It was about 1969. I had published a few small pieces in Modern Age and National Review. I remember well Sam Francis calling me out of the blue, flattering me as “the best-known conservative writer” on campus, and urging me to attend the discussion group of which he was the spearhead. I had a family,...
10655 search results for: Post-Human Future
A Hard Case
Terri Shiavo’s tragic struggle is a hard case, and hard cases, we are taught, make bad law. Her husband, Michael, believes she is in a permanent vegetative state and that she would not have wanted to be kept alive artificially. Her parents, however, believe that she stands a chance of recovery and, further, that, as...
Media Matters: Another Inquisitor In Fighting ‘Hate’
The granddaddy of the “anti-hate” movement is, of course, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has made hundreds of millions of dollars and ruined the lives of conservatives by using innuendo, guilt by association and outright lies to smear anyone it doesn’t like. And that’s just about anyone to right of, say, Che Guevara. One...
Raiching the Constitution Over the Coals
The Supreme Court is often described as the final redoubt of states’ rights. In the last decade, we have heard much about the Court’s “New Federalism” jurisprudence. The Court, we have been warned, is seeking to return the Constitution to the horse-and-buggy days of yesteryear. Legal oracles such as the New York Times’ Linda Greenhouse...
Nothing Out of Something
Moving by fits and starts, this biography of the Southern novelist and wife of Allen Tate lacks focus and—ultimately—purpose. Veronica Makowsky’s is a dull account of an inherently interesting subject. This relatively small book is essentially a failure, rendering, as it does, a diminished, fragmented, and elusive portrait of Caroline Gordon. The book does include...
Lobar Warming
Scoffers may deride the proposition I find instinctively plausible, that the consonants and the vowels of speech are its masculine and feminine constituents, though the same scoffers would not think to keep a professor from speaking of male rhymes or an electrician of female plugs. Yet the role of women in many societies, historically considered,...
Americans and War
World War II seems to be getting a lot of what might be called revisionist treatment these days. Such rethinking of history is, on principle, a good thing, although sometimes it does little more than revive old propaganda and partisanship. It is good, for instance, that people who are concerned by the overgrown and uncurbed...
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...
Running On Empty
All imperial projects eventually come to grief. The causes, time spans, and forms of decline differ from one great power to the next and from one century to another, but they all have in common one important feature: At some point the weakening hegemon is no longer able to bear the economic and financial burden...
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...
A Nation at War With Itself
President Donald Trump has decided to cease cooperating with what he sees, not incorrectly, as a Beltway conspiracy that is out to destroy him. “We’re fighting all the subpoenas,” Trump said Wednesday. “These aren’t, like, impartial people. The Democrats are out to win in 2020.” Thus the Treasury Department just breezed by a deadline from...
What the Editors Are Reading
I read Goethe’s Faust in college and had not looked into it again until the other day when, prompted by curiosity roused by Willi Jasper’s new book Lusitania: The Cultural History of a Catastrophe, I pulled a copy of the play off my shelf and began rereading with the idea of forming a better sense...
Books in Brief: The Forgotten Slave Trade
The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slaves of Islam, by Simon Webb (Pen and Sword History; 208 pp., $39.95). In America, public discussion about slavery—when it doesn’t devolve into BLM activists burning cities or congressmen bending the knee—is premised on important but erroneous assumptions: only blacks have been enslaved; black slavery was racially motivated; discussion...
Letter From London: Peking-on-Thames
Cross Shaftesbury Avenue going south toward Leicester Square, and you leave homosexual London for Peking-on- Thames. Decorative oriental-style iron gates, like in some 18th-century pleasure garden, mark the various entrances to the small area which is officially designated “Chinatown.” Oriental shops, restaurants, hairdressers, travel agents, and apothecaries selling Chinese medicines are crammed along and spill...
Well, Naturally, We’re Gullible
I love Sarah Palin. That’s not necessarily because of anything she believes or advocates, but because of the pleasure I derive from watching the apoplexy she causes in liberals, especially in a university setting. Not only is Palin a strong conservative, but she has a regular middle-class background and a passionate religious commitment. This combination...
Virtual Selves, Vacant Hearts
My first face-to-face interview with Krista took place on a Friday afternoon in a local coffee shop. We had “chatted” several times on Facebook, and since she lived in my area I suggested that we talk in “real” time. I explained that I was gathering material on how the proliferation of social media was reshaping...
Health Care Debate—At Last
A new Associated Press-GfK poll that shows Americans evenly divided on the Obamacare repeal is getting big play as the House opens debate on precisely that course of action. Won’t it be amazing to hear Democrats argue—in view of this spectacular turn in public opinion—that House Republicans should now back off? Nope. To Obamacare’s...
The Borrower’s Crisis
Like the mindless day traders of the 1990’s who piled into the same hot internet stocks, today’s commentators on the causes of 2008’s residential-real-estate implosion have exhibited a similar obtuseness regarding the workings of financial markets. One will search in vain for any article that identifies a party other than Wall Street or large commercial...
Mortal Terror
The Fighter Produced by Mark Wahlberg and David Hoberman Directed by David O. Russell Screenplay by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, and Eric Johnson Distributed by Paramount Pictures 127 Hours Produced and directed by Danny Boyle Screenplay by Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy Distributed by Fox Searchlight Mark Wahlberg produced The Fighter and convincingly plays...
Learning From Mises?
I read with great interest R. Cort Kirkwood’s review of Christopher Ferrara’s The Church and the Libertarian (“Anarcho-Utopia Revisited”) in the November issue of Chronicles. Mr. Kirkwood does a great service by pointing out the pitfalls, from a Catholic perspective, of some of the thinking of some adherents of the Austrian School. While Mr. Kirkwood...
Terror on the Underground
Two muslim terrorists held under Britain’s controversial “control order powers”—an Iraqi with possible links to Al Qaeda and a British citizen likely connected to the London Underground bombings last year—have escaped, as Tony Blair’s government reluctantly acknowledged on October 16. Both were suspected of being linked to international terrorist groups, and, in a sane world,...
Bond and Betrayal
Goldeneye Produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli Directed by Martin Campbell Screenplay by Jeffrey Caine and Bruce Feirstein Released by United Artists In the best of the James Bond films derived directly from the novels of Ian Fleming—Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, and Thunderball—Sean Connery was able to evoke the gentlemanly,...
Growing Cotton and Communism on the Mexican Stage
When a killer quake ripped through Mexico City last September, it crippled the young theater season then taking shape. In the aftermath of the national tragedy, playhouses went dark for a fortnight. Actors were idled and unpaid, and playgoers turned for sustenance to motion pictures and television drama. But the theater, fabulous invalid that it...
Strictest US Lockdown Can’t Stem California COVID Cases
COVID-19 vaccine may have arrived, but government lockdowns are far from over. On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson reinstated a strict lockdown in the United Kingdom, citing a surge in infections and hospitalizations fueled by what officials say is a more transmissible variant of the coronavirus. “It is clear that we need to do more...
A Flawed Primer on ‘Conservative Revolutionaries’
The book Partisans is a product of contemporary political discourse—made up of cut-and-paste, second- and third-hand source-filled rants—that fails to pass for serious scholarship.
Campus Terror
At 3:00 p.m. on February 14, I was sitting in the political-science graduate assistants’ office in DuSable Hall at Northern Illinois University. Ten of us were chatting, waiting for 3:30 classes. At 3:10, my friend’s cell phone rang. “Joe just called,” she said after hanging up, her face ashen and her eyes wide. “He says...
Modern Religious Wars
The weathered boatman peered out at the three Westerners as we climbed into a small water taxi to cross the bay from the city of Ambon to the airport. “You’re from America? Send us arms. The Muslims are bad.” He used his hands to indicate a rifle as we pulled away from shore. Ambon, the...
57 million babies and counting, RIP
Something died in America 42 years ago today. That’s when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its 1973 edict, Roe v. Wade, forcing all 50 states to almost completely legalize abortion on demand – even those states that already had legalized it. About 57 million babies have been killed since. But something more died: Maybe...
The Anti-Science of Structural Racism
Policies designed to achieve racial equality have existed for decades, but a profoundly different cure now dominates public discussion—eliminating structural racism (also called “systemic racism”). Given that structural racism is allegedly hard-wired into American society and responsible for a multitude of what were once believed to be self-inflicted pathologies among blacks, i.e., crime, illegitimacy, and academic failure,...
On Hispanics and the GOP
Samuel Francis (Principalities & Powers, April 2000) is correct in much of his analysis of the weaknesses of Gov. George W. Bush’s political strategy for attracting Hispanic votes. He is also correct in debunking the endlessly repeated canard that Bush won 49 percent (rather than 39 percent) of the Texas Hispanic vote in his successful...
Catastrophic Chic
The wave of articles and books concerning nuclear-weapons policy has reached flood stage since 1981 in the wake of the protests launched by the born-again peace movement. The timing of this effort provokes suspicion. It is hard to take seriously as pacifists those figures who mix their opposition to American military policy with support for revolutionary...
The Guest Who Stayed Forever
I wish I had a dollar—oops, better make that a euro—for every recent obituary marking the political death of neoconservatism. I would have been able to bail out the grand financial house of Lehman Brothers and avert the tragedy of one more Wall Street fat cat being forced to lay off another maid in his...
In Praise of Inexcellence
“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly,” said G.K. Chesterton. All that talk about being the best is Olympic fever, ad hype. If everyone were the best, where would the rest of us be? In sports this is obvious. Perhaps not so much so in advanced nuclear physics. The guy next...
Reel Crimes, True Illusions
True Crime Produced by Malpaso Productions Directed by Clint Eastwood Screenplay by Andrew Klavan and Larry Gross Released by Warner Bros. The Matrix Produced by Groucho II Film Partnership and Silver Pictures Directed by Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski Screenplay by Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski Released by Warner Bros. Clint Eastwood’s True Crime lives...
Decline and Fall
“The lives, not only of men, but of commonwealths and the whole world, run not upon a helix that still enlargeth; but on a circle where, arriving at their meridian, they decline in obscurity, and fall under the horizon again.” —Thomas Browne, Religio Medici I There are few books I have read in recent...
Making Love and War
Nearly half a century has passed, yet we continue to be enthralled by World War II. We watch reruns of The World at War on PBS, never miss Casablanca when it’s featured, and can even sit through The Longest Day one more time. Not so with World War I, which, though older, was in a...
Catholic Synod on Synodality Flames Out
The Catholic Church’s Synod on Synodality looks like a flop and may be the last gasp of the same failed approach that has destroyed the Protestant mainstream in the West.
Everybody in America
As I understand gun control, the idea is to disarm criminals unless they work for the government. Police used to see their duty as to protect people. Since the feds took over training them, more and more of them think their job is to swagger, push people around, and make military-style assaults. An Obama spokesperson...
Who Are the Taxers?
Never say Republicans can’t learn. After losing the presidency in 1992 on the tax issue, they now use euphemisms for their tax hikes and hide the increases with new and improved fiscal gimmickry. In this Congress, the word “reform” has come to be synonymous with a scheme to extract more money from the private sector,...
The Center Cannot Hold
The Church of England is made up of three parts: evangelical Protestants, Anglo-Catholics, and liberals. They have long been at war, and soon this war will lead to the final rending of that Church. The Anglo-Catholics will break away when women are ordained bishops, as some already did when the Church of England first ordained...
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
One of the great interests of Anglo-Saxon poems is the heroic code of the warriors. They fight for their own glory, of course, but also to protect and avenge their lord, to preserve their religion, and defend the liberties of their people. Unlike the Vikings, they are neither savages nor merely predators. Before going on...
Political Passions, Part II
American churches cannot make up their minds. Do they serve God or an Uncle Sam who for a long time has been looking a great deal like Mammon? On patriotic holidays the choirs sing that bloodthirsty and nonsensical anthem to war and slaughter ironically titled “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and pastors give sermons...
The Big Bore of Arkansas
“‘Jour printer, by trade; do a little in patent medicines; theatre-actor—tragedy, you know; take a turn at mesmerism and phrenology when there’s a chance; teach singing—geography school for a change; sling a lecture, sometimes—oh, I do lots of things—most anything that comes in handy, so it ain’t work. What’s your lay?’” —The Duke, Huckleberry Finn...
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...
On the Move
Basque nationalists are on the move. Despite the vigilance of the French and Spanish authorities, the Basques have carried out a fierce summer offensive, the latest stage in a clash between nationalism and federal police power. But there is no sign that Europe’s leaders can cope with this latest nationalist upsurge. Following a couple of...
Losing Their Vitality
H.L. Mencken, in 1923, noted the “amalgamation of the two great parties. Both have lost their old vitality, all their old reality; neither, as it stands today, is anything more than a huge and clumsy machine for cadging jobs. They do not carry living principles into their successive campaigns; they simply grab up anything that...
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...
The Secret, Sordid Mouth of Krystle Matthews
In her unguarded moments, South Carolina politician Krystle Mathews provided a glimpse into the philosophy and methods of racial intimidation used by some blacks to gain and maintain political power.
Fallen Hero
“Let the bloodbath begin.” That was how my old friend, longtime conservative journalist and Chronicles contributor John Lofton, who shuffled off this mortal coil last month, opened the discussion at Pat Buchanan’s house in 1987 when Pugnacious Pat was contemplating a bid for the White House. It was vintage Lofton, whom I knew during my...
Biden’s Chinese War
Don’t look now, but a serious conflict is brewing with China, infinitely more dangerous than anything regarding Russia or Iran. The problem? China may have developed the ability to militarily defeat the United States and control the Far East. “U.S. policy between the end of the Cold War and 2017,” former Trump National Security Advisor H. R....