“All may have if they dare try a glorious life or grave.” I saw those words—George Herbert’s, as it turned out—incised into the stonework of a church near Waterloo Station. There was a little churchyard nearby, it was a warm spring afternoon, and I think I must have read those words over a thousand times. ...
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A Christmas Parable
It was beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. The stores were staying open until midnight, and the crowded malls were noisy. But all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. We had just settled down for a long winter’s nap, when there was a clatter on the roof and...
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The Town Meeting
When America was closer to her democratic roots, citizens held town meetings to discuss problems and vote on policies. I was born too late to participate in any of those meetings myself, but the idea of getting together with other concerned citizens to discuss important issues has a nostalgic appeal for me. Consequently, I jumped...
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Cupid’s Thunderbolt
In the weeks immediately following the encounter with the illegal immigrants in the arroyo, Jesús “Eddie” and Héctor were men possessed by a single idea, though not the same one. Jesús could think only of joining up with the recently formed Critter Company, based in El Paso but with a chapter in Deming, and fighting...
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Political Art and Artful Politics
We speak as readily of the art of politics as we do of the art of cooking or writing, and what we have in mind in each case is what the French call savoir faire. This sense of “art” claims excellence for the activity of which the term is predicated, and since to know what...
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Conrad Aiken
I was to meet Cap Pearce at his office at 12:30, for discussion of a book contract and for one of our lunches at a small Italian restaurant in the East Thirties where the veal scallopini was well pounded and the wine muscular. But Cap called and said, “Come early. Conrad Aiken will be here...
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The Electric Conductor
Back in the day, was there anyone more famous than Arturo Toscanini? Everyone knew who he was, what he did, and what he looked like. He was more famous than Walt Disney and got coverage like a movie star. And even the sight-challenged were aware of his performances and recordings. The first recording I ever...
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A Real Place
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! —Sir Walter Scott This work reminds me, on an appropriately more modest scale, of John Lukacs’s book on Philadelphians. Both hearken back to a time when Americans were a semicivilized people who lived in...
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Old Times There Are Not Forgotten
I’m sure some readers of these letters are tired of hearing what a special place the South is. So I’ll warn you: I’m going to say it again. And I’m going to quote all sorts of other people who say it, too. Come back next month if you can’t take it. The South is a...
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Chronicling the Fall
“Folly is often more cruel in the consequences than malice can be in the intent.” —Halifax The correspondence of Edmund Burke, whose letters help to illuminate his published works, was not available in a complete edition until 1978. Today, however, it seems that every aspiring journalist begins saving his correspondence even...
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Unending Journeys
Few subjects arouse such atavistic emotions as migration—whether the arrivals come as conquerors or as kin, fleeing ordeals or seeking opportunities. For incomers, migration can represent a dream, a rational choice, an urgent necessity, or a last hope. For recipient countries, it can be an infusion of energy, a reunion, a social challenge, or an...
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A Soviet Psychosis
As Mikhail Gorbachev moves forward in his role as the new Vozhd of the USSR, he must take pride in a unique achievement. In a few years, he has managed to internationalize a Russian word—glasnost—and by its repeated use at home and abroad has dazzled the world with miracles that have yet to materialize. Whatever...
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Southern Men, American Persons
“Sweet home Alabama / Where the skies are so blue.” It has been many years since anyone made money from patriotic songs dedicated to Illinois or New Jersey. Chicago and New York have their anthems of course, to say nothing of San Francisco, but no one is going to get into a fight over “the...
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The Journalist and the Fixer: Who Makes the Story Possible?
We were already roaring down the road when the young man called to me over his shoulder. There was a woman seated between us on the motorbike and with the distance, his accent, the rushing air, and the engine noise, it took a moment for me to decipher what he had just said: We might...
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Perot, the Proto-Trump
One evening in the fall of 2015, with the unlikely Donald J. Trump already dominating the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, I ran into Ross Perot, Jr., at an exclusive charity event in Dallas. Perot is a billionaire real estate developer and the only son of H. Ross Perot, who campaigned for president...
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George O’Brien: American Star
WWI veteran George O’Brien became a star in Hollywood with his breakout performance in John Ford’s silent film epic, The Iron Horse. Handsome and built like the top athlete he was, O’Brien appeared in 11 more Ford movies and 85 films altogether, a successful career punctuated by voluntary and selfless distinction in two more wars,...
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The Banality of Banal
I first thought I would title this review “Memoirs of the Imperial Jester.” The jester being one who, though of no importance himself, is always present at the imperial court, I thought I discerned certain parallels between him and the author of A Life in the Twentieth Century. After looking into its pages, however, I...
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THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE: THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN ORDER: January 2007
PERSPECTIVE Two Oinks for Democracyby Thomas Fleming Looking out for number one. VIEWS The Declaration of Independence and Philosophic Superstitionsby Donald W. Livingston Meaning without culture. Nationalism or Patriotismby Thomas Storck Love of an idea versus love of place. Harry Jaffa and the Historical Imaginationby Tom Landess Reconfiguring souls. NEWS WMD Negotiations Must Be Based...
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Law, Morality, and Religion
A paleoconservative thinks about the law the way Edmund Burke did. The basis of all law is the will of God or, to use the term employed by Blackstone (another hero of paleoconservatives), “natural law.” According to natural law as understood by Blackstone, Burke, and our late 18th-century American Founding Fathers (as paleoconservatives can still...
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Tale of a “Seditionist”
Lawrence Dennis was an outsider in a movement of outsiders, a unique and largely solitary figure whose career as a writer—and notorious “seditionist”—embodies the tragedy and bravery of the Old Right, the pre-World War II “America first” generation of conservative intellectuals and activists. In many important ways, Dennis is the prototype of modern “paleo conservatives.”...
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The Titanic 90’s
Titanic Produced by James Cameron and Jon Landau Directed by James Cameron Screenplay by James Cameron Released by Paramount and 20th Century Fox The umpteenth movie about the sinking of the great ship finally meets modern standards. James Cameron’s Academy Award-winning Titanic may be the “movie of the year,” but it is just as dishonest,...
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The Myth of Learning Disability
In advertising, it’s called weasel type, those tiny bits of typography which explain the nut of the matter (Offer expires on May 31, 1997. Employees of XYZ Corp. are ineligible). So, here goes the weasel type of this discourse. I am not a teacher. Nor am I a mother. Not even a research scientist, a...
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Homo Sovieticus Lives On
To the old popular proverb, “The only good communist is a dead communist,” we should perhaps now add: “Once a communist, forever a communist.” Although as a muscled ideology communism is dead, as a way of life it is still very much alive. Similar to any other past and present mass belief or theology, communism...
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A Week of Mondays
“There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson What helps set this study apart is its still largely verboten subject. Joseph Scotchie devotes his attention to that part of the American right that Lee Edwards, Jonathan M. Schoenwald, and William Rusher...
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A Tale of Two Cities
Visits in the space of ten days to Toronto, Ontario, and then Tifton, Georgia, demand reflective analysis for stronger reasons than the compelling force of alliteration. The city and the town are so different that the visitor to both is driven to look for the faintest similarities. Once that effort is made, however, sweeping conclusions...
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Remembering Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt boldly addressed the most pressing political questions at a time of deep social and ideological division. His thought continues fascinating young scholars.
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On the Blue-Eyed Coulter
Robert Stacy McCain’s main point in his review of Ann Coulter’s Godless: The Church of Liberalism (“Is Ann Coulter Among the Prophets?” September) seems to be that those of us who are not blonde and blue-eyed should not envy those who are. (“But we all cannot be blue-eyed blondes, and, in the Age of Media,...
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What a Swell Party This Is
The final presidential election of the millennium is still more than a year away, but by last summer rumblings of discontent with the plastic dashboard figurines who are the leading candidates of the two major plastic dashboard political parties were already audible. The rumblings first attracted national notice when Pat Buchanan, in the course of...
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Sublimal Messages
From a black background an eerie, white sphere illuminates three ice cubes in a glass of clear liquid. At first, there is nothing special about the pallid image, except maybe the lack of color. But look again. Below the glass the bold white letters read “ABSOLUT SUBLIMINAL.” Something tugs at your memory. The word “Subliminal”...
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Rotten Democracy
For decades, Kenya has been an oasis of peace, compared with her neighbors Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, and Somalia. That changed on December 30, 2007. After 24 years of the corrupt presidency of Daniel arap Moi, Kenyans had high hopes when, in December 2002, they elected Mwai Kibaki as their president for the next five years. ...
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The Origins of the Jerk
(Inspired by Clyde Wilson) Every human society has had its share of offensive or annoying people: busybodies and bores, poseurs and bullies, cheapskates and check-grabbers, hypocrites and egomaniacs. You might even be able to define some societies by the offensive characters they tend to produce or by the qualities they find most offensive. Southerners used to regard...
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Marbury v. Madison
The impact of judicial review has been profound and often detrimental to the rule of law in America. Judicial review is the power of the courts to void federal, state, and local laws and ordinances that they have determined to be incompatible with the U.S. Constitution. Certainly, national and state legislatures have passed laws that...
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Voices: An Excerpt From ‘Entered From the Sun’
“Are you acquainted with Christopher Marlowe?” “The poet?” “The same.” “I am surprised you do not speak of him in the past tense. He has been dead for some while.” “Since May of ’93, as it happens.” “Well, then,” Hunnyman tells the young man. “At that same time our company was performing in the North.”...
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Liberalism as Addiction
Modern liberalism, so apt to see every social pathology as a form of mental or emotional illness, invites the application of a similar perspective on itself. Whether the issue in question has to do with teenage promiscuity, adultery, prostitution, drug and alcohol abuse, kleptomania, school shootings, child abuse, gang warfare, or corruption in government (though...
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A Different Past
Sometimes historical scholarship tells us more about the present than about the past. In June 2005, an exhibit of Omar ibn Said’s The Life, the only known autobiography written by an American black while in bondage, was on display in the lobby of the U.N. headquarters. What made it even more significant was that The...
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Those Oldies But Goodies
An Italian-American restaurant I count on features sound reasons for my presence there, and that of others. I like the tone in that environment. There is an aspect of 1950’s atmosphere—the place is quiet, the lighting subdued, and the manners polite. The menu is gratifying when the garlic is held in control, and the service...
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Lament for a Lost Love
Oh, England! How have I loved thee, even though most of my forebears came from the doubtful Scots and Welsh borders, and not a few were 17th-century refugees from the turmoil of the German states. I am old enough to remember when many, many of us regarded you as our Mother Country, despite all the...
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America’s Forgotten 400th Anniversary
We seem to hear little this year about the arrival of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts in November 1620. Perhaps the coronavirus is the cause, or maybe the ugly mess and turmoil of our presidential election has overshadowed its remembrance. Or maybe political correctness has claimed another victim. Whatever the case, the 400th anniversary...
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Eternal Memory
As we round the curve, the driver pulls up short—at least, as short as you can when you’re only going five miles per hour in the first place. As the minibus shudders to a halt, we all shift in our seats to get a better view out of the windshield. There, up ahead on the...
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Academic Sins
Frank: “They threw me out for plagiarizing.” Ernest: “You were stealing songs?” Frank: “No, I was taking notes.” —from a Frank and Ernest cartoon (Frank has been expelled from music school) A graduate student asked if he could take a reading course; sitting at my feet, I thought, talking with the rabbi. He was...
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Shrinks Psychoanalyze Trump From Afar, in an Attempt to get MAGA Committed
When leftists couldn't beat Trump, they turned to psychiatrists. Cancellation by diagnosis is an old, and effective, left-wing tactic—and cleaner than firing squads!
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Neither Law Nor Justice
A few weeks ago, I was listening to Radio Moscow’s Joe Adamov answering mail-in questions from his North American audience. One query came from somebody in Nova Scotia: How important was Stalin to the Soviet victory in World War II? Adamov’s answer went like this: Stalin’s contribution to the war effort had been nil. Before...
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Under the Ruble or An Idiot Abroad
It was eight o’clock Moscow time when the overcrowded British Airways Jet landed at Sheremetevo Airport. Liberated from our Iron Maiden seats—BA seems to have squeezed in an additional seat per row—we made our way into the arrival hall, happily anticipating if not a good Russian dinner, then at least something to eat. The barely...
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The Black Nationalism of George S. Schuyler
Decisions, decisions. Such is the life of a black man in America today. Whether to be a black nationalist, a black Muslim, an Afrocentrist, or simply a color-blind Christian—a.k.a. an “Oreo,” a traitor to the black race. Such choices are not new; they were made by black Americans in earlier generations, dramatically in the ease...
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Why I Am Not a Socialist
Though Chesterton disliked socialism intensely, he did not regard it as the most serious danger facing Western civilization. Writing in 1925, he describes the socialist state as something “centralized, impersonal, and monotonous” but suggests that this is also an accurate description of the societies in the modern industrialized West that regard themselves as enemies of...
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Two Cultures
Four decades before Hillary Clinton coined the term “Deplorables,” Chronicles predicted how the battle lines in the culture war would be drawn.
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Come, Ye Thankful People
A “progressive” rap on “social conservatives”: All they crave is power to tell you whom to sleep with, and how, and what god (if any) to worship. This contrasts, naturally, with broad-minded types of the progressive persuasion, who don’t care what you do, morally speaking, so long as you don’t say or do anything insensitive...
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A Jolt from the Slumber of the Self
Werner Herzog, in his new memoir, turns his attention to himself, and singles out essential elements of his life that have given birth to ideas, perceptions, and films.
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Witnessing at The Hague
All history is to some extent contemporary, but none more so than that analyzed, interpreted, and sometimes constructed by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague. ...
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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...