Morphine is said to be good for people subject to severe depressions, or even pessimism. Although the drug first surfaced in a laboratory at the end of the last century, its basis, opium, had been used earlier by many aristocratic and reactionary thinkers. A young and secretive German romantic, Novalis, enjoyed eating and smoking opium...
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Putin’s Miscalculation
“This is worse than a crime,” Talleyrand famously said of Napoleon’s execution of the Duke of Enghien: “it is a mistake.” The same can be said of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, almost four weeks after it was launched. However the battle turns out–even if the Russian army achieves its operational...
Shotgun Marriage
“The Shadowy Female absorbing The enormous Sciences . . . “ —William Blake Reproductive control and genetic manipulation have been making the headlines for years. One day new developments in birth control herald a freer, happier world for women. The next day, knowledge also gained from those very same developments foretell a future of horror...
The Theatrical Tradition of Dorothy Sayers
In 1941, bestselling novelist Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) ignited a religious controversy that reverberated throughout England. Leading to discussion in Parliament, her BBC radio plays about Jesus were accused of being subversive and irreverent. Ironically, Sayers was motivated not by a defiance of tradition but by an intense desire to preserve it. Sayers’ lifelong interest...
On Joe McCarthy
Philip Jenkins’ essay about McCarthyism (“Goodbye, Senator McCarthy,” Breaking Glass, May) was an exercise in retailing received opinions about the Wisconsin senator and his countersubversion efforts. Without offering specific illustrations, Professor Jenkins execrated Senator McCarthy as “a liar and a jerk of the first order” who conducted a “campaign of name-calling, accusations, and smears ....
Free Speech or True Speech?
“Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit: and not a series of disconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.” —Edmund Burke Few names are more notorious in the contemporary academic and culture wars than that of Stanley Fish. Among conservatives, he is mockingly dismissed as the representative of all...
Sexualizing Children: NBA Edition
The national celebration of sodomy continues thanks to Sports Illustrated’s new cover story featuring the first “major sport” athlete to come out of the closet while still an active player. Jason Collins, a seven-foot-tall black man, writes his own “coming out” story in the current number of SI, along with several other pieces by writers who see...
Down But Not Out
NRA “Extremism”—down but not out. A year ago the National Rifle Association’s internal politics, by tradition kept out of the public spotlight, erupted into the mainstream press. According to NRA management and Beltway spin doctors, a group of extremists on the NRA Board of Directors was trying to fire NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre...
“We are in this for a long haul!”
Srdja Trifkovic’s latest RT interview on the Ukrainian crisis RT: After Russia’s steps to deescalate the crisis, they are still being criticized. Is there anything Moscow can do at this point to make Western leaders change their ongoing rhetoric? Trifkovic: Oh yes, Moscow could escalate the crisis, and then they would dearly like to come...
Needed: A North Korean “Plan B”
For years, the United States and East Asian nations have proceeded on the assumption that a diplomatic solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis is feasible. A settlement would entail Pyongyang’s renunciation of its nuclear ambitions in exchange for diplomatic and economic concessions by the other participants in the six-party talks. But what if the...
Let Us Pray (But to Whom?)
In May, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause is not offended when a city council opens its meetings with a short prayer (Town of Greece v. Galloway). While this result seems to be an example of commonsense constitutionalism, conservatives should not be too quick to pat the Court on the back. ...
A Speech of No Consequence
All too many speeches by major political figures are heralded as historic in advance of delivery yet prove to be irrelevant in the grand-strategic scheme of things. Churchill’s “we shall fight on the beaches” address in the wake of Dunkirk, for example, and his Iron Curtain speech at Fulton six years later were rich in...
Rockin’ in the 50’s
When the mode of music changes, Plato remarked, the walls of the city shake. When the mode of music changed back in the 1950’s, the denizens of Plato’s Pad—sorry, but there are so few opportunities to get in an allusion to The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis these days—and their peers saw more fingers than...
Conspiratorial Illusions
The Atlanta air is clear and sultry, yet there’s a different air in the Democratic Convention’s Women’s Caucus in the Hyatt Regency—an air of conspiratorial illusions which stifle zealotry with their cold, hard calculations, but promise victory and the triumph of total human rights. In the hallway adjacent to the meeting room I’m the recipient...
Our Daily Lies, From Tbilisi to Tripoli
A prominent opposition figure was shot dead last Sunday in the capital of a former Soviet republic. Had it been a “pro-Western reformist” in Moscow, you’d be force-fed the victim’s name for days on end. A legion of editorialists and “analysts” would be telling you that Vladimir Putin is behind the crime and that we...
Brazil’s Exceptional President
Jair Bolsonaro won the presidential election in Brazil on October 28 with 55 percent of the vote. The former army captain triumphed over Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers’ Party pledging to fight crime and corruption, to end affirmative action for “disadvantaged minorities,” and to shatter the straitjacketed discourse on race and sexuality. The leader...
Not a Smashing Success
It’s the little things—not the front-page disclosures—that suggest to us that we’ve been had. Take, for instance, a 1987-88 study by the Oregon Department of Transportation. ODOT studied 551 students between 16 and 19 years of age who had completed driver education programs, 581 students who said they would have taken the course had it...
The Gales of November
“You’re probably not going to like this,” David Dale Johnson said, “but I’m suggesting we ask the Board of Review to reduce the assessment by $30,000.” I had retained David as a hired gun in my attempt to get our house’s assessment, and thus our property taxes, lowered. David knows a thing or two about...
On Family Life
In the November 1996 issue of Chronicles, there is a review (“Heathen Days” by Gregory McNamee) of John Gillis’s book A World of Their Own Making. I do not know whether to blame the reviewer or the author, but I find many of the statements questionable. McNamee says “Gillis combs the census records to show...
Afghanistan’s Democratic Process
George W. Bush bailed last September’s parliamentary election in Afghanistan as “a major step forward” for the country’s democratic process. When the results were published at the end of October, however, it became obvious that the Wolesi Jirga (Lower House) will be dominated by warlords, veteran jihadists, and former Taliban officials. The new legislature will...
Confluences – Mysterious Activities
The Politics of Interpretation (University of Chicago Press; Chicago), edited by W. J. T. Mitchell, contains essays and responses to them by some of the leading literary theorists of our time–Booth, Bruns, Graff, Hirsch, Kristeva, Said, and others. One of the more lively controversies that emerge in the text has little to do with deconstructing,...
Anarcho-Tyranny: The Perpetual Revolution—April 2005
PERSPECTIVE Synthesizing Tyrannyby Samuel Francis The last word. VIEWS The Real Fight Is Here at Homeby Roger D. McGrathFallujah, California. Global Anarcho-Tyrannyby Srdja TrifkovicA game of chess. Samuel T. Francis, R.I.P.Clyde Wilson and Thomas Fleming remembertheir fellow Tarheel conspirator. NEWS Final Solutionby B.K. EakmanThe hostile takeover of America’s schools. REVIEWS My Favorite Justiceby Stephen B....
At the End of Italy
I am writing this from a cottage near Santa Maria di Leuca, on the southernmost tip of Italy in the Adriatic. As the luggage, including my maps and guidebooks, only arrived yesterday, I cannot really be expected to say anything worth believing about the land or the people. As for the curious inner workings of...
European Disunion
In early 1980, the Soviet Union appeared to be more powerful than ever before. Its hold over Eastern Europe had been sealed in Helsinki five years previously. Its presence or influence in the Third World was rising, while that of the United States was diminishing. The notion of its eventual demise was dear to a...
“Racial Balance”
The Rockford schools case continues, but for the first time since the “People Who Care” lawsuit was filed in 1989, there are signs of hope. As chronicled by Tom Fleming in these pages in February (“Here Come the Judge”), the Rockford public schools have been under federal control for the past three years, the result...
The Palin Perplexity
Sarah Palin is the best thing that's happened lately to the right and the left, both at the same time. Much of the right pays her obeisance for mobilizing the troops and smart-alecking the left—which in turn loves her for splitting (so the left hopes) the right over her personality ...
Setting the Stage
The Bolshevik Revolution’s 73rd anniversary set the stage for an angry dissident’s attempt to assassinate Mikhail Gorbachev at an outdoor rally. It would have been the first shot of the coming Russian revolution, which may be peaceful, but more likely not. Time is running out for peaceful change. Gorbachev’s new Treaty of the Union is...
Free Speech or Federal Tyranny?
Today’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church has encouraged many decent conservatives to think that the United States will not so quickly go down the garden path of political correctness as Canada and the EU. I think this view is seriously mistaken. As everyone knows, the Westboro Baptist “Church” is a...
A Bowl of Stew: A Story
I can’t forget the sorrow of my lodge brothers when the doors closed to our beloved home. We had to pay a bill for a new roof, then the ice machine in the bar went on us. When the jukebox broke, we couldn’t play “Poland Shall Not Perish While We Live to Love Her.” Neighbors around...
Of Locks and la King
A man whose reputation rivals that of the Clintons for dishonesty and lies recently claimed he overheard a gangster confirming that Bobby Riggs had thrown his match against Billie Jean King in the infamous Battle of the Sexes on September 20, 1973. King won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. According to the Clinton-wannabe, Bobby was $100,000 in...
An Empirical Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Man was wade of social earth.” —R.W. Emerson Ever since Frederika MacDonald published her massive two-volume work, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: A New Study in Criticism (1905), scholars favorably disposed toward Rousseau have pursued the difficult task of rehabilitating him from the “audacious historical fraud” perpetuated by Frederic- Melchior Grimm, Denis Diderot, and Mme. d’Epinay. On the...
The Lessons of Greed
I am not an economist. I do not want to be an economist, because I do not believe there is a science of economics, and from all I can gather there is no kind of ...
Can Trump Still Avoid War With Iran?
President Donald Trump does not want war with Iran. America does not want war with Iran. Even the Senate Republicans are advising against military action in response to that attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities. “All of us (should) get together and exchange ideas, respectfully, and come to a consensus–and that should be bipartisan,” says...
David Hume: Historian
Intellectual historians commonly group Voltaire, Edward Gibbon, William Robertson, and David Hume as the four greatest 18th-century historians. If limited to only one of these authors, we would do well to begin with Hume. For one thing, Hume is the only thinker in history who has achieved world-class status as a philosopher and as an...
Paleo Prophets
The 12 Southerners who contributed to I’ll Take My Stand (1930) must have been a terrible failure, for the South as well as the rest of the nation ignored their warnings and injunctions. Yet, in their failure—caused in part by the frustration of the Depression and sealed by the global engagement of World War II—they...
Stress Test for a Fading Superpower
Because America entered both world wars of the 20th century last, while all the other great powers bled one another, and because we outlasted the Soviet Empire in the Cold War, America emerged, in the term of President George H.W. Bush, as “the last superpower.” We had it all. We were the “indispensable nation.” We...
Bush Republicanism Is Dead and Gone
“The two living Republican past presidents, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, have no plans to endorse Trump, according to their spokesmen.” So said the lead story in the Washington Post. Graceless, yes, but not unexpected. The Bushes have many fine qualities. Losing well, however, is not one of them. And they have...
Give Us Your Coyotes
From Aesop on, through Ovid, Chaucer, La Fontaine, and Dryden, to George Orwell, the genre of the animal fable (whether in verse or prose) has been useful to moralists and critics of human behavior. Paul Lake’s satire belongs to this lineage. Identified as “A Political Fable,” it is, as the back cover asserts, a 21st-century...
Quod Scripsi, Scripsi
Reader: I wasn’t quoting you. I was characterizing your analysis as such. Me: You were mischaracterizing my analysis. What I have written, I have written. What you have written, I did not. Reader: Says you. Words have meaning. We live our lives, for the most part, in a world in which, on a clear spring...
Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture
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The Electric Vehicle Scam Grows
Americans with a sincere concern for the environment and with the concept of self-government should learn to restore an old car and drive it.
Stifling Dissent, One Publisher at a Time
The deplatforming of Arktos Press by an influential American book distributor is an ominous sign of the disappearance of intellectual freedom in the West.
The Atheist’s Redemption
In my last appearance in this space, I wrote erroneously that Christopher Hitchens had favored both Anglo-American wars on Iraq. In fact, he strongly opposed the first one, back in 1991. I remember this so vividly (I was delighted with him at the ...
A New Deal—April 2009
PERSPECTIVE Dead Romans and Live Americans by Thomas Fleming VIEWS