I am an unabashed lover—not a worshipper (I reserve that for Someone Else)—of Abraham Lincoln, forever grateful for what he was and what he did for our country. While I don’t question the patriotism of Chronicles’ editors, I believe it is supremely ironic that you publish your magazine from the “Land of Lincoln,” since you...
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Plain People
The Century of the Common Man. That was the phrase Henry Wallace used to describe the world emerging out of the Second World War. Wars do have a way of leveling society into the great democracy of the dead and dying, and it is certainly the case that, in the two great wars of the...
California’s Own Reparations
California is at the forefront of the plan to grant reparations to blacks for slavery and discrimination. The state's published plan to pay up to $800 billion makes no sense, especially since California entered the Union as a free state.
Against the Rainbow Capitalists
Broad swaths of conservative opinion today would have it that the enemy of the right is some variant of Marxism. But this does not accurately describe people like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, or CNN’s Jeff Zucker. All the tech and media executives who are censoring and deplatforming voices on the right can hardly...
Cultural Cleansing, Phase One
In 1833 James Fenimore Cooper returned from a European tour to Coopers town—founded by his father, one of the first pioneers into the dangerous frontier of New York beyond the Hudson Valley. Cooper property included a pretty peninsula on Lake Otsego that the family had allowed the community to use for fishing, picnics, and boating. ...
Interview With a Border Warrior
In 2008, Sheriff Paul Babeu became the first Republican elected to that office in the 136-year history of Pinal County, Arizona. At age 42, he is a 20-year veteran of the Army National Guard, retiring with the rank of major, having served in Iraq and as commander in the Yuma Sector of the U.S.-Mexican border. ...
Lessons From Experience
Consider these two premises: First, in 1865, the Confederacy is collapsing, and President Davis, concerned about the funds in the treasury, sends a young naval officer out on a wild expedition to hide the gold, to be used some day to help the South. Second, in 2005, knowledge of the whereabouts of the hidden gold...
War in Ukraine, Two Years Later
The war in Ukraine reflects an ongoing revolution in military affairs that started two decades ago but which needed a major conflict to become fully apparent. To put it in a nutshell, the battlefield pendulum has swung in favor of defense
The Land of Oil and Water
A sign above the cafe adjacent to the motel across the highway from the railroad tracks in Lordsburg, New Mexico, proclaimed the good news in faded red letters on a flaking white background. “Whiskey and water,” I told the waitress when she came with her pencil and pad. “No bar,” she explained. “But there’s a...
Defending Joe Biden to the Right
My establishment conservative acquaintances are still swooning over an anti-Biden tirade that Mark Levin delivered on his TV program last week, when we learned that our current president is the most racist person who has ever occupied the Oval Office, a charge that was then qualified with the phrase “since Woodrow Wilson.” Only two points in...
Letter from Germany (II): The Duopoly Is Back
You can read Letter from Germany, Part I here. This past week has been unseasonably lovely in southern Germany, with crystal blue skies and the temperature in the fifties. I was enjoying the view of the Alps from the southern wing of Neuschwannstein, the famous fairytale castle built by Wagner’s mad friend King Ludwig, when...
Chansons by the Bayou
Louisiana being the jazz capital of the United States (and the world, for that matter), one easily forgets the other contributions she has made to American culture. Then one remembers Louisiana is Walker Percy’s adopted home and the setting of his most famous novel, The Moviegoer. Perhaps the writers Ernest J. Gaines and Shirley Ann...
Oh I Wish I Was in Dixie
For a native son of the Midwest who has sympathized with the Southern states in the War of Northern Aggression for as far back as he can remember, I can see why some Southerners might find a certain justice in the impending fiscal collapse of the state that launched Abraham Lincoln, coming as it has...
Goodbye to Gold and Glory
“A crocodile has been worshipped, and its priesthood have asserted, that morality required the people to suffer themselves to be eaten by a crocodile.” —John Taylor of Caroline “The Father of Waters now flows unvexed to the sea,” Lincoln famously announced in July 1863. He was, according to a reporter, uncharacteristically “wearing a smile...
Neocon Artistry and Its Discontents
The Neocons, with the political left, now comprise a uniparty elite that confuses the interests of the state with the interests of the American people.
The Mulberry Graveyard
Spain is a country with strong regional identities. The central government recognizes four official languages: Spanish, Galician, Basque, and Catalan. The people in the “periphery” of Spain may refer to Spanish as Castilian, to distinguish it from their own language. In the Basque country, Catalonia, and Galicia, signs in the regional language are omnipresent. At...
The New Intolerance
“This was a recognition of American terrorists.” That is CNN’s Roland Martin’s summary judgment of the 258,000 men and boys who fell fighting for the Confederacy in a war that cost as many American lives as World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq combined. Martin reflects the hysteria that seized Obamaville on hearing...
A Memorable Secession
I haven’t read The Land We Love: The South and Its Heritage, and judging by Donald Livingston’s review (May 2019 issue) I probably won’t. Why? Because it sounds like yet another attempt to defend “Lost Cause” ideology. According to the book’s author, Boyd Cathey, the real reason the South seceded had little to do with...
Something Is Missing
“If anyone wish to migrate to another village, and if one or more who live in that village do notwish to receive him, if there he only one who objects he shall not move there.” —The Salic Law, c. 490 In this commentary on the American experiment, Michael Barone declares that...
On Macleans’ Account
Don’t you guys ever give up? Sean Scallon (“Letter From Canada: A Pocket Full of Sovereigns,” Correspondence, November 2002) writes that, “From reading [the Macleans] account, you might guess that the sovereignty question in Quebec has been solved . . . that is what Canada’s establishment, from Macleans on down, would like to believe.” What...
Gentle Warrior
Thomas H. Landess died from a sudden illness on January 9, 2012. He was 80 years old. His death was a shock to his family and his many friends. I last heard from Tom two days before his death, an event that was out of mind, so warm and hopeful were his comments. I had...
Idling, Week 1
Idling: A Public and Entirely Self-Serving Diary 1 September 4,2011. A few words by way of justification for wasting time, mine as much as yours, on talking about nothing. I have always been by inclination an idle man, the sort who is too lazy to balance his checkbook or do his taxes until the...
It’s True What They Say About Dixie
Throughout most of American history region has been a better predictor of political position than party. That aspect of our reality has been neglected and suppressed in recent times as the rest of the country has conspired or acquiesced in transforming the South into a replica of Ohio. Yet the notorious squeak vote on the...
Limited Government is Not ‘Reckless Radicalism’
With Inauguration Day behind us, ink spilled on politics is being diverted from Donald Trump and the transition of power to Joe Biden and the exercise of power. One such piece by Jeffrey D. Sachs over at CNN takes a rather disingenuous approach to this theme, calling a small government approach “reckless radicalism.” Rather than...
Where the Ashley and the Cooper Rivers Meet . . .
Some 45 years ago, I was sitting in Washington Park, a quiet refuge in downtown Charleston defined by Broad, Meeting, and Chalmers Streets. The park was my favorite place to read and to engage in what was then every young man’s hobby: brooding about girls. Sitting there, I be- came aware of an annoying presence—...
A “Containment Policy” for the New Cold War
Americans regularly accept expropriations—legal, moral, and economic—from the central government that would have driven our 18th- and 19th-century ancestors to arms. The Constitution reserves to the states and local communities all powers necessary to provide legal protection for valuable ways of life. These rights have been usurped by the central government, especially by the Supreme...
Clearing Up the Confusion on Leo Strauss
Lately I’ve been hearing from colleagues and friends that Leo Strauss helped birth neoconservatism and that Straussianism and neoconservatism belong together rhetorically and conceptually. Supposedly neoconservatism would not have existed in the form in which it took over the conservative movement in the 1980s if Strauss had not provided its essential ideas. Thus, so goes...
Slavery’s Inconvenient Facts
I learned firsthand how disturbing facts could be when teaching a U.S. history course at UCLA in 1987. One of my teaching assistants, a politically correct young woman, became terribly upset after listening to my lecture on slavery. “He shouldn’t be saying such things!” she exclaimed to another teaching assistant. When asked by the other...
George Garrett: 1929-2008
A few years ago, an editor at The Oxford American telephoned to request that I write a piece for that journal about the Calder Willingham-Fred Chappell feud. I struggled to recall the brief episode wherein I corresponded with that screenwriter (The Graduate) and pop novelist (Eternal Fire) about some obscure detail. By an equally obscure complication,...
In Hoc Signo Vinces
Tactical strengths and strategic weaknesses mark John D. McKenzie’s reassessment of Robert E. Lee’s generalship. The strengths of this book are many. The weaknesses, however, undercut the very point that the author attempts to make; namely, that Lee was at best an average military leader, and that Lee’s apologists have given us a biased view...
Leaving America
On the Daily Mail, I posted a piece under the title “The Decline of the American Empire,” which I borrowed from a movie by Denys Arcand, the great Quebecois filmmaker. Since the the savage tone of piece appears to have precluded front-page treatment, I have revised it a bit for our website in the hope...
Beyond Trash
In the middle part of this century one of the main staples of the Anglo- American reading public was the historical novel, or romance. Such “swashbucklers” were not great literature, but they had their virtues. In the hands of skilled writers like C.S. Forester or Kenneth Roberts, they introduced a great many people to some...
Raw Bits
Some undigested odds and ends this month. Let’s see—let’s start with some survey research on regional differences, real and perceived. From California comes word that the Stanford Research Institute has come up with a typology of Americans based on their (excuse the expression) life-styles. Not surprisingly, the types are not distributed uniformly across the U.S....
Benevolent Global Hegemony
Every once in a great while, an article appears in a mainstream publication that lets the eat out of the bag, by spelling out ideas that have long been dominant in public life but are usually seen only in vague or implicit form. One such appeared in the July/August 1996 edition of Foreign Affairs. Entitled...
Bad Georgie
The facts of George Garrett’s literary career are laid out in the bibliography here: his 24 books include novels, plays, and collections of poems and short stories. In addition he has served as editor of 17 other books—interviews with contemporary writers, literary criticism, books on film scripts. He has also written a biography of the...
Blindsided
Poor Denny’s. The South Carolina-based company, with 1,600 “always-open” family restaurants, has been blindsided. After years of serving cheap, decent meals to working Americans, it is under a politico-racial attack. The aggressors are the usual suspects: the central government, the national media, civil rights leaders, and a lawyer, Guy Saperstein, from Oakland, California. A New...
Blood Will Tell
In Tom Wolfe’s America the Northern WASP elite is shallow and cowardly, the most sacrosanct minority groups seethe with ingratitude toward the majority and snarl at one another, culture is dominated by the conspicuous vulgarity of new and ill-gotten wealth, and manners and morals are in a catastrophic nosedive in which the relation of man...
Of Genes, Vowels, and Violence
Why do the British speak English and not a variety of Welsh? Philip Jenkins, having fallen under the sway of a Harvard medieval historian, Michael McCormick, believes it is because the invading Germans of the fifth and sixth centuries killed all the Celtic-speaking male Britons in what is now England. (See “Once There Was a...
Society Before Government: Calhoun’s Wisdom
John C. Calhoun was the last great American statesman. A statesman must be something of a prophet—one who has an historical perspective and says what he believes to be true and in the best long-range interest of the people, whether it is popular or not. A politician, which is all we have now, says and...
Why the Politics of Grievance Is a Winning Strategy for the Democrats
The Democratic Party decided to abandon the working class and become the party of grievance groups generations ago. This is what it is today; there's no going back.
Lone Star Populism
Out of thin air—or of mythic consciousness—a Texas governor once plucked unhesitatingly the mot juste. The governor, Allan Shivers, who served back in the 1950’s, was indignant over some piece or other of legislative tomfoolery. As he saw it, the whole enterprise was downright “un-Texan.” “Un-Texan.” Right there we had the nub of the matter....
Imperial Dusk
Whether it ends with a whimper or a bang, the American Empire is ending. WikiLeaks shows that the empire can no longer control the dissemination of information. Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen show it can no longer militarily defeat insurgencies. Brazil, China, Iran, Russia, Turkey, and even Bolivia show it can no longer dictate the foreign...
Rainbow Fascism at Home and Abroad
Some years ago, when I was a consular officer in the once-notorious border city of Tijuana, I spent a few days in Mexico City on my way back from a temporary assignment in Matamoros, another border town just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. At a social function, I was cornered by a typically...
Change is in the Air
Gov. Rick Perry was a star at the Texas “tea parties,” denouncing Washington and mentioning the s-word—secession—in front of enthusiastic crowds. Perry had already made headlines by calling for Texas to reject Washington’s “stimulus” funds and by backing a resolution in the Texas House of Representatives affirming the state’s sovereignty, before he fired up the...
No Mere Christian
The cover of your November issue suggests the truth that we, conservatives and especially conservative Christians, are engaged in spiritual warfare. And yet, smack in the middle of that issue, you print an article, “Remembering C. S. Lewis.” The reader is led to believe that this man has been a powerful instrument of truth and has...
The Facts Behind the Greek Melodrama
Greece is now technically in default, having failed to pay its $1.8 bn monthly installment to the IMF which was due June 30. Contrary to the mainstream media treatment of the story, there will be no ripple effect and no major financial crisis. The Greeks are in dire straits, but their economy (the size of...
National Enormities
Seed From Madagascar, first published in 1937 and now printed for the third time, is an agrarian memoir. Its author was one of the last rice planters of coastal Carolina, from a family who had been in the business for two centuries. Duncan Heyward details the methodology of rice planting as only one well acquainted...
The Economic Realities of U.S. Immigration
Mass immigration is changing the fundamental character of America—our culture, institutions, standards, and objectives. Until recently, our society was the envy of the world, so why are these changes even necessary? In addition to the ruling class’s commitment to globalism and multiculturalism, the chief reason that is given in support of open borders is the...
Dawn Goes Down to Day
Walter Sullivan entered Vanderbilt University in 1941 as an 18-year-old freshman. Two years later, he left during World War II to join the Marine Corps. He returned in 1946 to finish his degree in English and left again in 1947 to pursue an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he studied with Robie Macauley...
‘War Between the States’
Judge John Roberts can rest assured that his Supreme Court confirmation will go very smoothly, judging from the weak 11th-hour attacks the left is mounting against him in the media. A “shocking” discovery about his record appeared in an August 26 report in the Washington Post that took issue with a phrase Roberts used while...