Perhaps I’m going crazy, but I thought I just heard NBC News and other respected information sources report that the recent burning of two Black Lives Matter (BLM) signs is being investigated as “potential hate crimes” by the Washington, D.C. police. Apparently these alleged hate crimes occurred as BLM and its sister organization (or rather,...
One of the dumber remarks of the 1984 Presidential campaign—a campaign notable for its dumb remarks—came from Joe Frank Harris, governor of Georgia. Asked if he approved of Geraldine Ferraro, he replied: “Yes. I asked her if she had eaten grits and liked them, and she said, ‘Yes’—and she passed the test.” He should have...
The Supreme Court’s ruling allowing affirmative action at the University of Michigan but striking down the school’s system of racial quotas led Linda Chavez, in a syndicated column entitled “Supreme Mischief and Racism” (June 26), to warn against desecrating a sacred vision. Forty years ago this August, “the Rev. Martin Luther King gave a speech...
The best-seller The Perfect Storm tells a true story of a ship caught in a vortex created by a continental low-pressure system, a tropical hurricane, and an arctic cold front off the shores of Newfoundland. This complex disaster comes to mind when trying to describe the nature of the crisis that nearly closed down the...
The Wisconsin primary could be an axle-breaking speed bump on Donald Trump’s road to the nomination. Ted Cruz, now the last hope to derail Trump of a desperate Beltway elite that lately loathed him, has taken the lead in the Badger State. Millions in attack ads are being dumped on the Donald’s head by super...
Freudian Fraud has an intriguing but difficult-to-prove thesis, namely that Freudian thought radically altered American society for the worse. An “audit of Freud’s American account,” says Torrey, shows more debits than credits. He believes the chief liability inherent in the Freudian system is its tendency to undermine traditional notions of responsibility. “Don’t blame me, blame...
“Jobs Issue Dominates Defense Cuts Debates,” the Los Angeles Times proclaimed in a recent article. The story informed us that the end of the Cold War has brought about layoffs for many workers in the defense industry. This, in turn, has led members of Congress to wonder if the reductions in military spending associated with...
On September 25, 1789, Congress submitted to the states for ratification ten amendments to the 1787 Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights. Seldom is there much serious reflection on the issues involved in a “Bill of Rights,” but there was a great deal in 1787-1789. Those Americans were highly informed political thinkers, versed in...
Antonin Scalia has been a public critic of affirmative action since at least 1979, when the Washington University Law Review published his modest proposal of a “Restorative Justice Handicapping System.” Scalia’s position, simply put, is that the government should not engage in racial discrimination, a position reflected in numerous opinions authored by Scalia. There are...
Proust wrote, in Time Regained, that “Style is a question not of technique, but of vision.” Technique may be said to inform and undergird the style, but the artistic vision has priority: It is the style. In Charles Edward Eaton’s recent collection, his 17th, comprising new verse (some published previously in Chronicles) and a generous...
“The purity of a revolution can last a fortnight.” —Jean Cocteau Magisterial works of history are almost always informed by a tragic sense of life. Some recall epochal transformations that were as lamentable as they were inescapable. Still others dramatize the clash of two valid, but irreconcilable, principles. Among the latter, certainly, are the best...
Everyone now knows what the Methodists have done to their hymnal. Inclusive language once again triumphs over not only tradition and elegance, but even reason. Economists arc not exempt from such folly. In an otherwise excellent and informative book, Breaking the Academic Mould: Economists and American Higher Learning in the Nineteenth Century, there is an...
PERSPECTIVE Imposing Utopiaby Thomas FlemingConcealing despotism. VIEWS Cincinnatus, Call the Office!by Clyde WilsonPublic service versus the American System. Judging for the Peopleby Stephen B. PresserDemocracy, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution. Democracy: The Enlightened Wayby Claude PolinThe your-fault society. REVIEWS A Government We Deserveby H.A. Scott Trask Sean Wilentz: The Rise of Democracy: Jefferson to...
Mary Pride’s informed prediction of technology’s radical transformation of higher education (“Hire Education,” September 1994) incorrectly noted that I advocated “cutting professors’ salaries.” In How Professors Play the Cat Guarding the Cream: Why We’re Paying More and Getting Less in Higher Education (George Mason University Press, 1992), I lacked the courage to invoke spousal rage...
The steamy morning reminded the congregation that Baltimore is on the shore and was once considered part of the South. The heat and the elderly substitute for the vacationing rector made the service informal and cozy, but if I had known the small church didn’t have air conditioning, I might have chosen some other Sunday...
“In the battle between democracy and autocracy, democracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security,” said President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address. “This is a real test. It’s going to take time.” Thus did Biden frame the struggle of our time...
Greg Kaza’s article on Canadian Red Tory and former prime minister Brian Mulroney (“Bush’s Red Tory,” Vital Signs, August) was well informed and insightful almost throughout. But near the end, Mr. Kaza erroneously stated that Reform Party leader Preston Manning “has no intention of abandoning his conservative base.” In fact, he already has. Except for...
Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life; by Zena Hitz; Princeton University Press; 240 pp., $22.95 “What do I need to know for the test?” This common refrain, repeated endlessly by high school and undergraduate students, sums up one of the great heresies of our age: the view that learning is a...
The New York Post‘s editorial page has been one of the few bright spots in the City of Dreadful Night. Generally a steamy tabloid in its news coverage, the Post has nevertheless offered thoughtful and informed editorials and Commentary of a mainstream conservative orientation under its editorial page editor, neoconservative Eric Breindel, and his deputy,...
If you think the removal of the Confederate Battle Flag from the grounds of the South Carolina capitol was the end of flag controversy, you may be surprised to learn that an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times declared, “It’s time California dump” the Bear Flag, “a symbol of blatant illegality and racial prejudice. ...
When Magic Johnson announced that he was retiring from basketball because he had tested positive for the HIV virus, the nation fell into the kind of cultural coma that is all too common in recent history. The national television networks interrupted regularly scheduled programs for live coverage of Magic’s news conference and ran nightly retrospectives...
Peter Hutchinson: Games Authors Play; Methuen; New York. During a conversation with Jorge Luis Borges at the Ingersoll Prizes ceremony in Chicago last December, we were informed that, in his estimation, “Literature is supposed to be enjoyed.” He added, “It is fun, is it not?” There was what can only be described as a whimsical...
The second law of thermodynamics poses a problem for evolutionary biologists. While it seems to predict increasing disorder over time, the record of evolution suggests ever-increasing order and higher levels of organization. The common solution to the paradox was to look for a balance between organic systems and their environment. Perhaps there was, as Schrodinger...
When Abraham Lincoln tried to explain the issue between North and South, he said it was a test of the conception on which America had been founded, “a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Lincoln, inadvertently revealing the principle on which a revolution was being...
In the run-up to Christmas, President Donald Trump has been the beneficiary of some surprisingly good news and glad tidings. Sunday, Vladimir Putin called to thank him and the CIA for providing Russia critical information that helped abort an ISIS plot to massacre visitors to Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. Monday found polls showing Trump...
Ronald Blythe: Characters and Their Landscapes; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; San Diego. Central though it is to any sound system of economics, the traditional notion of private property is wholly inadequate in the world of literature. As Henry David Thoreau once observed: I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of...
“Jan. 6, 2021, is not over, but it already lives in infamy. A sitting president of the United States, having lost re-election, incited a mob to storm the Capitol as the Congress sat in joint session to certify the Electoral College vote. This act was without precedent. It was based on a lie, fed by...
It is with sadness that I must inform you that I will not be renewing my subscription . . . the next time around. I was severely disappointed in the Thomas Fleming article “X2K: aut Christus aut nihil,” in the December 1999 issue. This is the second major disappointment I have experienced in an article...
Are we all going crazy? A few months ago, I read a newspaper column containing information so shocking yet unsurprising, so awful yet predictable, that I was overcome by emotional vertigo. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, I thought of John and Lawrence, two children I knew long ago, and disorientation was replaced by generalized depression....
In the third book of his Ancien Régime, Alexis de Tocqueville takes up the intellectual origins of the French Revolution. AT notes the at first sight strange phenomenon, that in absolutist France intellectuals were free to challenge the most fundamental political, social, and religious institutions and beliefs. While each “philosopher” had his own system and...
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...
Whether it ends with a whimper or a bang, the American Empire is ending. WikiLeaks shows that the empire can no longer control the dissemination of information. Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen show it can no longer militarily defeat insurgencies. Brazil, China, Iran, Russia, Turkey, and even Bolivia show it can no longer dictate the foreign...
As 1995 drew to a close, Senate Democrats and Republicans were still debating Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms’ legislation to restructure the State Department and its ancillary agencies. Helms wanted to jettison the United States Agency for International Development, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the United States Information Agency, fold their functions...
An article I read lately informs me that the Southern accent is endangered: the “post-vocalic r,” the absence of which has heretofore characterized most Southerners’ speech, is creeping in, especially in middle-class circles, and especially among women. Ordinarily I stand up for schoolmarms—a genuinely endangered species, there-but if they’re behind this revolting development, I say...
Barack Obama has just taken his first baby steps into a war in Syria that may define and destroy his presidency. Thursday, while he was ringing in Gay Pride Month with LGBT revelers, a staffer, Ben Rhodes, informed the White House press that U.S. weapons will be going to the Syrian rebels. For two...
The creative writing students in the small seminar room at Ateneo University in Metro Manila were answering my question about the relation of language to politics in the Philippines. With that youthful energy that is each generation’s greatest natural resource they talked about the “feudal system” Filipinos have lived under, about the centrality of village...
Last Wednesday China completed a major naval exercise in the disputed waters of the South China Sea. On July 3 it was reported that China was testing a new naval helicopter which “could fill a big gap” in its expanding fleet. Over the weekend, Australian media reported that the country’s navy was monitoring a Chinese...
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...
Informing Iran, “The U.S. is watching what you do,” Amb. Nikki Haley called an emergency meeting Friday of the Security Council regarding the riots in Iran. The session left her and us looking ridiculous. France’s ambassador tutored Haley that how nations deal with internal disorders is not the council’s concern. Russia’s ambassador suggested the United...
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...
The Christian Vision: Man in Society; Edited by Lynne Morris; The Hillsdale College Press; Hillsdale, MI. “Where there is no vision,” says Proverbs, “the people perish.” Because the vision provided by Judeo-Christianity has been fading for some time on America’s campuses, college graduates informed by a sense of purpose and meaning have become rare. As...
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...
The Jury is the greatest achievement of the Anglo-Saxon legal system. No matter how much pressure from kings and lords, or in our ease politicians and the media, “twelve good men and true” can do the right thing, so to speak. And that is exactly what they did in the case of Rodney King, although...
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 release praising the landmark case...
“Every artist,” wrote V.I. Lenin, “everyone who considers himself as such, has the right to create freely according to his ideals, independently of everything.” Who would have guessed that the author of this noble thought is none other than the originator of one of the world’s most repressive social systems! Even the most remote similarity...
The Justice Department has put the entire U.S. tax system in jeopardy by handing out an indulgence on unpaid taxes to the president's politically connected son, Hunter. It's easy for politicians to raise taxes if they know they won't have to pay them.
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...
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...
President Vladimir Putin has been facing several crises that could undermine Russia’s strategic interests. His inability to respond quickly and effectively reflects lingering complacency within areas of Moscow’s sphere of influence. Azerbaijan’s offensive against the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, encouraged and abetted by Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is testing Moscow’s ability to remain neutral in...
HASTINGS: ‘What news, what news in this our tott’ring state? CATESBY: ‘It is a reeling world indeed, my lord, And I believe will never stand upright Till Richard wear the garland of the realm.’ —(RICHARD III, 3.2.37-40) Catesby is testing out the reaction of Hastings to the question: where will he stand when Richard makes...