Through the long Memorial Day weekend, anyone who read the newspapers or watched television could not miss or be unmoved by it: Story after story after story of the fallen, of those who had given the “last full measure of devotion” to their country. Heart-rending is an apt description of those stories; and searing are...
Having turned 60 last month I should start taking stock of my life, making the reasonable assumption that the best is behind me (infantile baby-boomer assertion that “sixty is the new forty” notwithstanding). Yes, I am doing that, but such musings are not to be shared. A byproduct, which may be of some interest to...
The interstate highways, John Steinbeck complained in his 1962 memoir Travels with Charley, “are wonderful for moving goods but not for inspection of a countryside. When we get these thruways across the country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.” When...
We were driving past the Pavilion de Flore, which punctuates the southwestern extremity of the Louvre’s Grande Galerie, when my neighbor suddenly gripped my arm and exclaimed, “Mira! Estos techos! estas chimineas! Hombre! Estupendo!” (Look! Those roofs, those chimneys! Man alive! Stupendous!) Such was the reaction of the famous Spanish cartoonist, Antonio Mingote, to his...
Robin N—wasn’t sure what was wrong. The suburban Milwaukee mother of three had experienced a pang upon turning 35, but these “pangs” seemed to be intensifying as the months passed. Sometimes, they took the form of paralyzing depression; other times, of anxiety verging on panic. She found herself fearful of going out in public or...
“Everything is good when it comes from the hands of the Almighty; everything degenerates in the hands of man.” —Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile Not the least of the ironies of the modern age is that the more it pretends to rationality, the more it wallows in the irrational. In the last...
San Antonio, Texas, America’s seventh-largest city, has always owed its troubles, as well as its glory, to its geographical situation within the state, and not just because it is the nearest large city to Mexico. The city sits on the Balcones Escarpment, the line separating the hot, semiarid lowlands to its south from the beautiful,...
“The call for free trade is as unavailing as the cry of a spoiled child for the moon. It never has existed; it never will exist.” —Henry Clay During the closing days of the 1993 congressional debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 300 of the nation’s leading economists, including two Nobel Laureates,...
President Barack Obama’s tirade on June 14 was filled with angry passion. His rhetoric was not directed against the perpetrator of the Orlando attack and his ilk, however, but against the (unnamed) GOP nominee and others who do not subscribe to Obama’s fundamental views on the nature of Islam and his “strategy” of confronting the...
The wave of articles and books concerning nuclear-weapons policy has reached flood stage since 1981 in the wake of the protests launched by the born-again peace movement. The timing of this effort provokes suspicion. It is hard to take seriously as pacifists those figures who mix their opposition to American military policy with support for revolutionary...
The human universe, we are told by optimists on the editorial pages, is contracting into a gray and insipid doughball, pasted over with brightly colored labels advertising the only ethnic rivalries that persist: the struggles between Nissan and Daimler, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. Unfortunately, there are people around the world who do not read...
Item: An American of Greek origin calls a congressional office to protest United States policies in Bosnia that would place Christian Serbs at the mercy of a hostile Muslim regime. “So-called Christians,” corrects a member of the congressman’s staff, ignorant of the caller’s religion. Item: A national opinion magazine carries on its cover a harsh...
After several weeks of fulminating about John Kerry’s war record and the medals he presumably awarded himself, at least some veterans of the Stupid Party eventually got down to the real point about the man who wants to replace ...
Does God take sides in conflicts between men? If He does, how can we tell? Is the side favored by God always victorious, or can a lost cause also have been blessed? Bob Dylan mocked the very notion of God taking sides in human warfare: Accept it with pride, For you don’t count the dead...
Joe Biden's latest fall demonstrates again that he is a massive liability as president. It also shows how America is suffering from gerontocratic rule, with aging Baby Boomers in their 70s and 80s dominating leadership positions.
Questions concerning the relationship between morality and law were reignited when, during the Republican primary campaign, Donald Trump commented on the matter of abortion and (implicitly) women’s rights. When pressed by a journalist, Trump stated that, yes, women should be “punished” if their behavior is illegal or contrary to prevailing community standards. Though abortion is...
“Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment governs them.” —Chesterfield Richard Nixon’s second term as president ended over two years early with his resignation on August 9, 1974. Someday, when President Reagan’s papers and telephone logs are made public, I think they will reveal that Nixon completed his presidential term in the second Reagan...
“The call for free trade is as unavailing as the cry of a spoiled child for the moon. It never has existed; it never will exist.” —Henry Clay During the closing days of the 1993 congressional debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 300 of the nation’s leading economists, including two Nobel Laureates,...
Christine Blasey Ford, the accuser in the infamous 2018 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has written an unrepentant and incoherent book while showing no remorse for the ordeal she caused others and the nation.
President Donald Trump’s address to the nation on Afghanistan was carefully crafted and well delivered. It did not provide a blueprint for winning the war, however, which remains his stated objective. Trump has settled for a compromise between all-out escalation, advocated by some of his generals, and the disengagement he had favored on the campaign...
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.
And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you. —Luke 22:19-20 These familiar...
Justin Raimondo, long-time Chronicles columnist, vociferous anti-war activist and a leading member of the paleolibertarian political movement, died Thursday at age 67 after a long battle with lung cancer. An influential champion of anti-interventionist foreign policy within the Libertarian and Republican political parties, Raimondo lobbed broadsides at warmongers left, right, and center from his post...
Long-forgotten is the early struggle between the Huguenots and the Spaniards for colonization of Floridian territory, where the Timucuan Indians dwelt.