New federal hate-crimes legislation is on the way. Never one to miss an opportunity to expands its powers, the national government has capitalized on a perceived rash of hate crimes in order to increase federal jurisdiction, and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 1999 (HCPA) will probably become law in the near future. When confronted...
1118 search results for: Forgotten%252BHistory
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The Deliberate Infection Myth of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
Arguing with my liberal high school teachers did not endear me to them. It got worse when a day or two after one of these disagreements I brought to class material demonstrating the teacher had been feeding us a false narrative. The teacher was not doing so intentionally but simply out of ignorance, having accepted a...
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Wyndham Lewis and the Moronic Inferno
Looking back today at the achievements of the heroic modernists, we must do so with at least some degree of ambivalence. The presence of those colossi has receded with the passing of the years; and we no longer regard them as they themselves taught us to do. Yet they still loom on the mental horizon,...
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Shafik and Other College Presidents Have Mission Confusion
American colleges and universities have long been considered tops in the world, but this preeminence won’t last if they operate as mere indoctrination factories, turning out social activists instead of knowledgeable, independent thinkers.
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The Cost of Immigration—June 2009
PERSPECTIVE Immigration, Neighbors, and Enemiesby Thomas Fleming VIEWS The Economic Impact of Immigration by Peter BrimelowPaying for the Privilege. You Should Have Been Here Yesteryearby Roger D. McGrathWhen the Golden State was paradise. California Crashby John C. Seiler, Jr.The Golden State today. Mandating Failure by Edwin S. RubensteinFederal insistence on multilingualism. NEWS Bailing Out the Bucket...
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Beyond Left and Right
November 9, 1989, marked the end of the old politics and the old alignments; on that day, as the Berlin Wall fell, so did the political categories and alliances of half a century. The end of the Cold War meant a lot more than the end of communism as a viable ideology. It meant more...
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Tom and Sally and Joe and Fawn
The timing of Nature magazine’s “expose” of Thomas Jefferson’s alleged affair with his slave Sally Hemings received a great deal of press attention, coming as it did just before elections which were expected to determine a modern philandering president’s fate. At the same time, Joe Ellis, the author of the article, signed a full-page newspaper...
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The Crime of History
He who writes a nation’s history also controls its future—so wrote George Orwell. During the Soviet reign over Eastern Europe, every citizen knew who was in charge of writing history, especially that dealing with the victims of World War II. Anyone professing to be a Slovak, a Croat, a Ukrainian, or a Russian nationalist was...
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Feeding the Beast
When Angela Merkel became chancellor of Germany in late 2005, the conservative German newspaper Die Welt admitted that “Nobody knows in what direction she will take the country.” The liberal Berliner Zeitung was equally ignorant, wondering, “What will she be demanding from us citizens?” (In Europe, we have “democracies” of the kind in which politicians...
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Fuzzy Focus & Clear Vision
Every now and again a book appears which, despite its pervasive deficiencies, is destined to become a minor classic simply because it epitomizes the delusions of an epoch. Such, for example, were the bogus Sir John Mandeville’s Travels, a compendium of medieval credulity about men who walked on their heads or had eyes in their...
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To Be Or Not to Be Western Civilization
Shakespeare and the Idea of Western Civilization, by R.V. Young, is an invaluable defense of Shakespeare against modern anti-Western critics.
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Reflections on Chronicles
The March issue (“Against Ideology”) was a brilliantly perceptive one, notably as it stresses the utmost importance, for any true conservative, of defending loyalties to local mores and traditions, small hometowns and family farms, regional cultures—things that have passed the test of time and matter most to real people. With such ideas I could not...
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John-John Is My Co-Pilot
Aside from the non-resignation and non-ruin of President Clinton and the non-campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, the biggest non-event of 1999 was undoubtedly the non-survival last summer of John F. Kennedy, Jr., who, true to the traditions of his family, managed to seize international headlines when his own recklessness and incompetence led to disaster—this...
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Remembering Donald Davidson
Lewis P. Simpson, in his memorable preface to The Literary Correspondence of Donald Davidson and Allen Tate, evoked Thomas Carlyle’s description of Robert Burns to hail Davidson’s own achievement. Burns, wrote Carlyle, was a “piece of right Saxon stuff: strong as the Harz-rock, rooted in the depths of the world;—rock, yet with wells of living...
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White Guys and 9/11
Whiteness and maleness lately have been under constant attack. It’s worth remembering that 23 years ago our culture celebrated four white male heroes who stopped a terrorist attack in the skies above Pennsylvania.
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A Divisive Statement
The Dixie Chicks have caused quite a stir in Lee Greenwood’s America. To recap, for those who have taken E. Michael Jones’ advice and drop-kicked their television set out the front door: On March 10, during a concert in London, singer Natalie Maines said, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United...
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Our Sacred Anticanon
I arrived a few minutes late for the meeting with the hippie roofer. Two many DUIs had cost him his driver’s license, and I had to take him to the home-improvement store. “Been to church?” he asked. Dressed in a suit at 10:30 on Sunday morning, I was forced to admit the fact. “I’ve read...
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A Model for the West
Ciechocinek lies about 200 kilometers northwest of Warsaw, near Torun, the birthplace of Nicolaus Copernicus, in the Kujawy-Pomorze (Kuyavia-Pomerania) region. It is a spa and resort town of about 14,000 permanent residents, known for its unique titration towers—large wooden structures with thick layers of bramble, through which water from nearby salt springs is filtered into...
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A Cultural Evening in Grenada
During the four-and-one-half years of Cuban hegemony in Grenada, I often had cause to cross a country road from my house on the Pointe Salines peninsula to the Headquarters of the DGI (Directorio General de Intelegencia) to complain about the noise. Would they please turn down the altavoz or speaker system beaming Castro’s speeches at...
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Three Classic Critics of the Revolution: A Bastille-Day Meditation (Part II)
Edmund Burke was not the only great early critic of the French Revolution. De Maistre and Taine also developed strong, distinct criticisms of the revolutionaries in the period immediately following the Terror.
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The Diner’s Refrain
With former president Bill Clinton settled into his new headquarters on New York’s 125th Street, in central Harlem, the danger for the culinary crowd is that he may now take to hanging out at Sylvia’s, the famous soul-food restaurant barely three blocks away on Lenox Avenue near 126th. For almost 40 years, the family-owned restaurant...
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Chained Bible
The Church of England is now a citadel of advanced liberalism. It went over to secularism long ago, and its zealots intensify their hold upon doctrine and practice. The charge sheet includes, but is not confined to, support for the transgender lobby, for illegal immigrants, and for pandenominational movements. The Church smiles upon the “marriage”...
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Occupying Iraq
Beirut’s occupation in 1983 by U.S. Marines may provide a small-scale sample of what a prolonged U.S. occupation of Iraq could be like, should the Pollyannaish postwar scenarios of some members of the War Party fail to materialize. Of course, the two situations are, in some ways, very different. Beirut, for instance, is just a...
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Ireland’s Forgotten Genocide
Despite much handwringing about British colonial misdeeds in Africa and the Caribbean, the systematic, purposeful extermination of more than a million Irish during the potato famine of the 19th century gets little attention.
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Now He Knows the Rest of the Story
“Hello, Americans. This is Paul Harvey. Stand by for . . . news!” His voice was arguably the most recognized in the history of radio. His broadcasting career lasted over three quarters of a century, from his days as a high-school intern at KVOO in his native Tulsa, Oklahoma, until 2009. Yet few of the...
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His Land, His People
“Dickinson was, in truth,” writes William Murchison, as much philosopher as writer, a man to whom God had imparted the gifts not merely of expression but also of examination and reflection. Among the large fraternity active in the cause of independence, he gave place, intellectually, to no one. That being indisputably the case, Dickinson’s inclusion...
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Inspiration and Craft
“Take these two books,” is an entirely arbitrary prompting by an editor who happened to have them around on a shelf. Willy-nilly, here they are together, and one looks at them, shuffling through the poems, some familiar and some not. And there is a moment when the rightness of the conjunction seems wonderful! A piece...
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Autopilot Wars: Sixteen Years, But Who’s Counting?
Consider, if you will, these two indisputable facts. First, the United States is today more or less permanently engaged in hostilities in not one faraway place, but at least seven. Second, the vast majority of the American people could not care less. Nor can it be said that we don’t care because we don’t know....
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Treason Against the New Order
I was doing my best to mind my own business on a very busy Saturday. My wife was in England, and after nearly two weeks of playing mother, I was catching up on the laundry, shopping for the dinner I would have to prepare, and, in between trips to the store, I had to take...
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Who Is Pete Schaub?
When Pete Schaub, a business major in his senior year at the University of Washington at Seattle, couldn’t get into an overenrolled business course for the first quarter of 1988, he signed up for “Women 200: Introduction to Women Studies” instead. He was expecting to learn about “the history of women and the contributions that...
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Real Jews
Exploration of the relationship between Jews and America is far from complete, at least among Jewish conservatives, who do not rely on their religious traditions as explicitly as do some among the Christian right. There has been some speculation in Jewish circles that the reason Jews in America have prospered is because both Judaism and...
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The Centaur
I used to make fun of them, those barelegged, ball-capped figures grunting under the weight of 90-pound loads giving them the appearance of Neil Armstrong on the moon or a man bearing his own coffin on his back: tall, headless silhouettes lurching from around a bend in the trail to dispel the illusion of primordial...
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The Cajuns of Louisiana
In the 1980’s, “Cajun” suddenly became “cool.” From rotund Chef Paul Prudhomme and high-rolling Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards to the music of Beausoleil and “blackened” redfish, anyone and anything associated with the remnants of French culture along the Gulf Coast was “in.” The nation eagerly embraced the battle-cry of the Cajun: “Let the good times...
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Showdown at Gettysburg
Sitting through a showing of the recent film Gettysburg in a multiplex theater amid the abstract sprawl of suburban Yankeedom was somehow an unnerving experience. I don’t mean to say that the movie itself was off-putting or unsuccessful, though come to think of it, there were a few awkward moments here and there. No, the...
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The Making of a Banana Republic
Now that the Rubicon has been crossed and we have entered a world in which politicians attempt to not merely defeat their opposition at the ballot box but also prosecute and incarcerate them, there is no going back.
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Marriage and the Law
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s 4-3 ruling, in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, that the Massachusetts constitution—if not the federal Constitution—requires the state to allow same-sex marriages has thrown nearly everyone into a good old-fashioned tizzy. The Massachusetts court somehow discovered that it was “arbitrary” and “capricious” and therefore legally impermissible to limit the...
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A Message for Boys
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...
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Daffodils for Wordsworth
The name Philip Larkin (1922-1985) is a wonderfully poetic one, conjuring an image of a lover of horses on a carefree adventure. Such, however, is far from the temperament of this 20th-century poet, whose poetry is more suggestive of some horse in a Dickens novel, harnessed to an industrial wheel and moving forever round in...
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Remains of the Day
Freddy Gray’s “Brexit: What Now?” (City of Westminster, September) reads like the continuation of the Remain campaign by other means. After a balanced opening, his article tilts like the final stages of the Titanic. Some instances. Donald Trump said, on the day of the result, “What I like is that I love to see people...
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One More Wallow In Fantasy?
The Patriot, Mel Gibson’s epic about the American Revolution, opened (by an amazing coincidence) in theaters on Independence Day weekend. And cynics complain that Americans don’t take national holidays seriously anymore! Many viewers may regard the film as one more wallow in fantasy and stale popcorn, but among the nation’s literati, it has actually incited...
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Time
“I wanna go back and do it all over But I can’t go back I know I wanna go back ’cause I’m feeling so much older But I can’t go back I know” —Popular song by Eddie Money (1986, CBS Inc.) Mostly we take space for granted so long as we have enough of it....
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Gigantic in Everything
When you visit a foreign capital for the first time, sooner or later you are likely to be asked the question: “What do you think of our country?” or “What is your impression of this city?” In St. Petersburg, which I had visited in May, I had a ready answer: Everything there (the worst as...
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The Sea Gave Up the Dead
“Lord, he looks so peaceful,” Miss Alice said tearfully. I braced myself for a long two hours at my post—and that was before the funeral started. Interrupting my thoughts, she looked up at me and spoke in a whisper that was loud enough for Pastor Brown, who was standing on the other side of the...
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Home Rule
The city-state is the seedbed of civilization, but the concept seems alien to the American tradition. Nonetheless, our cities did once possess, at least before the Revolution, many of the same rights enjoyed by English and European burgs. In the Anglo-American world, the liberties of cities were defined by the charters they received either from...
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Polish-German Reconciliation in an Historic Town
On August 29, 2004, just before my departure from Poland, I attended an important ceremony at the small, historic town of Nieszawa, which lies near the Vistula River, about 200 kilometers northwest of Warsaw, in the Kujawy-Pomorze (Kuyavia-Pomerania) region or Voivodeship (Wojewodztwo). It was a sunny and rather hot day. The town, which currently has...
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Memories and Modernity in Kasbah Country
I first visited Morocco in January 1943 as a young officer affected, with others, to the Casablanca Conference; it was considered sack time, after sterner service in the Western Desert, so called, or Libya. Originally it was to have been between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, but Uncle Joe, as both called the Russian dictator, sulked...
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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...
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Tommy Flanagan
Early one evening in the mid-1980’s, jazz pianist Walter Bishop, Jr., who in 1951-52 had performed and recorded with star bebop alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, was having a bad first set at Bradley’s, New York City’s premier jazz piano bar. Bishop’s sense of time was off, he was missing notes, and he even seemed disoriented...
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Mayday
Last night’s quip went round the country: “Theresa May fell on her sword—but missed.” She is indeed, like Charles II, an unconscionable time dying. That monarch however went on—though not for long—to say that he hoped they would excuse it. No such hope for May: she is already arraigned at the bar of public opinion...
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Chopin’s Life and Times
Alan Walker has insisted, at the very beginning of his massive new biography of Chopin, that the composer has today a unique global reputation and appeal. And when we consider the evidence that justifies his claims, we must admit that this evidence is most impressive—and also that some of it is the opposite: doubtful and...