Braveheart Produced by Mel Gibson Directed by Mel Gibson Screenplay by Randall Wallace Released by Paramount Pictures In recent films, “angry white males” are generally portrayed as psychopaths, and it is, therefore, almost astonishing that even a good conservative like Mel Gibson should have chosen to make a movie on the life of William Wallace....
10363 search results for: Politics%2Bof%2BRace
The Gay Nihilism of Umberto Eco
Simone Weil wrote, with respect to literature, that “nothing is more beautiful, wonderful, ever new, ever more surprising, more sweetly and lastingly intoxicating than the good. Nothing is more arid, sad, monotonous and cranky than the had. Such are authentic goodness and evil. The fictional good and bad are opposite. The fictional good is cranky...
Is Third World America Inevitable?
Thousands of U.S. troops safeguard the border of South Korea. U.S. warships patrol the South China Sea to stand witness to the territorial claims of Asian allies against China. U.S. troops move in and out of the Baltic States to signal our willingness to defend the frontiers of these tiny NATO allies. Yet nothing that...
A Time to Reap
I do not know what the city-bred recollect of childhood, but one of my earliest memories is of a sunny Easter morning, when I was no more than three or four years old, standing in an unpaved lane that led down to a tiny farm: the bright new grass was pushing through last year’s burnt-over...
Law Survives
Winnie Manela’s recent conviction shows that something like the rule of law survives in South Africa after the unconditional release of her husband. On a visit to Johannesburg several months ago, I found myself more than once, to my amusement, arguing the court had to convict Winnie Mandela, to South Africans who smiled at me...
Blaspheming Liberals
“Free speech!” has been the rallying cry of Republicans and conservatives for months on end. This really ought to stop. Milo, Gavin McInnes, Ann Coulter: These conservative and libertarian provocateurs have been met with radical opposition from roving gangs of snowflake thugs who set things on fire, break glass, pepper-spray bystanders—all in order to keep...
Is It Time to End Prohibition?
The lessons of history are never quite definitive. History repeats itself, but not exactly, and the trick is to know where the differences come in. Nevertheless, in the case of drug abuse and its control we have as good a lesson and as close an analogy as history ever provides—Prohibition. Unfortunately, our politicians have no...
Why the Empire Fell
Why do empires fall? Nearly everyone has a theory. Some focus on external challenges. For example, the Soviet Union collapsed under the pressure of the arms race that Ronald Reagan heated up; the British were forced out of India by Gandhi and by the rising tide of Indian nationalism. Others seek the cause in the...
Ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
If you want to know why it isn’t a bright idea to permit homosexuals to serve openly in the military, consider the subject of “snorkeling.” That, according to The Atlantic, was one of Rep. Eric Massa’s occupation specialties as a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. You might have heard of Mr. Massa. He quit...
Cheer, Cheer for Old Notre Dame
Just three days after Georgetown University had Kathleen Sebelius on campus to address an awards ceremony during commencement week, another prominent Catholic university found a better way of dealing with Sebelius: the University of Notre Dame filed suit against Sebelius in federal court, asking the court to enjoin and then vacate the Obama Administration’s mandate requiring...
We’ve Only Just Begun
The Left is not generous in victory. The ink on the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges was barely dry before a vicious assault on organized religion in this country was launched, a multipronged offensive with the clear intention of marginalizing Christians and banishing them from the public square. The first shot was fired...
Another War in the Works
Does anyone remember all the lies that they were told by President Bush and the “mainstream media” about the grave threat to America from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? These lies were repeated endlessly in the print and TV media despite the reports from the weapons inspectors, who had been sent to Iraq, that...
Of Masons, Magic, Monks, Medicine, and Marriage
My maternal grandfather was a very practical man, an entrepreneur with a self-made fortune, a local mayor, philo-Dixiecrat, devoted to his wife and three daughters. His habitual reading was the Raleigh paper and the local small-town daily (which, by some miracle, still exists). He died when I was very small, and so I never had...
Scientism’s Sins
Few theologians have influenced the spiritual life of the West as profoundly as the lay physicist Galileo Galilei when he successfully challenged the Church’s geocentric world view. Though the Copernican doctrine he championed was originally discovered by a devout Christian, Galileo redefined it within a mechanistic world view which exiled God to the periphery. Shaped...
America’s Lengthening Enemies List
Friday, deep into the 17th year of America’s longest war, Taliban forces overran Ghazni, a provincial capital that sits on the highway from Kabul to Kandahar. The ferocity of the Taliban offensive brought U.S. advisers along with U.S. air power, including a B-1 bomber, into the battle. “As the casualty toll in Ghazni appeared to...
MLK Redivivus
Martin Luther King, Jr. did not bring the races closer together; and the legacy he left behind has been one of erasing more and more of our national heritage whenever it does not fit a progressively more radical leftist agenda.
Christmas Visit to Bosnia
President Bill Clinton’s announcement, made during his brief Christmas visit to Bosnia, that U.S. troops were going to stay in that blighted Balkan province well beyond the initially announced “deadline” of June 1998, surprised only the naive. The only surprising aspect of the announcement was Clinton’s refusal to set any new deadlines: the troops were...
Caveat Emptor
Like the flea-market buyer of an atomic clock that is supposed to keep perfect time until the year 8021 but breaks the next day, the poet player straddles the gnostic frontier between infinite skepticism and absolute faith. On the one hand, it appears that the buyer’s skepticism is justified, because he’s been swindled. Look here,...
Is Thomas Woods a Dissenter? A Further Reply, Pt. 3
Next we must look at another rhetorical device of Woods which serves to distract the attention of the reader from the point at issue and to prejudice him against what I actually wrote. Woods mentions the interventions of bishops’ conferences into economic matters. As a matter of fact I said absolutely nothing in my article...
Radosh’s Rant Against the Old Right
A recent posting on neocon-lite website, Quillette, by its go-to authority on foreign affairs, Ronald Radosh, makes unkind references to Pat Buchanan, Pedro Gonzalez, and me: The current issue of Chronicles, meanwhile, includes an article by Pat Buchanan condemning President Biden’s “vilification” of Putin, while in another, Paul Gottfried cries “Long Live Orbán!” and elsewhere...
Anatomy of an Inaugural Poem
Evidence that Maya Angelou may have borrowed from another poem for the one she delivered at Bill Clinton’s inauguration was reported in this magazine last December. The White House, having seen the December Chronicles and the subsequent news stories about it, appears to have opted to distance itself from Angelou rather than to defend her....
Singin’ the Publishing Blues
I like a traveling circus. The American Historical Association’s annual conference periodically sets up its tent at the New York Hilton. Since I live nearby, I subject myself to its clown car of characters every half decade. But this year, I saw the confab’s book fair as an opportunity to introduce myself to the editors...
Commendables – Schools for Scandal
Herbert I. London: Why Are They Lying to Our Children?; Stein and Day; New York. The title of Herbert London’s book is an all-too-accurate description of the textbooks used to “educate” American students, Why Are They Lying to Our Children? is a brief and closely reasoned exploration of the “faddist and trendy character of these books,...
Dreams of Gold
If California were to secede from the United States and establish itself, as its first Anglo settlers once intended, as an independent republic, it would instantly emerge as one of the world’s richest nations. As it is, one in every ten Americans now resides in the so-called Golden State. Its economy affects not only those...
Love and Grace
This is a remarkable book by a remarkable man. Mr. Marcolla is well known to many conservatives in Europe and the United States for his observations on modern philosophy contributed over the years to Osservatore Romano. He is a keen student of Anglo-American conservative thought as well as having been a friend and translator of...
Suspicious Minds
Will Russian philosophy gain a foothold in Russia? It already has, laments David Brooks in a New York Times op-ed (“Putin Can’t Stop,” March 3). Brooks finds disturbing Vladimir Putin’s tendency to quote the likes of Nikolai Berdyaev, Vladimir Soloviev, and Ivan Ilyin; more worrying still, the Kremlin has recently sent copies of these three philosophers’ works to...
Natural Woman
Women of the younger, liberated generation have been raised to believe that being equal to men means being the same as men. Thus, they try hard to convince themselves that casual sex is harmless “fun” as long as they “play it safe.” In A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue, Wendy Shalit presents the...
Circuit Rider
A town without a saloon is like a woman without a heart. I made Blanding, Utah, before sundown, checked into the Best Western Motel, and rang up the front desk from my room. “Is the Elk Ridge Restaurant within walking distance from here?” “It’s just half a block away.” “Do they have a liquor license?”...
The Pilgrimage of Malcolm Muggeridge
[This article first appeared in the December 1992 issue of Chronicles.] In the second segment of the several-part BBC documentary on his life, Malcolm Muggeridge smoothed his white feathery hair away from his cherubic face, smiled cryptically, and said in his deep, rolling, gentle English voice, “There’s nothing in this world more instinctively abhorrent to...
America: A Growing Servility
Here is Part 1 of the English version of Thomas Fleming’s interview with the Serbian magazine Geopolitika, on the decline of America: Geopolitika: What has happened to the United States? Observers in and outside of America have been commenting on America’s decline, both as a world power and as an inspiration and model for other countries. Within living...
On the AIDS Cover-up
In his discussion of Bill Clinton’s “mini-General Assembly” (Cultural Revolutions, November 2005), Dr. Srdja Trifkovic claims that Thabo Mbeki’s assertion—that such “traditional attitudes” of African men as violence against women and promiscuity do not play a significant role in spreading the disease—is highly controversial. Actually, Mbeki’s assertion is justified. Dr. Trifkovic should read “The Chemical...
When Censorship’s the Game, Despotism Is the Goal
We’re only a few months beyond the turn of the calendar and already I have a candidate for the word of the year: Censorship. Examples are proliferating at such a fast rate that it seems like a game of whac-a-mole just to keep up with all of them. A few of the most recent include:...
Master of Your Domain
With the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in Kelo v. New London, the truth of this column’s conceit—that Rockford, Illinois, is a microcosm of America—has never been more clear. One of the running themes of this column since shortly after it began in 2001 as a “Letter From Rockford” has been the abuse of the...
Familiarity Breeds Contempt
Creating a sense of moral obligation to outsiders is one of Christianity’s singular achievements. But the full genius of historical Christianity was shown by its ability to do this without falling into a suicidal universalism.
Artless Imitations
The Importance of Being Earnest Produced and distributed by Miramax Films Directed by Oliver Parker Screenplay by Oliver Parker from Oscar Wilde’s play The Sum of All Fears Produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures Directed by Phil Alden Robinson Screenplay by Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne from Tom Clancy’s novel Oscar Wilde believed one’s first...
UKIP Invades the Tories
TORIES FEAR INFILTRATION BY UKIP MEMBERS warned a headline in The Times this week. That journal of record has been slow on the uptake, but this is now a settled trend. People are joining the Conservative Party in large and growing numbers, not because they believe in it—au contraire—but because they reckon a leadership contest...
Women and Biographers First!
“One would suffer a great deal to he happy.” —Marly Wortley Montagu To be really successful a modern writer must reach and hold a huge audience, and there seems to be essentially two ways of doing it: the journeyman (or tradesman-like) and the heroic-histrionic. Scott, Trollope, Agatha Christie, and P.G. Wodehouse represent the first way,...
Books and Lovers
Back in 1839, an Englishman by the name of Alexander Walker wrote a manual by the name of Woman, in which he quoted Hume: “Among the inferior creatures, nature herself, being the supreme legislator, prescribes all the laws which regulate their marriages, and varies those laws according to the different circumstances of the creature.” So...
Archduke Otto—The Smears
I am grateful to Dr. Trikovic for his reply to my response to his article defaming Archduke Otto since he thereby proves my case entirely. Not one of the challenges to his sources is he able to gainsay or rebut. The most he can do is claim some sort of generalised misinterpretation of his position. There is but...
Managerial Suicide
In The Spectator (June 24, 2016) Charles Moore, the Grand Old Man of British journalism despite his relatively young age, writes, “How much longer can it go on? Deaths caused by terrorism are always followed now by candlelit vigils, a minute’s silence, victims’ families/government ministers/emergency services/clergy/imams all clustered together, walls of messages, flags at half-mast. ...
Collegiate Anti-Semitism Did Not Start Yesterday
As I look at the Johnny-Come-Lately critics of our anti-Semitic universities, I am reminded of the French Communist Party during and after the fall of France. Why should we now celebrate those who contributed to this poisoning of our culture?
War Hero or Deserter?
“We needed to get him out of there, essentially to save his life.” So said Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, an Army sergeant in Vietnam, of Barack Obama’s trade of five hard-core Taliban leaders at Guantanamo for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a Taliban prisoner for five years. The trade speaks well of America’s ‘s resolve to...
Europe’s Population Implosion
Over the course of the last millennium, the populations of Europe (including Russia) and its Western offshoots (including the United States) grew explosively. Fueled by the agricultural and industrial revolutions that they pioneered and the raw materials of the New World that they settled, combined European-derived populations grew from less than one sixth to one...
After SCOTUS: Welcoming Apocalypse
Here are my initial thoughts on today’s SCOTUS opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges and three other cases, which effectively makes “same-sex marriage” the law of the land. Nothing substantial has changed. The Supreme Court did not suddenly create more homosexuals or instill a new desire in the hearts of sodomites to flout nature. That was...
Rivers of Blood
“An idea which is a distortion may have a greater intellectual thrust than the truth; it may serve the needs of the spirit.” —Susan Sontag “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependents,...
Big Brother’s Big Plans
Some people have no sense of humor. In the summer of 1998, Eric Rudolph, bomber of two abortion clinics, a lesbian bar, and the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics, was on the run from the law in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Scores of FBI agents and other officials, trailed by reporters and television crews,...
Going Rove
The idea that the “far right” is on the cultural warpath is, like most liberal canards, the exact opposite of the truth. See, for example, the sort of treatment handed out to the victor in Delaware’s GOP senatorial primary. The conservative Catholic Christine O’Donnell, a 46-year-old Sarah Palin knockoff, was immediately held up for ridicule...
The Righteousness of Rock?
The Fox Theatre—a grand movie palace of Detroit’s 1920’s, which is now used primarily as a venue for acts that won’t fill an arena—contained a chronologically mixed crowd in mid-March. Paul Young was in concert. Young, a slightly chubby, baby-faced British singer (he appears, to borrow a line from Elvis Costello, “teddy-bear tender and tragically...
Remembering the Old Russia
This Fall marks the centennial of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Although few commentators today are likely to glorify that event or its aftermath, most will assume that the revolution was a regrettable necessity, which swept away a repressive and stagnant ancient regime. Such a view is false. Culturally and spiritually, that lost pre-revolutionary Russia was...
Hoax of the Century
With publication of “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, the hunt was on for the “missing link.” Fame and fortune awaited the scientist who found the link proving Darwin right: that man evolved from a monkey. In 1912, success! In a gravel pit near Piltdown in East Sussex, there was found the cranium of...