At Midsummer 1631, Barbary pirates from North Africa raided the Irish village of Baltimore, and took several hundred local people into lifelong captivity. Such a distant projection of Islamic power might seem extreme and even bizarre, but it was no such thing. Forgotten today, the danger of Arab and Turkish assault remained a nightmare for...
633 search results for: Forgotten+History
Post
Poems by Jorge Luis Borges
Texas Here too. Here, as on the other unfurling Frontier of the continent, the great Prairie where a solitary cry fades out; Here too the lariat, the Indian, the yearling. Here too the secretive and unseen bird That over the clamorous strains of history Sings for one evening and its memory; Here too the mystic...
Post
Displaced Persons
In an age of anti-elite anger, it might seem otiose to publish an academic analysis of aristocratic ideas in Western thought. But as the post-1945 order rattles itself to pieces, it is time to look past its bankrupted beliefs and discredited leaders for other guiding principles—principles based on history instead of ill-defined and naive hopes,...
Post
Causley at 70
My formal association with Chronicles began in February 1986, when, at the suggestion of its editor, I wrote an obituary of Philip Larkin. Looking back at the history of my loves, I explained that I had decided to buy and edit The Yale Literary Magazine because “my ambition in life was to find the poet...
Post
Trump: America for the Americans!
As the patriotic pageantry of Inauguration Day gave way to the demonstrations of defiance Saturday, our new America came into view. We are two nations now, two peoples. Though bracing, President Trump’s inaugural address was rooted in cold truths, as he dispensed with the customary idealism of inaugurals that are forgotten within a fortnight of...
Post
The Virtues of Property
Somewhere deep in their bones, Americans recognize that property is the paramount civil right—perhaps the paramount human right. Anyone who seriously studies American history, particularly that of the late 18th century, will discover that property, along with virtue, provided the foundation for American government. Indeed, the preservation of properly is arguably the chief reason we...
Post
“All Men Are Created Equal”
“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another . . .” The necessity has occurred. The 13 colonies have a long history as self-governing societies, a condition that is now threatened. As all governments derive their just powers from...
Post
Chorus Lines
The catastrophic burst of the housing bubble in the fall of 2008 shook the foundations of the world economy and instilled a fear of a new depression. Morris Dickstein notes with irony that he completed his cultural history of the Great Depression just as the country was entering a steep recession with parallels to the...
Post
A Giant Beset by Pygmies
Most newspaper and magazine articles are forgotten not long after they appear. Does anyone read the 25-year-old columns of Norman Podhoretz, William F. Buckley, or Richard John Neuhaus for insight into current events? It therefore tells us something when First Things prints a 20-page essay about a political journalist who has been dead for almost...
Post
GOP Blank Check for War?
High among the blunders of history was the “blank cheque” Kaiser Wilhelm gave Vienna, after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to deal with the Serbs as they saw fit. Five weeks later, Vienna cashed the check and declared war, after Belgrade refused to submit to all 10 demands of an ultimatum. Russia mobilized; Germany...
Post
Is This Worse Than ’68?
Saturday, in Pittsburgh, a Sabbath celebration at the Tree of Life synagogue became the site of the largest mass murder of Jews in U.S. history. Eleven worshippers were killed by a racist gunman. Friday, we learned the identity of the crazed criminal who mailed pipe bombs to a dozen leaders of the Democratic Party, including...
Post
Resolutely Abstract
The avant-garde, according to those who are supposed to know, has been entering the mainstream, but the commentators busy cataloging this development for future art historians seem to have forgotten that “avant-garde” and “mainstream” are mutually exclusive terms. Once our present has become past, it may become clearer that the greatest artists of this period...
Post
Fact-Free: Where No Center Holds
Facts were fuzzy in the ancient world. From Homer to Herodotus, from Thales to Plotinus, from the Old Testament to the New, myth, science, and history met and mingled, merging into amalgams that were almost invariably greater than the sum of their parts and yet less than what might pass our modern-day tests of peer...
Post
An Undereducated Admiral
Since there are no pressing global issues that cannot wait until next week, I’ll devote my column to a book I’ve just finished reading. Its title, Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans (Penguin, 2017), and the reputation of its author—retired admiral James George Stavridis, who ended his career as NATO Supreme...
Post
The War’s Destruction of Ukrainian Culture
One of the forgotten casualties of the war in Ukraine, as in all wars, is the loss of high-cultural monuments and works of art.
Post
Mommy’s Little Monster
Monsters are an ancient phenomenon in human history: There have always been individuals whose characters are marked by brutal, sadistic cruelty, who lack any redeeming instincts of compassion or mercy. Call them what we will—fiends or psychopaths, ghouls or serial killers—this type is by no means new to the later 20th century, however much the...
Post
America’s First and Best Economist
Practice free trade. Avoid government debt. Keep the government and the banking system separate from each other. These quaint and long-rejected policies were Condy Raguet’s prescription for American peace and prosperity. Now largely forgotten, Raguet (1784-1842) was one of our earliest and best political economists. Unlike some later advocates of a free economy, Raguet was...
Post
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...
Post
Neonatal Circumcision: Preventive Medicine or Mutilation?
During most of human history, religious explanations and rituals imparted meaning to people’s lives and justified controlling their conduct. Today, medical explanations and rituals often perform those functions. For example, masturbation and homosexuality were first forbidden on religious grounds, then on medical grounds. Being a male infant is, of course, not behavior. Accordingly, routine neonatal...
Post
The Angry Summer
Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight . . . —Psalm 144:1 According to the Washington Post, McAllen, Texas is an “all-American city,” albeit one “that speaks Spanish.” So it’s small wonder that “immigration isn’t a problem for this Texas town—it’s a way of life.” ...
Post
Forgetting a Villian
Imagine it is the year 2030, and you are talking to some young adults. To your horror, you find that they have never heard the name Osama bin Laden. As you begin to rant about the ignorance of the young, you find to your still greater astonishment that none of your older friends have any...
Post
Foss’s Flying Circus
In the early 1960’s, I was introduced to a fellow motorcycle rider by the name of Steve Foss. Before I could say anything, he quickly offered, “No relation to Joe Foss.” He had anticipated my question and that of nearly everyone he had met for years back. For most Americans back then, the name Foss...
Post
The Gascon of Europe
Now that communism is dead, a new specter is haunting much of Europe—the specter of nationalism. In several countries, for the first time since World War II, what may be conveniently termed nationalist, right-wing, populist parties are on the verge of coming to power, or at least of gaining respectable numbers of seats in government....
Post
Pire qu’un Crime . . .
“Arts, Culture, Reverence, Honour, all things fade. Save Treason and the dagger of her trade . . . “ —Oscar Wilde, “Libertatis Sacra Fames” The Pollard treason case is so unusual that I want to start my review of this book with a review of the reviews. I do this because the first-hand story by...
Post
Spying on the American Remnant
As a boy, your author lived in a working-class neighborhood just outside Houston’s city limits. My parents were the children of rural people who had come to Houston looking for work during the Great Depression. They lived in frame houses sitting on cinder blocks in Houston’s West End, a community of people Larry McMurtry called...
Post
“We Want the World, and We Want It Now!”
The Jerk virtually defines the American character of the 21st century. Ask any foreigner, and he will tell you amazing tales of badly dressed, obnoxious Americans who treat restaurant owners as their personal servants, snap their fingers, screaming Garçon! Garçon! for service, and complain about everything they eat. Too many American travelers have seen too...
Post
Syria: Too Much “Intelligence”
Only a few weeks into the latest round of horrors in Syria, we are getting used to the debasement of “intelligence” to serve the crudest political ends. In September, President Hollande showed the U.N. secretary general and journalists round the French military intelligence HQ at Creil north of Paris, where the amazed visitors admired the...
Post
A Future for Europe
Political scientists are now grumpy. Instead of waxing enthusiastic about the 40 days that shook the world—let us say from the crumbling of the Berlin Wall to Ceausescu’s execution—they resent the brutal intrusion of reality on their slumber. It used to be so comfortable to think in terms of superpower pseudo-polarity, and global democratization is...
Post
An Easter Reflection: The Mystery of Goodness
The sun broke through the thin, whispery clouds, and its reflection in a pool of water collected from the previous night’s rain caught my eye. Suddenly the day was bright and the morning as clear and joyful as hope itself. Resurrection Day. It was Easter morning in a year that will surely be marked down...
Post
I Remember
For some years I have lived in Québec as a friendly alien from the United States, traveling from time to time back to my native Minnesota and other states to practice law in my fields of interest. I am married to a French-Canadian wife who is a member of the bar and mairesse of our...
Post
Does America Deserve to Be ‘Great Again?’
It will take more than an economic revival to make America great again. We’re going to need a moral revival, too.
Post
Borderlines, Part 2
Tanks make good pictures—the idea of an invasion of Ukraine sends shivers down the spines of most of Europe—and keeping the tanks at bay is what the political class is expected, indeed offers, to do. The price, however, will be for nations to surrender just about everything else. And that price is now about to...
Post
Enthusiastic Democracy
Less than a month after President Bush unbosomed his latest reflections on political philosophy before the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, one of the latest victims of his administration’s crusade to foster the “global democratic revolution” in Iraq was grousing that what the administration planned for his country simply wasn’t democratic enough. The Grand...
Post
Go Figure
“A politician . . . one that would circumvent God.” —William Shakespeare In preparing my review of this riveting biography, I gathered samples of what has recently been written about Richard M. Nixon, and I must say they make a bewildering collection. Here are a few: “A monster of a million disguises.” Andrew Kopkind, the...
Post
The Fading of Feminism
Writing her column the other day in a London newspaper, a feminist confessed that the women’s movement that started some 25 years ago had “spluttered to a halt.” Many a middle-aged feminist nowadays will tell you the same thing. The young, they will say with an air of regret, meaning their daughters and the friends...
Post
What Makes Southern Manners Peculiar?
“Southerners live in the 18th century.” This common charge is not altogether false, since the peculiar habits, customs, and meanings of words found often in the American South are found also in 18th-century English authors. Most English-speaking people use the word “manners” now only in the senses designated by the Oxford English Dictionary as current:...
Post
The Secretary of Education Doesn’t
Monsignor Ronald Knox, when asked to conduct a baptismal service in the English language, replied that the Devil knew Latin, thus supplying a title for this lively, informative, and intelligent book. Many of its chapters have already appeared in periodicals, particularly Chronicles and Academic Questions. But five of them have been made by the addition...
Post
Antifascists on the March
All over Britain and Ireland, including the unpleasing town where I live, which is run by a left-wing junta, there are memorials to those who fought in the International Brigades on the Red Republican side in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Even though there are but a few British and Irish survivors of the battles...
Post
Theseus in the Moral Maze
Roger Scruton has had a long and paradoxical career as a kind of intellectual outlaw—a sage of the badlands that hem in the p.c. pale. Aesthete, philosopher, author, journalist, lecturer, broadcaster, farmer, fox hunter, even musician—he has been all of these things, an often solitary small-c conservative voice in milieux dominated by the forces of...
Post
Europe Is Not What It Seems
It would be logical for me to say that, returning to the United States after another four months this summer and fall in various countries of Europe, east and west, I found a great many misconceptions about the continent in American media and public opinion. Yet it would not be fair to limit myself to...
Post
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.
Post
Who Is Henry Galt? Ayn Rand and Plagiarism
Can it be that a fraud has been perpetrated on the readers and admirers of novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand—a literary and intellectual swindle that veers perilously close to plagiarism? That such a charge could be leveled at the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged is irony bordering on farce. For the spirit that animated the...
Post
Epidemic for the Record Books
As the hysterical coronavirus overreaction crashes our economy, I can’t help but think of the Spanish flu, which took some 675,000 American lives in 1918 and 1919. Adjusting for the difference in the size of the American population then and now, that number would be equivalent to two million deaths today. I’ll be surprised—I’m writing...
Post
Science Fiction, R.I.P.
To register the obituary long after the fact: science fiction is dead. Aficionados of the genre who acquired their taste for it in the 1950’s and 60’s probably already know this. What they might not know is that the death of science fiction has significance for the state of American culture in 1997. With the...
Post
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.”...
Post
I Am Not Ashamed Either
Ever since the cinéaste Nino Frank first used the term in France in 1946 (he never said he invented it), there has been considerable controversy about the meaning of “film noir” and various attempts to define it, some more or less authoritative. The essential arguments have been usefully collected in Silver and Ursini’s Film Noir...
Post
C-H-A-R-I-S-M-A
Mikhail Gorbachev has it, so do Jesse Jackson, Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela, and Violetta Chamorro. John Kennedy personified it, Ronald Reagan scripted it, and Michael Dukakis experienced what life can be like for a politician without it. It’s how success and failure in national politics is so often now spelled: it’s c-h-a-r-i-s-m-a. Like so many...
Post
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...
Post
The Ephemeral and the Historic
The International Criminal Court’s sham indictment of Vladimir Putin for war crimes is overshadowed by China’s truly historic rise in diplomacy.
Post
The Arrhythmic Heart of England
The city of Leicester is about as far from the sea as one can get in England. But one sweltering August day, when everyone else was heading down to the beaches, we were driving in the opposite direction so that I could fill in a long-troubling gap on my mental map of England. I had...