America’s present position is paradoxical. On the one hand, her unparalleled power and wealth are reflected in the astoundingly imperialist “National Security Strategy” unveiled last October, which asserts a right to stop any country “from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing or equaling the power of the United States.” That America is a...
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The European Kerensky?
“Prodi, the Italian Kerensky?” was the intriguing headline of a full-page ad by a Christian-inspired group, Centro Culturale Lepanto (CCL), in two major Italian dailies, Il Giornale and Il Tempo, on May 14, 1996. In that manifesto, CCL president Roberto de Mattei, professor of modern history at the University of Cassino and one of the...
Islam and the West: An Irreconcilable Conflict?
“I worry greatly that the rhetoric coming from the Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, is sending a message to Muslims here . . . and . . . around the world, that there is a ‘clash of civilizations.'” So said Hillary Clinton in Saturday night’s New Hampshire debate. Yet, that phrase was not popularized by Donald...
On ‘Your Papers, Please’
I don’t know who Mr. R. Cort Kirkwood is or what his credentials to write about “law” are. His knee-jerk reaction (Vital Signs, November 1990) to efficiently verifiable identification of applicants for special recognition in the United States today compels me to suppose that they are minimal. No one suggests that there be any compulsion...
The Agony of Nations in the West
European history since the fall of the Roman Empire may be regarded as the slow forging, as if by a hidden hand as well as by human passions, of these particular forms of human collectivities called nations. After several failed attempts to reconstitute the Roman Empire, Europe emerged out of the Middle Ages as a...
A Highly Personal History
We’re about 50 miles east of Toledo, cruising along the Ohio Turnpike on our way to Cleveland for the wedding of longtime Chronicles contributor Tom Piatak. Satisfied from a lunch of cabbage rolls, paprikas dumplings, and Hungarian sausage at the original Tony Packo’s, I have Amy’s MacBook open on my lap and Bruce Springsteen’s Born...
The Return of the Savage
The Democrats and the rest of the left are taking the results of last November’s election no better than they predicted the Republicans and the right would do if their man lost. The street riots, lawsuits, recounts, constitutional challenges, furious denial, and refusal to accept the electoral decision in a spirit of peace, resignation, and...
Great Escapists
While M. Revel’s critique of Western leftists and fellow travelers is fully shared by me, I part company with him when it comes to the issue of the durability of communist systems. Both he and I were among the vast number of observers and critics of such regimes who did not anticipate their spectacular and...
On Correctness and Collegiality
It all began in February, when one disgruntled Vermonter started a blog to attack the Second Vermont Republic, the four-year-old secessionist organization in our state. He was apparently prompted by hearing Rob Williams, then cochair of the SVR, attacking Abraham Lincoln on the radio for the illegal suppression of Southern secession, and his political-correctness genes...
Fight Them on the Beaches
Before the drive from California to North Carolina that I wrote about last month, I believed that American regionalism was alive and well. Now I damn well know it is. I’ll tell you what I am worried about, though, is England. Not long ago my wife and I flew direct from Charlotte to London. That...
Which Way for Rand Paul?
Of all the Republican successes in the midterm elections, perhaps none has the potential to be as consequential as the elevation of Rand Paul to the U.S. Senate from Kentucky. Paul was the biggest and most genuine Tea Party triumph in November. As the son and ideological heir of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), he...
The Long March Ahead for the Real Right
The American electorate split strongly along class lines in the 2020 election, as revealed by a Bloomberg News data chart that correlated campaign donors with their professions. This data map looks like an inverted triangle made up of circles in varying shades of blue and red. At the top are large circles in deep blue, denoting...
More Knee-Slappers
One of the great knee-slappers, however perverse, of the so-called War on Terror is the fact that fundamentalist Islamic forces are stronger than ever as a result. It is like going on a crash diet for a month and putting on 20 pounds. In the 12 years since George W. first uttered those three little...
The Fall of Rome All Over Again
The great American Empire is collapsing, like Rome before it, but not for the reasons our academic elites give.
Trump Should Make an Issue of Hillary’s Warmongering
“The Security of the U.S. & the Peace of the World” by Jim Jatras and Anthony T. Salvia One cannot help but wonder if Hillary Rodham Clinton is smart enough to be President. She evidently learned nothing from her attempt a few weeks ago to play the “woman card” against Donald Trump. He responded by...
The Coming North American Order
Most of what we see and read from the government and its media organs are variations on a tired but persistent theme of irreversible progress toward utopia. (William Pfaff has a new book arguing that secular utopianism, even more than war profiteering or career advancement, is what drives U.S. foreign policy, making it impervious to...
America Today: From Sea to Shining Sea
It is reported that a machete-wielding Somali has attacked an Asian in a restaurant owned by an Israeli. In Ohio. All but a few of the baker’s dozen contenders for the Republican presidential nomination advocate warlike measures against Russia, Syria, and Iran. Consequences are not discussed. Most of them want to fight terrorism by increased...
Russia’s Way Back
Liberalism’s Glorious Age of parliamentary democracy, nation building and national consolidation, free trade, and empire, of which Great Britain was the chief power and paramount symbol, reached a catastrophic close in 1914. After 1945, liberalism in renovated form attempted to launch a modern Glorious Age dominated by the Pax Americana and the United Nations and...
Causes and Catapults
For over a thousand years, Western civilization was defined by the shifting religious frontier between Christianity and Islam, and the Muslim religion was the ultimate enemy. Whenever Western Christians wished to condemn a person or a movement, the obvious tactic was to compare it to Islam. When a medieval French king wanted to justify his...
The Way We Are Now and Where We Are Going
“Nothing doth more hurt a state than that cunning men pass for wise.” —Francis Bacon I finally figured out why so many people admire Obama and his family. They remind TV watchers of the Heathcliffe Huxtables. I have been practicing “Kumbaya” lately. I want to be ready for Real Change. Of course, Obama owes a...
Election Hangover
Your Excellency, I don’t know about you, but I am ready for this campaign season to be as dead as Scrooge’s doornail. For the last month, political commercials have crowded television screens and websites, interrupting even Mayberry reruns and the latest scoop on Paris Hilton. Despite their promises to avoid negative campaigns, all candidates have...
The ICC Orders Qaddafy’s Arrest
The Libyan affair became a choreographed farce on June 27, with the International Criminal Court (ICC) issuing arrest warrants for Muammar Qaddafy, one of his sons, and his chief of military intelligence. This move is a carbon copy of The Hague Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indicting Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes at...
Once More Beyond the Pale
“A thousand years scarce serve to form a state; An hour may lay it in the dust.” —Lord Byron Few antiliberal writers are disliked and distrusted so much by mainstream “conservatives” as John Lukacs and George Kennan. Like most movements that achieve a degree of success, intellectual “conservatism” in America has petrified into an establishment...
Trump: America for the Americans!
As the patriotic pageantry of Inauguration Day gave way to the demonstrations of defiance Saturday, our new America came into view. We are two nations now, two peoples. Though bracing, President Trump’s inaugural address was rooted in cold truths, as he dispensed with the customary idealism of inaugurals that are forgotten within a fortnight of...
Calling Dr. Johnson
The Dear Leader of the United States reminds me of Robert Frost’s quip that a liberal is a man who won’t take his own side in a fight. More precisely, his own country’s side. Barack Obama seems to hate calling anyone our enemy. It isn’t nice. It’s not Christian, as he understands Christianity. Well, Christ...
New World Baseball
For all the subtle grace that distinguishes Japanese civilization, the esoteric gabble of Western diplomacy seems to elude its leaders. Every few months, some titan of Tokyo pronounces his low opinion of America and Americans, unveiling his view that our schools are dreadful, our racial minorities backward, our politicians crooks, or our workers lazy. Where...
The Future of Christendom
The future of Christendom, according to the Population Reference Bureau’s 2001 annual report, is likely to be pretty bleak. The report’s chief conclusion is that population growth in the West has ground to a halt, while the Third World is reproducing like gangbusters. Tire numbers: “Of the 83 million people added to the global population...
How Do I Hate Thee? Let Me Count the Ways
The cinders of the World Trade Center had barely fallen to the earth before George W. Bush had it all figured out. “America was targeted for attack,” the President explained to the nation barely 12 hours after the first plane hit the Manhattan skyscrapers, “because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the...
What Bernie & The Donald Portend
Three weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, and clarity emerges. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, is in trouble. Polls show her slightly ahead of Socialist Bernie Sanders in Iowa, but narrowly behind in New Hampshire. And the weekend brought new revelations about yet more classified and secret documents sent over her private email server...
Trump, NAFTA, and America First
President Donald Trump has made the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) a cornerstone of his economic policy. Signed into law by Democrat Bill Clinton in 1993 with Republican support, NAFTA created a managed trade zone among Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The multilateral agreement remains highly controversial among blue-collar voters...
America First
In this 1996 essay, the late Congressman James Traficant illustrates the Washington establishment’s habitual subordination of America to foreign interests.
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...
Kevin McCarthy’s War Against MAGA
Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy joined Mitch McConnell in sabotaging his own side to keep America First candidates out of office. No one is more responsible for the failure of a midterm 'red wave' to arrive.
Charlie Is Their Darling
On October 25, 2000, central Sydney’s traffic stood still for hours, for the first time since the Olympiad. Inside the late-Victorian Town Hall, approximately 2,000 pilgrims witnessed the Aboriginal faith’s latest canonization: the state funeral of Charles Perkins, who had died on October 18 after 29 years of daily medical dependence on the “whitefella” culture...
Are Abortion & Gay Rights American Values?
“My religion defines who I am. And I’ve been a practicing Catholic my whole life,” said Vice President Joe Biden in 2012. “I accept my church’s position on abortion as . . . doctrine. Life begins at conception. . . . I just refuse to impose that on others.” For four decades, Biden backed the...
The Enlightenment and the Millennium
Conor Cruise O’Brien, the Irish diplomat-journalist-scholar and one of the more astute writers of our time, lapses into spiteful diatribe in this collection of essays. Provoked by the position taken by the Vatican on abortion and contraception at the Cairo Conference on Population and Development in September 1994, O’Brien fears an orthodox Catholic and fundamentalist...
The Truth About Afghanistan
If anyone hasn’t heard about it by now, “our” government has been lying about the lack of progress being made in the seemingly eternal war being fought in Afghanistan. In the 18 years of the longest war in U.S. history, more than $1 trillion has gone down the drain, along with thousands of lives, in...
Glenn Beck, the Straight Dope
A few years ago, I was invited to appear on Glenn Beck’s television show. We were scheduled to discuss the nonsecurity spending Congress had stuffed into the supplemental appropriations bill being used to pay for the Iraq war: money for peanut farmers, spinach growers, etc. (The Iraq occupation itself should probably fall into the category...
A White Pill for Disappointed Populists
President Donald Trump conceded the 2020 election Thursday night. Many voices on the right and left are condemning him and his followers because a small number of his rally attendees that day briefly occupied the capitol building—one of whom, Ashli Babbitt, was brutally and unnecessarily slain by federal law enforcement. Some are suggesting that the...
The Hobbes Horror
Life within late-stage American Empire is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
The War Years
World War II seems both near and far away. In one sense, it seems like only yesterday that I was 17 years old, in uniform, and in Georgia and California. In another sense, that period is ancient history. We have traversed a century or more in human experience since the early 1940’s. The conflict was...
The Fire This Time
“You’ve damaged your own race,” said Mayor Michael Nutter to the black youths of Philadelphia whose flash mobs have been beating and robbing shoppers in the fashionable district of downtown. “Take those God-darn hoodies down,” the mayor went on in his blistering lecture. “Pull your pants up and buy a belt, ’cause no one...
Parties
Contrary to popular belief, political parties are not democratic institutions. They are extraconstitutional instruments of elite control, machines for corralling and pacifying the voters with platitudes. The appearance of advertising, public relations, and polling has strengthened this aspect of their character. This has particularly been the nature of the Republican Party, as should be evident...
Mr. Kennan’s America
No admirer of George F. Kennan’s should be surprised by the angry tone of the reviews his recently published Diaries has been receiving. Of the several I have read, in the British as well as the American press, all were, to some extent or another, willfully unsympathetic. That is only to have been expected, Kennan...
Sympathetic Magic
Endorsements by Christopher Hitchens and Nora Ephron do not inspire confidence in Bright-Sided. Nor does Barbara Ehrenreich’s website, with its list of soporific-sounding previous publications, which includes Long March, Short Spring: The Student Uprising at Home and Abroad and Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers. Her enumerated interests also threaten tedium—healthcare, peace,...
Smoke From Ritual Fires
Sacrifice, a word not often heard in the nation’s capital during the past dozen years, is being spoken by Washington politicians again. Since none of these gentlemen or ladies has been noticed even to observe Lent, much less to abstain from newly acquired powers, perquisites, and salaries, the rest of the country may be likened...
On Rediscovering Identity
Sean Scallon’s “Letter From Quebec: Talking About Culture” (Correspondence, July) is an excellent report on the recent provincial elections in Quebec. As explained by Mr. Scallon, the ADQ has attempted to reintroduce the question of Quebec culture into the political arena. This emphasis on cultural identity by M. Dumount and the ADQ raises a generally...
The Third World Revisited
“Sixty thousand blacks are annually embarked from the coast of Guinea, never to return to their native country; but they are embarked in chains; and this constant emigration which in the space of two centuries might have furnished armies to overrun the globe, accuses the guilt of Europe and the weakness of Africa.” —Edward Gibbon...
Land of the Rude, Home of the Jerk
There must be some reason or reasons, why the Jerk has become the archetypal American character. Without going too deep into themysteries of social history, here is a little experiment that might stand in for several hundred pages of tedious social history. Herewith a little theoretical foundation for my continuing study of Jerkus americanus....
Stop Funding the ‘Rights for Migrants’ Legal Scam
As migrants invade U.S. cities, public advocacy lawyers profit big time.