As of this writing, stories describing the horrifying bombing and shootings committed in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik are still coming in, but there is enough information available for an attentive reader to draw some preliminary conclusions about the self-identified mass-murderer. Breivik’s actions and certain sections of his lengthy manifesto belie the mainstream media’s portrayal...
220 search results for: Wayne Allensworth
Grassroots Extremism
“Extremist” is a word that may conjure up images of hooded Klansmen crowded around a burning cross or of Black Panther separatists or kooky 60’s “revolutionaries.” Or perhaps images of Hitler, Stalin, or Mao come to mind. There is a supposition that those who are commonly called “extremists” are unreasonable, irrational, perhaps crazy, and quite...
Russia’s Demographic Crisis
On May 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin surprised his audience during his annual address to the Federal Assembly. Most of his hour-long speech had gone as expected: He spoke on economics, technological innovation, and the need to rebuild the country’s infrastructure. Then the former KGB officer shifted tack: “And now for the most important thing.” ...
Trump Pulls It Off
He did it. Billionaire reality TV star Donald Trump has pulled off the most stunning upset in U.S. political history. Some of us did not buy the false narrative the media was feeding the public—and understand that the fight is just beginning after Trump’s election as the 45th president, but all of us who have...
Living With the Questions
It was hot out there, the sun glaring down on us in our suits and ties. The air was sort of smoky, the way it usually is down here near the Gulf Coast. A parade of suits and uniforms marched behind the fire truck. The casket was sitting in back, and the sun glared off...
Importing Jihad—October 2005
PERSPECTIVE Christians Against Terrorismby Thomas Fleming Counterterrorism is hell. VIEWS Promoting Militant Islam Abroadby Ronald L. HatchettU.S. policy blunders. Learning From Canada’s Mistakesby James BissettTerror along the border. Welcoming Muhammadby Scott P. RichertAbandoning that which is our own. NEWS Rivers of Bloodby Richard CummingsImmigration and terror in a time of chaos. The Dishonest Pursuit of...
A Gentleman and a Scholar
The call came just before dinner on a Wednesday in April—a bright, windy day when spring was just taking hold and seemed so full of possibilities. Coach had died the previous Friday in his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio. I hoped that he had not been alone. I’m told that a close friend, a man who...
Russia’s Chechen Crisis
Russia’s ill-fated decision to intervene in the Chechen civil war has precipitated a political crisis at least as heated, and far more bloody, than the 1993 presidential-parliamentary showdown. Consider the following; all the major “democratic” parties, including former prime minister and Yeltsin backer Yegor Gaidar’s “Russia’s Choice,” have denounced the intervention and called for a...
Influx of Illegal Aliens
The European Union will set up rapid-reaction teams to deal with an increasing flood of illegal African immigrants on Europe’s southern flank. The decision was made by the European Commission at a July 19 meeting spurred on by complaints from Spain, Italy, and Malta. Illegal immigration to Spain via the Canary Islands has increased sharply...
A Manner of Speaking
On a hot day in late June, looking to buy some cheap tires for an old car of mine, I pulled into a tire shop on a stretch of highway near Fort Worth. We’d recently had a lot of rain, and the sun was glaring, seeming to draw a screen of haze off the pavement...
Hard Bargaining
A U.N. resolution concerning weapons inspections in Iraq made October a month for hard bargaining among Washington, Paris, and Moscow. Washington and London both desired a resolution that would allow the automatic application of force should Iraq obstruct any proposed arms inspections. Paris and Moscow balked, but by mid-October it appeared that both the French...
Unspoken Questions
We live in interesting times. In June of this year, the U.S. national soccer team played an “away” game against Mexico—in Los Angeles. Many of the 93,000 fans in the Rose Bowl booed the U.S. squad, chanted obscenities directed at the U.S. goalkeeper, and blew air horns during the U.S. national anthem. After Mexico won...
Murder in the Wasteland
The mystery novel, to borrow a line from Original Sin, has all the virtues of its defects. “The mystery,” Baroness James explained in a recent Washington Post interview, “deals with the planned murder” and is thus confined to a certain formulaic structure in which a detective protagonist confronts an often unsavory lot of suspects, all...
A Broad Path to Destruction
Public and private interests are joining forces to build a massive transportation “corridor” through the middle of Texas—threatening property rights, wildlife, and the historic landscape of the Lone Star State. The Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) would be the initial U.S. portion of a complex of highways and rail lines from the interior of Mexico to the...
Never and Always
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. —T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” Precious memories, unseen angels Sent from somewhere to my soul How they linger, ever near me, As the sacred past unfolds I...
Cancelling a Contract
Saddam Hussein, a Kremlin source told the Russian Information Agency (RIA-Novosti), “isn’t so nice that you would want to defend him just for his own sake.” Following the December 12, 2002, announcement by the Iraqi government that it had cancelled its contract with Russia’s Lukoil, which held the rights to develop Iraq’s vast West Kurna...
The Promise of American Life—January 2005
PERSPECTIVE Love the One You’re Withby Thomas Fleming Life in occupied America. VIEWS Education and Authorityby Michael McMahonRespect in the marketplace. Honor to Whom Honorby Harold O.J. BrownBelow reproach. America’s Unthinking Militaryby Robert D. HicksonServants of the imperium. Government: Good or Bad? Big or Little?by Thomas StorckReframing the debate. NEWS First Prize, Second Hand, Third...
The Best Are Not the Brightest
Some years ago, in a discussion with the late Joe Sobran about the motivations of those managing our vastly overstretched empire, I pointed out that, for certain strata of the bureaucracy (the people who meet with E.U. officials in Brussels and attend cocktail parties in Georgetown, for example), as well as think-tank warriors theorizing about...
The Nationalist Imperative
“Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.” —Albert Einstein When James Bowie took his considerable reputation as a brawler and duelist, along with the famous knife his brother Resin had fashioned for him, to Mexico, married the daughter of the vice-governor of the province of Texas, and became a respected citizen...
THE PARTY STATE
In Washington, D.C., access and influence go hand-in-hand; they are the stock and trade of the lobbyist, the lawyer, and the political advisor. They are, as well, the biggest “skill” current officeholders and staff members can take with them when they leave the government. —from Pat Choate, “Puppets for Nippon,” May...
Islam, Immigration, and the Alienists Among Us
In his Introduction to Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith, G.K. Chesterton casts himself as a man on a yacht seeking the world and finding home. The seeker, he writes, may have entertained us with his efforts to find “in an anarchist club or a Babylonian temple what I might have found in the nearest parish...
Sing Me Back Home
Sing me back home with a song I used to hear Make all my memories come alive Take me away and turn back the years Sing me back home before I die Merle Haggard was a real American. At its best, his music was folk art, Americana poetry, each song capturing a snapshot of his...
Paying the Price
Iraqi Christians are paying the price of the Bush administration’s desire to remove Saddam Hussein. The Iranian Revolution and the rising influence of militant Islam have already forced the secular Iraqi dictatorship to make concessions to proponents of Iraq’s Islamicization, but the threat of a U.S. attack, together with a widespread feeling in the Arab...
Peace in the Promised Land—May 2005
PERSPECTIVE Peace in the Land of Sojournby Thomas Fleming Gods and promises. VIEWS A Brief History of Quagmireby Doug BandowSix decades of passionate attachment. A Tale of Two Citiesby Leon T. HadarDifferent visions of Israel’s future. Israel and Americaby Ivan ElandParallel lives, similar mistakes. The Christian Zionist Threat to Peaceby Aaron D. WolfSpend your vacation...
More Human and More Tragic
An associate and I were waiting for a flight to Washington, D.C., flying out of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, in the fall of 1996. I spotted another waiting passenger in the lounge and made a bet with my partner, a native New Yorker, that the man was a fellow Texan. My partner took the bet, and...
Radical Populism on the Volga
On May 8, 1995, President Boris Yeltsin addressed an auditorium filled with gray-haired war veterans, their chests bedecked with rows of ribbons and medals, and told them of the cost of victory in the Great Patriotic War. Citing new archival research, Yeltsin revealed the “terrifying figure” of 26,549,000 Soviet citizens “lost” in the war against...
Goodbye, Mr. Bond
Casino Royale Produced by Barbara Broccoli, Andrew Noakes, and Anthony Waye Directed by Martin Campbell Screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis Based on the novel by Ian Fleming Released by Columbia Pictures It is with great trepidation and some sadness that I must announce that James Bond is dead. Granted, there is...
Fire in the Minds of Men
Recently, we marked the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution, an event sparked by the revolutionary fire in the minds of men that has burned for as long as there have been men on the earth. In the modern era, revolution ignited in France in the 18th century. It caught fire again in 1848,...
Memorial Day
We used to go there on every Memorial Day—a small national cemetery off the road a piece in the woods. It was usually warm; the woods, deep, green, and moist. We would walk down a dirt path to the stone wall encircling the graves, sometimes passing others who had just visited there before us. My...
Ray Bradbury, R.I.P.
On June 5, we lost not only one of our finest writers but a true American storyteller and one of the last of the book people. For Ray Bradbury, who passed away at the age of 91, was, like the remnant that Montag joins at the end of Fahrenheit 451, a book person, a walking...
The Revival of Russian Paganism
“The predisposition to religious belief,” wrote sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, “is the most complex and powerful force in the human mind and in all probability an ineradicable part of human nature.” Christians would agree with Mr. Wilson, but it is his fellow atheists, not Christians, who have dominated the religious (though not the truly spiritual)...
Iraq as “Intelligence Failure”: We Told You So
“W,” a.k.a. “our Commander in Chief,” is apparently even more blindly stubborn and willfully ignorant than I had thought. As of this writing (December 2006), he is still distancing himself from the Iraq Study Group’s efforts to provide him cover for a withdrawal from the Middle East morass he has drawn us into. Bush Senior,...
Homesick in America
“Darlin,’” she said, “I’ll get that. Go ahead and take it.” She was a weathered-looking woman with mousy light brown hair drawn back in a bun and the plain, honest look of one of those faces you see in Depression-era photos from the Dust Bowl, faces that don’t smile—they are just themselves, making the best...
A Surprising Threat of Veto
Vladimir Putin, during his February trip to Germany and France, surprised Kremlin watchers east and west by threatening to veto any U.S.- or U.K.-sponsored resolution on military action against Iraq. In Paris, Putin told reporters that, if a resolution on the “unreasonable use of force” against Baghdad were made “today,” Moscow “would act with France...
Saving American Manufacturing—October 2006
PERSPECTIVE The Root of All Evilby Thomas FlemingPolicy, purpose, and pleonexia. VIEWS It’s Hard Times, Cotton Mill Girlsby Tom LandessManufacturing, gone with the wind. How Neutral Is the Fed?by Greg Kaza A measure of humility. Giving America Priority in Trade Policyby William R. HawkinsFreeing American trade. The Price of Globalismby David A. HartmanAssessing the fallout....
Giving Up, Giving In
“But what if Juárez is not a failure? What if it is closer to the future that beckons all of us from our safe streets and Internet cocoons?” —Charles Bowden, Murder City On September 30, 2010, David Hartley and his wife, Tiffany, were jet-skiing on Falcon Lake along the Texas-Mexico border when a speedboat approached...
The Russian Demon
In the year 1818, Aleksandr Pushkin penned these lines in his well-known verse “To Chaadaev,” addressed to his friend Peter Chaadaev, one of the leading Russian liberals of the period: Comrade, believe: joy’s star will leap Upon our sight, a radiant token; Russia will rouse from her long sleep; And where autocracy lies, broken. Our...
No Country for Honorable Men: The Prosecution of the “Border Patrol Two”
The prosecution of, and harsh sentences meted out to, two Border Patrol agents involved in a shooting incident at the Texas-Mexico border tell us all we really need to know about the Bush administration’s plans to erase U.S. borders once and for all. On February 17, 2005, Border Patrol agent Ignacio Ramos responded to a...
High Stakes in the Immigration Battle
The presidency of Donald Trump has made some things many of us suspected for a long time perfectly clear, as a former president used to say. Our enemies no longer hide what their agenda is, and job #1 on that agenda is replacing what Archie Bunker used to call “regular Americans” with foreigners. Thus, the...
A Place Called Home
Kazan was preparing for her 1,000-year anniversary last August when Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived to address the World Tatar Congress in what once had been the center of a Tatar khanate. The goal of the congress was the “spiritual unification” of the Tatars, scattered across Russia and the world. I do not know whether...
30 Years Fighting the Culture War—July 2006
PERSPECTIVE Violent Revolution by Thomas Fleming Women in bondage. VIEWS Hollywood Blues by George Garrett A culture of grand illusions. Culture War by Clyde Wilson Fighting on. Dressing for Progress by Andrei Navrozov A culture of lovelessness. An American Dilemma by Tom Landess The Episcopal Church (1976-2006). RUOK? AWHFY? by James O. Tate Communication in the vast wasteland. O Literature, Thou Art Sick by Catharine Savage Brosman The consequences of theory. INTERVIEW Rendering ...
Welcoming Terrorists, Locking Down Citizens
Terrorist bombings that killed 3 and wounded and maimed over 260 at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15 prompted the militarized “lockdown” of an American city for days, as police in full combat gear took part in a massive manhunt that may have given us a glimpse of our future. As...
Getting to Know the General
The rise to political prominence of former Airborne Forces General Aleksandr Lebed, and especially his emphasis on law and order as the only real basis for proceeding with reforms, has raised the specter in the Russian mind of the proverbial Man on a White Horse, the military savior whose iron-fisted rule puts the national house...
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...
Six Midterm Reflections
As the Midterm Election returns came in, one thing became clear: There would be no “blue wave.” The Democrats secured the House of Representatives, though not by a wide margin, and the Republicans held the Senate, gaining a few seats. The House Democrats and their GOP “NeverTrump” allies still skulking about the Beltway bubble will...
Avoiding a Crisis
Russia may have avoided a full-scale political crisis, at least temporarily, thanks to the Bush administration’s decision in mid-March not to pursue a U.N. Security Council vote on its latest resolution on Iraq. Russian President Vladimir Putin had appeared ready to accept Washington’s planned “regime change” in Baghdad in exchange for a piece of the...
New Words for Old—February 2006
PERSPECTIVE Lost in Translation by Thomas FlemingThe art of reality. VIEWS Mind Your Language!by James O. TateA sea of ruined words. Manners, Morals, Languageby Chilton Williamson, Jr.Forsaking the Beau-Ideal. A Trip to Smart-Mouth Collegeby Aaron D. WolfThe loss of sacred words. NEWS Riots in the Suburbsby Claude PolinThe programmed suicide of France. REVIEWS Seasoned Travelsby Catharine...
The Brothers Tsarnaev: Assimilating Terrorists
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s widow is no longer calling herself “Karima Tsarnaeva.” She is Katherine Russell again. Karima/Katherine is reportedly drifting away from the way of life she accepted when she converted to Islam and married the Boston Bomber, the terrorist killed by police last April following the bombings that left three dead and wounded as many...
White Self-Hatred and the Christian Spirit
At the first Congress on Racial Justice and Reconciliation, held in Washington in May, the Reverend Earl W. Jackson, the black director of the mostly white “Samaritan Project” of the Christian Coalition, told 500 mostly black Christians that, despite many blacks’ warnings that he was selling out to the “religious right,” “our agenda” is “the...
Our Terror Sanctuary
The “Fort Dix Six” may not be the smartest group of would-be jihadists we have seen, but their story should tell us something about how lax immigration and border-security policies put this country at risk. The six Muslims were arrested in New Jersey in May, for plotting to attack Fort Dix, which is known as...