Surely, no American city has endured such a history of disaster as Charleston, set beguilingly beside the Atlantic upon her fragile spit of earth between the Ashley and Cooper rivers. Fires, floods, epidemics, blockades, sieges, bombardments, hurricanes, and earthquakes have repeatedly scarred her, but arguably the great Charleston earthquake of 1886 was the most destructive...
On the fifth night of rioting, looting and arson in Minneapolis, the criminal elements were driven from the streets. By whom? By the same cops who had been the constant objects of media derision and mob hatred. Without the thin blue line, far larger sectors of dozens of America’s cities would be in ruins, burned...
“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” —Matthew 16:26 Our Lord taught us all about bad bargains. To lose your own soul and to receive in exchange that mere...
Bolshevism evolved into religion, some kind of materialistic pagan religion, which worships Lenin and his like as demigods, while considering lies, deceit, violence, the oppression of the poor, the demoralizing of children, humiliation of women, destruction of the family . . . and the reduction of all the nation to extreme poverty as the principles...
“Zeus gives no aid to liars.” —Homer Richard Gid Powers’ history is a powerful, even brilliant, piece of scholarship which documents one of the most bizarre political phenomena of the 20th century. While Soviet communism, in its 70-year dictatorship, was probably guilty of every conceivable crime against humanity, it was yet able to escape the...
“Ask the booksellers of London what is become of all these lights of the world.” —Edmund Burke Some 40 nonclassic books are discussed by Professor Perrin in this pleasant volume of literary preferences. By a classic, Noel Perrin means a work that everyone recognizes as highly important, even though one may never have opened it:...
Bridge of Spies Produced by DreamWorks SKG Directed by Steven Spielberg Screenplay by Matt Charman, Ethan Coen, and Joel Coen Distributed by Touchstone Pictures Steven Spielberg’s new movie Bridge of Spies recounts the Cold War spy swap America made with the Soviet Union in 1962. We gave the Russkies atom spy Col. Rudolf Abel (Mark...
Short reviews of The Constitution of Non-State Government, by T. L. Hulsey, and The Past Is a Future Country, by J.O.A. Rayner-Hilles.
Like 9/11, Hurricane Harvey brought us together. In awe at the destruction 50 inches of rain did to East Texas and our fourth-largest city and in admiration as cable television showed countless hours of Texans humanely and heroically rescuing and aiding fellow Texans in the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. On display this week...
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will return to the Kremlin as president in 2012, ending speculation on the fate of the “national leader” and of the “tandem” he had formed with current President Dmitri Medvedev. Medvedev nominated Putin on September 24 during the congress of the ruling United Russia party, dashing the hopes of reformers...
“Unrest in Syria has discomforted rather than shaken the regime of Bashir Al-Assad,” I wrote in the May issue of Chronicles (Cultural Revolutions, p. 6). “On current form it is an even bet that he will survive, which is preferable to any likely alternative.” The violence has become far worse since the editorial was written...
Joe Biden’s “pep talk” to the graduating students at the historically black Morehouse College was full of the left’s usual uninspiring lies.
Conservatives who fixate on Communism misunderstand the dynamic driving today’s left and bringing it to power. They are defending a Maginot Line around which the left has already made an end run.
America’s descent into banana republicanism continues apace, and on two fronts. To begin with, we learn that President Trump’s much-disdained assertion that Trump Tower was being wiretapped during the election campaign turns out to be absolutely true. On September 19, CNN reported that Paul Manafort, who lived in Trump Tower and was Trump’s campaign manager...
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), dead now for more than 20 years, continues to vex those for whom his poetry is not complete—or is not completely to be understood—without an intimate knowledge of his biography. At the time of his death, of course, Eliot’s reputation was somewhat in decline, despite the Nobel Prize of 1948, the Order...
German general elections are usually rather boring affairs, with polite debates, disagreements over minor issues and predictable outcomes. The one last Sunday was an exception. It was interesting not because the incumbent, veteran “center-right” Chancellor Angela Merkel (a nominal Christian Democrat), and the “center-left” opposition leader Martin Schulz (a nominal Social Democrat) differ on any...
Generation X, to which I belong, is a pious generation. You can easily become alienated from it unless you adopt the correct attitudes. Without the sociopolitical skills that today masquerade as good manners, it is quite possible to talk one’s way into trouble. The last time I felt threatened by educated middle-class people was in...
Joyce Carol Oates: The Profane Art: Essays and Reviews; E. P. Dutton; New York. Kenneth S. Lynn: The Air-Line to Seattle: Studies in Literary and Historical Writing about America; The University of Chicago Press; Chicago. Beyond any reasonable doubt, Matthew Arnold knew far more than did Samuel Johnson. Curiously, however, he was far less confident...
Just after 1 a.m. on July 22, 2019, Tyler Wingate, a 24-year-old white male, was driving on Livernois in Detroit when Lawrence Davis, a 24-year-old black male, bumped into him. The two pulled into a gas station to resolve the minor fender bender. Both got out of their cars. Wingate took one step when Davis...
In their desire to overcomplicate the world and, perhaps, elevate their own value in it, researchers delight in telling us that common sense is not very common. Perhaps that would mean something if those same researchers had the common sense to understand what common sense actually is. But they don’t.
Ten years or so ago Stephen Fry, English polymath, writer, TV personality, stage and screen actor, and many other things, gave a Spectator-sponsored lecture at the prestigious Royal Geographical Society. His theme was appreciation for America, where he said he would choose to live “in a heartbeat.” I know Stephen and paid extra attention to...
I find it hard to share Doug Bandow’s enthusiasm for the minimal religious freedom allowed Christians in Kuwait (“Letter From Kuwait: Religious Freedom in the Gulf,” Correspondence, November 2002). While Kuwait does allow Christian clergymen to minister to their flocks, it is those who have never heard the Gospel who primarily need the evangelist. Is...
“It is good also not to try experiments in states.” —Francis Bacon As a term, imperialism underwent a number of visions and revisions at the turn of the century when the fact itself was receding. There was Bernard Bosanquet’s British interpretation and, in France, the Baron de la Seilliere’s multivolume opus. Such were radically redefined...
In its lead editorial Wednesday, The New York Times called upon Congress to amend the National Emergency Act to “erect a wall against any President, not just Mr. Trump, who insists on creating emergencies where none exist.” Trump “took advantage” of a “loophole” in the NEA, said the Times, to declare “a crisis at the...
Let’s give credit where it’s due. Linda Greenhouse, retired Supreme Court correspondent for the New York Times, is a brilliantly qualified journalist: hard-working, creative, dedicated to the needs of her profession as she understands them. Which seems really to be the problem here; a problem large and grave, requiring critical analysis. Greenhouse’s very personal sense...
A nation lives by its myths and heroes. Many societies have survived defeat and invasion, even political and economic collapse. None has survived the corruption of the picture it has of itself. High art and popular art are not in competition here. Both may and do help citizens decide what they are and admire. In...
Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight . . . —Psalm 144:1 According to the Washington Post, McAllen, Texas is an “all-American city,” albeit one “that speaks Spanish.” So it’s small wonder that “immigration isn’t a problem for this Texas town—it’s a way of life.” ...
“John Glenn returns to space!” the headlines screamed, and I found myself screaming back, “I don’t care!” I guess it’s a generational thing: I wouldn’t understand. Why did so many people—especially children of the Baby Boom—care that this man, who has spent his entire life feeding out of the public trough (with a little dessert...
Nelson County, Marion County, and Washington County are collectively referred to by their inhabitants as the Kentucky Holy Land, and I don’t think the expression is meant to be entirely whimsical. Settled in the late 18th century by English Catholics from Maryland, the rolling green country is to this day marked by cattle farms, distilleries,...
Few theologians have influenced the spiritual life of the West as profoundly as the lay physicist Galileo Galilei when he successfully challenged the Church’s geocentric world view. Though the Copernican doctrine he championed was originally discovered by a devout Christian, Galileo redefined it within a mechanistic world view which exiled God to the periphery. Shaped...
In 1953, I saw a three-dimensional film for the first time. It was a André de Toth’s House of Wax, with that perfect slice of ham, Vincent Price, playing the curator of a wax museum in New York City, circa 1910. Having gone bats after a fire destroyed his original establishment, Price decides he can...
I did not mean to harm anyone when I bought a Bachelor of Arts degree in Child Psychology for $100. I meant it to be a bitter joke on myself I was going to hang it up in my room, much as an important man might hang a Playboy cartoon on a wall in his...
Once in a while I have to go to a hospital. Most people do. Of course, I go for medical reasons and don’t expect it to be a pleasure trip. Fortunately, the medical care I have received in New York hospitals is superb. But hospitals also function as hotels and restaurants. Patients must be lodged...
Murray Rothbard spelled out inflation’s devastating consequences before proposing his heretical solution: repudiation.
In the days and weeks ahead President Obama will face an important decision: whether to allow the conflict in Syria to escalate by approving Turkey’s and Saudi Arabia’s direct intervention, or to come to terms with the continued survival and expanding area of control of the government of Bashar al-Assad. Informed commentators note that this...
The Supreme Court missed the mark last year in unanimously shooting down a St. Paul, Minnesota, statute imposing criminal liability on those engaged in “hate speech.” The problem with the Court’s decision in R.A.V. v. St. Paul is that it dwelled on legal niceties rather than recognizing the time-tested, historically proven method for dealing with...
Herbert Hoover once praised the “American system of rugged individualism.” (This was the same Hoover who gave Americans a trial run of New Deal socialism.) The ideology of individualism is a classic piece of 19th-century claptrap. Once upon a time, people could speak of freedom and liberty without erecting an “ism” or “ology,” but as...
Yesterday brought the sad news that John McLaughlin, the host of the McLaughlin Group for 34 years, had died at the age of 89. McLaughlin managed to create a show that was informative, lively, and friendly to conservatives. When the McLaughlin Group premiered in 1982, political programming on television, by contrast, was mostly an exercise...
For hypothetical purposes, let’s say Joe Biden had spent the last four years in the White House and Donald Trump was the challenger. What if Biden was the one being dumped from office, despite evidence that Trump supporters engaged in questionable electioneering? What if election workers in heavily Republican areas had mistreated poll watchers in...
Ernest van den Haag: Smashing Liberal Icons: A Collection of Debates; The Heritage Foundation; Washington, DC. When the adversaries are aggressive and the topics provocative, debates are stimulating entertainment. And, too, many vigorous minds have shared Samuel Johnson’s relish for “talking for victory.” But for participant and auditor alike, the excitement is in being there—in the tones...
Much has been written in recent years on how courts construe law, whether it is the Constitution or a statute. The discussion typically addresses the judiciary’s search for the “intent” of the framers or legislators and reflects a continuing debate on what limitations our system of government places on a court when it applies written...
Too many members of my generation (postwar birth, 1960’s student) have a nasty way of ridiculing their juniors for their ignorance of history and their native tongue. Outrage at the students’ ignorance of U.S. history was expressed recently in the newspapers, but most of the test questions published were requests for an ideological opinion on...
“O money, money! . . . Thou art the test of beauty, the judge of ornament, the guide of fancy, the index of temper, and the pole star of the affections.” —Daniel Defoe It is an odd thing for someone who has written an approving book on Peter DeVries and who also has testified in...
We Americans are optimists. As people of goodwill and great intentions, we find it difficult to comprehend a system of government or a political philosophy that has no place for decency or compassion. From time to time, however, something happens that makes us face the facts of international life. Solzhenitsyn writes The Gulag Archipelago. Korean...
President Barack Obama surprised even battle-hardened pro-life Americans with his official remarks on the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that has, since 1973, littered garbage dumps across America with the corpses of 50 million babies, 32 percent of them African-American. In a White House press ...
“The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital.” With this defiant declaration, to a thunderous ovation at AIPAC, Benjamin Netanyahu informed the United States that East Jerusalem, taken from Jordan in the Six Day War, is not...
The American educational system at every level is an immensely expensive obstacle to culture and learning. America is not a Christian county. It is a post-Christian country. Ex-President Bush is guilty of great crimes and has done his country irreparable damage. (Although only an insignificant handful of people have noticed.) By launching ...
Cui bono? That is the question to ask now that the fur and feathers have settled from the celebrated January match between gamecock Vice President Bush and wildcat Dan Rather. Clearly the answer is George Bush. Before the encounter Bush had two serious liabilities: a general impression of wimpishness and a lingering taint (at least...
I wish to thank Chronicles for the insightful parts of Derek Turner’s recent “Letter From Rumania” (“What Civilization Remains,” Correspondence, June). Some portions are extremely lively and convey a vivid picture of his experiences there. As an informed reader, however, I was struck by the one-sided view the article imparts in several ways to the...
With his declaration Friday that the Iran nuclear deal is not in the national interest, President Donald Trump may have put us on the road to war with Iran. Indeed, it is easier to see the collisions that are coming than to see how we get off this road before the shooting starts. After “de-certifying”...