American policies in the Balkans over the past decade have come to embody all that is wrong with the fundamental assumptions of the decisionmakers in Washington. A thorough revision of those policies would be an important step toward a more pragmatic American strategy in world affairs based on the national interest. This is no longer...
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Remembering Paul Elmer More
Paul Elmer More was one of several notable independent-minded scholars who criticized America from a broadly traditionalist perspective during the first half of the 20th century.
Celebrity Politicians, Savvy Sergeants
“We need another Reagan.” I’ve heard that too many times to count. Don’t get me wrong: I think another Reagan would be a good start—but only a start. Everyone should recall that Reagan, even during the six years that the Republicans held the Senate, was able to do little to trim back the size of...
Will JFK’s Party Become Sanders’ Party?
Sen. Bernie Sanders may be on the cusp of both capturing the Democratic nomination and transforming his party as dramatically as President Donald Trump captured and remade the Republican Party. After his sweep of the Nevada caucuses, following popular vote victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders has the enthusiasm and the momentum, as the...
How the Fourteenth Amendment Repealed the Constitution
“It is easier to make certain things legal than to make them legitimate.” —Chomfort The evisceration of the federal system by the Supreme Court during the last few decades—indeed, most of the modem malfeasance of that august body—has been accomplished largely through the instrumentality of the Fourteenth Amendment. This sorry tale, from the adoption of...
The Teaching of Humanities and Other Trivia
“Humanities” is Western society’s name for the academic expression of its fundamental values. There are other branches of learning—medicine, law, engineering, and business, all of which benefit from the humanities—but only the “liberal arts” reflect a society’s soul, central beliefs, highest aspirations, and ultimately its culture. Yet during the last half-century America has witnessed the...
Sartor Resartus Resartus
Brilliantly original and insightful as Herr Prof. Doktor Teufelsdröckh’s Clothes, Their Origin and Influence remains more than a century and three-quarters after its initial appearance in print, a recent trip from Denver via London to Rome served as a reminder that a new—or, at least, a revised—Philosophy of Clothes is an essential need of what...
Brookfield Revisited
The Golden Year of the Golden Age of Hollywood was, perhaps, 1939. Amongst its many films that have since become classics—including Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame—was the first (and best) version of James Hilton’s novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips. The film (like the book)...
To Hell With Culture
“The corruption of man,” Emerson wrote, “is followed by the corruption of language.” The reverse is true, and a century later Georges Bernanos had it right: “The worst, the most corrupting lies are problems wrongly stated.” How pertinent this is about so many matters present, including the use of the word culture. My conservative friends...
Social Security’s War on Families: A Current Crisis and a Coming Disaster
The war in Iraq has left many casualties; Social Security reform is one of them. For so long, Democrats surrounded the issue with demagoguery. And now that the Democrats control Capitol Hill, Republicans seem unwilling to acknowledge, let alone confront, Social Security’s impending financial collapse. And yet the need to confront the problem has never...
Remember Pearl Harbor
Under the auspices of the United Nations, no nation is working harder to disarm American citizens than is Japan. With help from Canada and Colombia, Japan is the main engine pushing the United Nations to promote “small arms” controls which would obliterate the Second Amendment. There are three problems with Japan’s effort. First, it is...
Richard Holbrooke, RIH
On his deathbed in Washington, Richard Holbrooke allegedly told his Pakistani surgeon, “You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.” Perhaps the story is true. After all, Holbrooke, though one of the greatest liars in public life, must have told the truth occasionally and his words may even have been delivered accurately by the class...
On ‘History’
Forrest McDonald’s “On the Study of History” (February 1991) was stimulating. His quick survey of our nation’s ills was pinpoint bombing. I had trouble, however, digesting McDonald’s “the reason we cannot solve our social problems is precisely the reason we can put a man on the moon,” and his allegation that the scientific method “cannot...
Blinken, the Posthuman Diplomat
Antony Blinken is an inherently corrupt Washington insider: he is an ideologue who seeks permanent cultural revolution at home and the imposition of its fruits abroad.
The Coming November Wars
As it stands today, Republicans will add seats in the House and recapture the Senate on Tuesday. However, the near-certainty is that those elections will be swiftly eclipsed by issues of war, peace, immigration and race, all of which will be moved front and center this November. Consider. If repeated leaks from investigators to reporters...
Just You Wite, Maddy Hallbright, Just You Wite!
For Washington architects attempting the construction of a brave new unipolar world, the end of Henry Luce’s American Century is not even faintly clouded by the suspicion that America (meaning what was reorganized in 1789 as the United States) has virtually ceased to exist, after a mere 200 years. And if America isn’t America anymore,...
The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
Democrats don't want to lose next year, but they have to play the hand they dealt themselves.
Obamianity 101
An understanding of sin is central to our embrace of Christianity and the saving work of Jesus Christ. Scripture clearly teaches that “the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Thus, knowing what sin is and repenting of it are essentials to...
The New Environmentalism
More change has occurred in the environmental movement during the past ten years than in its entire previous history. Its thrust has become less ideological and more pragmatic, less New Age and more scientific. It is increasingly grounded in the databases of atmospheric science and the genetic models of conservation biology. The practice of conservation...
The Racial Hatred Behind Anti-Trump Extremism
After a second assassination attempt, ordinary Americans are beginning to see that those who hate Trump hate them, too.
Star Dreck
Cobra directed by George P. Cosmatos screenplay by Sylvester Stallone; Warner Bros. Sweet Liberty written and directed by Alan Alda. How did America’s movies ever get so bad? That seems to be the $99,000 question for American film critics lately, from Siskel and Ebert to American Film to New York Times critic Vincent Canby, right...
Great Expectations
Foreign aid, like other forms of aid, is a subsidy that distorts choice. The distortion takes many forms; for example, aid is sometimes put to uses unintended by the giver; it also lets the recipient pursue activities below their real cost. Since President Harry Truman launched the foreign-aid crusade, U.S. economic aid to developing nations...
The College Bubble
The university graduation season this past spring dumped another seven million job seekers onto the sputtering economy. A June headline in the New York Times painted a dismal picture of their likelihood of finding employment: “Degrees but No Guarantees: Faltering Economy . . . Dims Prospects for Graduates.” In response, the mortarboard horde took to...
Emperor of Imagination
Charles the Great looms out of the swirling obscurity of post-Roman Europe like the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria, signaling simultaneously radical renewal and an alteration of everything that came before. As Janet Nelson illuminates in her new book, it is impossible to imagine the West without Charlemagne as figurative and literal progenitor. The King of...
Plato’s Apology
After returning from my Balkan adventures, I can now return to the serious business of using Plato to teach reasoning. Let us turn to the Apology. You probably all know that the Greek apologia means something like justification or defense argument rather than apology. It is Plato’s reconstruction (or imaginative recreation) of the speech Socrates made in...
Our Pushover President
Our Pushover President by Patrick J. Buchanan • November 24, 2009 • Printer-friendly “This state visit is . . . a terrible mistake,” said Rep. Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. “He is illegitimate with his own people, and Brazil is now going to give him the air of legitimacy...
The Man Who Would Be King
He called himself an “amateur barbarian,” but his comrades in arms called him “that devil Burton” or, more often, “the white nigger.” None of the epithets mattered much to their subject, for Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890), junior officer in the Indian Army, had no time for petty indignations. He was too busy playing out the...
Full Force
Full Metal Jacket directed by Stanley Kubrick screenplay by Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Gustav Hasford based on the novel The Short-Timers by Hasford; Warner Bros. Funny, that a film about “Vietnam as it really was,” as Platoon was touted, should fall so wide of any mark of merit, and that Vietnam films with a surreal...
Take Off Your Hat
I have been a member of a private club up in the Alps since 1959. Its name is the Eagle Ski Club, and I joined it when I was 20 years of age. Sixty years later I’ve resigned as a life member because of an incident I won’t go into, as things that happen in...
Vanishing American Footprint
With his order to effect the execution of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALs, 40 miles from Islamabad, without asking permission of the government, Barack Obama made a bold and courageous decision. Its success, and the accolades he has received, have given him a credibility as commander in chief that he never had before. The...
Religion as a Social System
To study any vital religion is to address, as a matter of hypothesis, a striking example of how people explain to themselves who they are as a social entity. Religion as a powerful force in human culture is realized in society, not only or even mainly in theology. Religions form social entities—churches, peoples, “holy nations,”...
Down With Del Marxists
Elites who live in wealthy communities like Del Mar pose as revolutionaries and preach fellowship with the disenfranchised while holding America’s underclass in contempt.
Catholic Rome
St. Thomas Aquinas maintains that our intellect cannot grasp anything except through our senses. Recognizing this truth is essential to understanding the city of Rome and—beyond Rome—the Catholic Church, because Rome means nothing without the Church, and the Church loses her identity if is deprived of her Roman character. The Church has five characteristics: She...
A Voice from Internal Exile on the Evil Party, the Stupid Party, and the Futility of Elections
Rabbi Mayer Schiller was a close friend of Thomas Molnar, Sam Francis, and Joe Sobran. I described his life and views in a VDARE column some years ago. Rabbi Schiller is a staunchly paleoconservative Hassidic rabbi living in internal exile in the manner of Soviet dissidents in upstate New York and teaches at a prestigious...
The Problem With Religious Secular Zealots
Since September 11, I’ve heard it more than once and will likely hear it again. The argument goes like this: Yes, all this banal talk about Islam being a “religion of peace” is, of course, a lot of nonsense. But the problem is not their religion but all religion. “Religious” people, you see, are all...
Blago Nullification
Call it the luck of the Serbs. If deposed Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich had been charged with trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat in the months after September 11, he would have been shipped off to Guantanamo and never heard from again. But since the economy collapsed in December 2007, Americans have been in...
The Lyric of Tradition
“The Lyric of Tradition” is an essay written nearly twenty-five years ago by the late Donald Davidson, celebrated American poet, critic, and philosopher of cultural change who developed, out of his own artistic practice, a comprehensive theory of the role of literature in a healthy society. It was a view not at all like those...
Amos Perlmutter, R.I.P.
As a man and scholar, Amos Perlmutter (1931-2001) stood out for his intellectual honesty, although rectitude in this case was wedded to a jovial personality and an unfailing wit. Having emigrated as a child alongside his parents and sister from Europe to Israel, Amos served his adopted country as a military officer. By all accounts,...
Footprints in the Snow: The Burgling of America
Roughly twenty years ago, a man in Asheville, North Carolina left his home in the wee hours of the morning, walked a couple of blocks to a convenience store, burglarized the store, and returned home with his loot. Unfortunately for our thief, snow had blanketed the city earlier that night. After responding to the burglary...
National Love-Fest
Jackie, Tiger, and Ellen—not as catchy as Martin, Bartin, and Fish, or Abraham, Martin, and John, but good enough to mesmerize the press this spring. In one respect, the mainstream media were right: Jackie Robinson was a courageous man; Tiger Woods is an extraordinary golfer; and Ellen DeGenerate—well, two out of three ain’t bad. But...
On Education in Texas
David Hartman’s comments about the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) tests are on the mark (Cultural Revolutions, February). It is a widespread practice for Texas teachers to “teach the TAAS.” Depriving students of a broad-based liberal arts education has never been so common. History classes are being downgraded to “social studies” status so that...
Moments, Redeeming and Otherwise
Snatch Produced by Columbia Pictures Directed and Written by Guy Ritchie Released by Sony Pictures Shadow of the Vampire Produced by Saturn Films Directed by E. Elias Merhige Screenplay by Steven Katz Released by Lion Gate Films Thirteen Days Produced by Kevin Costner and Beacon Communications Directed by Roger Donaldson Screenplay by Ernest R. May...
Rending the Seamless Garment
People often ask me, “What is wrong with our priests?” or “Why don’t our bishops say more about abortion? They seem to have no trouble whatsoever speaking out quite freely when it comes to war or capital punishment.” On the surface, this is disturbing. I find it even more disturbing, however, that I, a layman,...
America’s Dangerous Overreach
All recorded history can be viewed as a long record of the use of force, or threats of force, in relations between human communities. This applies to all epochs, civilizations, and geographic spaces. Violence is immanent to man. Its constant presence is indicative of the immutability of his nature, regardless of the cultural context or...
Fading Into Arabian Nights
As the shock of American cluster bombs and the distinctive rumble of Abrams tanks fade from the Arabian nights, we world-citizens must begin to sort through the events of the last eight months. Many lessons could be drawn. Allow me to suggest two. First, it seemed clear by the sixth week of open combat that...
U.S.—Staying in Business
“He that fails in his endeavors after wealth and power will not long retain either honesty or courage.” Not all change is progress. This simple statement is one of the dividing lines between right and left. An element of common sense to the conservative, it is denounced as timidity or a lame defense of vested...
University The New Overseas Campus
The inauguration of Lagado University’s new campus in Plagho-Plaguo, the capital of Dismailia, is generating great excitement throughout the Diversity Community. As President Bleatley has said, LU’s “Semester in Dismailia” is guaranteed to challenge Eurocentric cultural values on every level and at every turn. It centers the Other, presents the Absent, privileges Multiplicity, and promises...
The Promise of American Life—January 2005
PERSPECTIVE Love the One You’re Withby Thomas Fleming Life in occupied America. VIEWS Education and Authorityby Michael McMahonRespect in the marketplace. Honor to Whom Honorby Harold O.J. BrownBelow reproach. America’s Unthinking Militaryby Robert D. HicksonServants of the imperium. Government: Good or Bad? Big or Little?by Thomas StorckReframing the debate. NEWS First Prize, Second Hand, Third...
Books in Brief
Lusitania: The Cultural History of a Catastrophe, by Willi Jasper, translated by Stewart Spencer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; 233 pp., $30.00). Readers wanting a detailed narrative history of the torpedoing and sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 on the order of Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember about the loss of the Titanic...
An American Burke
John Randolph (1773-1833) survives in America’s footnotes as a colorful contrarian, and the Gore Vidal school of historiography pants at his duel with Henry Clay and his taste for opium. A master rhetorician, he left a long list of choice barbs, nearly all concocted on the spur of the moment. James Kilpatrick characterized the errant...