. One would think that all those masters of the universe, well used...
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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...
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The Mindset of Terrorists
Since September 11, I have spent a great deal of time in interviews with all sorts of media people, who range from the well informed to the abysmally ignorant. One question that occurs with deadly predictability concerns the mindset of the terrorists: Just what kind of warped alien creature could possibly crash a plane into...
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Sharia Rising
The crescent moon is rising over Deutschland. After France, Germany has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe. According to government statistics, approximately 3 to 3.5 million Muslims live in Germany. Of these, only about 80 percent are citizens. Most of the Muslim population trace their roots to Turkey and the guest-worker program of the...
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On the Accordion
In Scott P. Richert’s otherwise fine article “Polka Can’t Die” (The Rockford Files, November 2004), I was somewhat pained by his only slightly veiled disdain for the accordion. Polka without accordion? As soulless as Bach on a Moog synthesizer! His aversion does place him in some traditional company. A Daumier cartoon has a character whose...
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Requiem for a Patriot
“Conservative Tycoon … Dies at 95,” said the New York Times headline on New Year’s Eve about the death of Roger Milliken. Clearly, the headline writer did not know the man. For Roger Milliken exemplified the finest in American free enterprise. He cared about his workers. He cared about his industry. He cared about his...
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Farage’s European Victory Upends British Politics
When the 751 Members of the new European Parliament (MEPs) gather in the French city of Strasbourg on July 2, the largest national group present in all the EU will be the MEPs of Britain’s new Brexit Party led by Nigel Farage. While the 29 newly elected Brexit Party MEPs intend to upend the EU,...
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Some Thoughts on Being A Writer
The following is the text of Mr. Naipaul’s speech at the 1986 Ingersoll Prizes Awards Banquet. I do not really know how I became a writer. I can give certain dates and certain facts about my career. But the process itself remains mysterious. It is mysterious, for instance, that the ambition should have come first—the...
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Out of Balance
Ray Pentzell, head of the Hillsdale College theater department, attended university during the heyday of improvisational theater off-Broadway. When he could, Pentzell traveled down from Yale to New York dressed in the “straightest” outfit he could put together. His objective was to be picked by the improv players, who often selected hapless members of the...
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Pictures Into Words
Readers of Chronicles already know that David Middleton is an extraordinarily accomplished poet. For much of the rest of the reading world, unfortunately, he is a well-kept secret. Living in Thibodaux, Louisiana, and teaching at Nicholls State University, he is far removed from the centers of literary power and influence. Even if that were not...
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Thinking About Internment
I am going to ask what Churchill would have called some naughty questions, and offer some impertinent answers. I apologize in advance for the extreme political incorrectness of what follows. In the hope of persuading the reader that I raise these issues with no pleasure at all, I shall preface them with some personal notes....
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Tough Tamales
Maybe I should hop a jet to Vegas for a weekend at the dice tables or hang out in Beverly Hills for a while. Maybe I should bang a couple of hookers or sniff some cocaine—you know, something recreational to change my mood. I went in the library again and it didn’t do me any...
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Battle of the Journeymen
The 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I has long been anticipated, judging by the publication of dozens of new books on what was called, until World War II, the Great War, although the Ghastly War might be more appropriate. Paul Jankowski, a professor of history at Brandeis University, has made a scholarly...
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Democracy or Liberty
For some, the drafting of the Iraqi constitution has called to mind America’s founding. But whether any constitution will deliver liberty or democracy to Iraq’s people remains tragically uncertain. The failure of Washington to find WMDs in Iraq or to link Baghdad to anti-U.S. terrorism forced the Bush administration to find an alternate justification...
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The Horror!
At four-thirty in the afternoon Papa’s on North Mesa Street in El Paso was preparing to open for business. Although the place looks like a student hangout and is located near the university, the clientele is largely well-to-do professional men who can easily afford the nine, twelve, and twenty-dollar cigars displayed in a wide tall...
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The Women’s Movement
After an uninterrupted spell of a winter month or two here in Venice—all footsteps in the evening mist, and quiet conversation about the best way to cook pheasant, and a Neapolitan card game called “seven and a half—what one notices on arriving in London is the way women move. First of all, it’s the speed....
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The Value of Theory
This volume in tribute to Elizabeth Flower is loosely organized, with scarcely a mention of Flower’s work—the presumption doubtless being that the general sentiments and character of her work are best captured by such a gestaltist approach. While there is something to be said for such a loose organization, that only makes the reader grateful...
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To Brighten Your Day
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American Shakespeare
Shakespeare contains the cultural history of America. From first to last, Shakespeare is the graph of evolving American values. He early made the transatlantic crossing: It is thought that Cotton Mather was the first in America to acquire a First Folio. Richard III was performed in New York in 1750, and in 1752 the governor...