Regardless of whether Muammar Qaddafy is killed, brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, or exiled, his regime has collapsed beyond recovery. After a five-month air war against his forces NATO has succeeded in decisively tipping the balance on the ground in favor of the rebels. This does not mean that the war...
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The Process of Ratification
Even as we, in our own time, go about revising, or refusing to revise, our fundamental law, so did our Fathers in the beginning vote to put such law in its place: that is, one state at a time, reflecting, after vigorous dispute, 13 different majorities, some of them very belated—and very reluctant. All of...
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The Secret, Sordid Mouth of Krystle Matthews
In her unguarded moments, South Carolina politician Krystle Mathews provided a glimpse into the philosophy and methods of racial intimidation used by some blacks to gain and maintain political power.
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Renaissance Frauds
Former Vice President Al Gore distinguished himself by a number of colorful claims, including his invention of the internet, his status as inspiration for the plot of Love Story, and his crime-busting investigations that pulled the covers off Love Canal and the villainy of both the internal-combustion engine and flush toilet. During last year’s presidential...
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A Limited Victory
Gore Vidal, award-winning essayist, novelist, and playwright, has been a keen observer of American culture and politics for several decades. Yet when he originally submitted to major American magazines of opinion the essay that forms the first chapter of his new book, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, he found himself completely shut out. No one...
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Putting Policies Before Personalities
A candidate’s character matters, of course, but what matters most at this moment in history is which candidate proposes policies that will build a better America.
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A Revolution to Save the World
“Beyond Left and Right” was the tide of the Antiwar.com conference which brought together Pat Buchanan and Alexander Cockburn, Justin Raimondo and Lenora Fulani (to say nothing of two Chronicles editors) in the same room (if not all at the same time) for a broad critique of the aggressive New World Order launched by the...
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Not Really a Republic
Just because it looks like a Republic and quacks like a Republic doesn’t mean it’s really a Republic. In ancient Rome, after Julius and Augustus Caesar got through with the civil wars, proscriptions, and purges that spelled death to the remains of the old Roman nobility, the state still looked and quacked like the republic...
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Give Us Your Huddled Masses
“Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me.” —Emma Lazarus The publication of a Julian Simon book is a cause for rejoicing among advocates of laissez-faire and open-border immigration. According to Dr. Simon, who teaches business administration at the University of Maryland and is an adjunct scholar at the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute,...
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How Fox News Shapes the Right for Its Own Ends
In this issue we present two views of the “conservative” news media giant Fox News. The essay by Douglas Burton verges on the celebratory and recounts the merits of the Fox News enterprise and the bold vision of Rupert Murdoch, the Australian press baron, who launched this 24-hours-a-day American news service on Oct. 7, 1996. Murdoch...
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Sounding the Trump
In important ways, a revolutionary process has begun. So argues Ilana Mercer in the best extended analysis yet published of the Trump phenomenon: “Trump is getting an atrophied political system to oscillate” in “an oddly marvelous uprising.” For us revolutionaries there is still a long way to go, but we are entitled to a “modest...
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Pedantry and Progress
He wrote one of the most distinctive and original prose styles of his time, paralleling the techniques of his Yankee contemporary, Henry James, anticipating those of Pound and Eliot. But he used that style to write Greek grammars and commentaries on obscure Greek and Latin poets and page after page of “brief mentions,” mini-reviews, of...
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What the Editors Are Reading
An unfortunate effect of more than two decades of war between the West and the Middle East, and the resulting terrorist campaigns launched from there, is the replacement of the charm, even the magic, the historical Persia held for Europeans—and for me—by their opposite: contempt, disgust, even fear. In the late 80’s and the 90’s...
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Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Social conservatives have long argued that radical individualism—the essence of modern freedom—is corrosive to family and community life, and, if left unchecked, can even lead to civilizational collapse. But another, perhaps more damning, charge today is that individualism is bad for the environment. This seems paradoxical, as modern man sees himself as the quintessential environmentalist...
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An Unsteady Empire
August 29, 2005, the day when hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, may have marked the beginning of the end of the American Empire. Four years after the horrors in New York and Washington, D.C., showed the nation’s vulnerability to external attack, the Hobbesian free-for-all in New Orleans demonstrated just how fragile it is internally....
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The Bad Theology of Our Israel Über Alles Foreign Policy
Christian dispensationalism explains the fervor with which some in the Republican Party support the interests of the nation of Israel as if they were always our own.
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The Left’s Delusions on Crime and Policing
The death of George Floyd and the reaction that followed have seen an explosion of hysterical accusations, breast-beating, and lying that is extreme even by the standards of the last half-century. It is no exaggeration to say that reason and common sense have largely fled the scene, and there has been an incredibly weak reaction to...
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Moving Targets: The Trouble With Early Primaries
The 2008 presidential contest has dominated political news for over a year, starting almost immediately after the 2006 midterm elections. Most of the coverage has devolved, as it always does, to discussion of the “horse race” among the candidates, the competition for fundraising, and an insufferably large number of debates and fora that few actual...
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Can the GOP’s Shotgun Marriage Be Saved?
Wednesday morning, Nov. 9, 2016, Republicans awoke to learn they had won the lottery. Donald Trump had won the presidency by carrying Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. All three states had gone Democratic in the last six presidential elections. The GOP had won both houses of Congress. Party control of governorships and state legislatures rivaled the...
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Not Even Migrants Want to Live in America’s Dying Cities
America has taken on financial and social debts it cannot pay as a result of excessive immigration, and the consequences of those decisions have adversely affected all but the wealthy elites among us.
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Another Brown Scare
In the run-up to World War II, when FDR was locked in a political struggle with his conservative Republican opponents, Roosevelt’s “brain trust” came up with a scheme to win the war of ideas and get rid of the President’s bothersome critics. Today, we call it the “Brown Scare.” It was a campaign of vilification...
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Polemics & Exchanges
Founding Virtue To the list of those labeled as “social justice conservatives” by Brion McClanahan (“Reinventing Reconstruction,” February 2020) you can add the names of the Founding Fathers. Referring to them, Alexander Stephens (Vice-President of the Confederacy and author of the infamous “Cornerstone Speech”) wrote, “The prevailing ideas entertained by [Jefferson] and most of the...
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The Ruined Tenement
“Every child should be taught to respect the sanctity of his neighbor’s house, garden, fields, and all that is his.” When James Fenimore Cooper insisted upon the inviolability of property, his conviction was as much the fruit of personal experience as it was the expression of his old-fashioned reverence for law and order. Upon returning...
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Here, on the Other Side of the Ring of Fire
Americans read the increasingly panic-stricken reports of deepening catastrophe at Fukushima 1, speed to the pharmacy to buy iodine and ask,
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Last Ride
Every city needs cemeteries, and not just for the obvious reason. Like public buildings and monuments, they are a visible—and spiritual—link to the city’s past, a reminder that others have traveled the path that we trod, and still others will follow in our footsteps. Placed prominently on the edge of residential or commercial areas or...
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The Third Muslim Invasion
They came in the early eighth century across the Straits of Gibraltar, unleashing terror and carnage across Iberia “like a desolating storm.” They were stopped deep inside today’s France, at Tours, by Charles Martel in 732. They kept attacking Europe throughout the Middle Ages, but their next sustained assault was at her vulnerable southeastern flank,...
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The Myth of American Isolationism
“Internationalism is a luxury which only the upper classes can afford; the common people are hopelessly bound to their native shores.” —Benito Mussolini Walter A. McDougall, a professor of international relations at the University of Pennsylvania, presents useful truths about the history of American foreign policy. The United States, he correctly...
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At Sea Again
A perfect 360-degree horizon, occluded in the nearer distance by cloud shadow and smears and smudges of squall, is something sensed, not seen. All around lies a mottled expanse of turquoise, wine-blue, cobalt, and purple patches streaked with brilliant sunshine alternating with gray shadow and scuffed into variously textured sheets ruffled and smoothed by the...
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Living With the Albanians
In the current debate on the future of Kosovo, it is often overlooked that hundreds of thousands of Serbs and other non-Albanians had fled the province under Albanian pressure well before the KLA terror campaign of 1996-1998. Under Tito, the Albanians’ share of the population thus rose from 64 percent in 1953 to 77 percent...
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The Monk From Mt. Athos
Our Greek host on Santorini, a young hotelier and newly married tour promoter, is trying to sell us a Mount Olympus excursion. “Half the German tourists frown, they are unhappy, and you wonder why,” he explains. “We Greeks, we drink, we dance, we smile, we enjoy life. When you are on holiday, you should enjoy...
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An Historian of Imagination
Forrest McDonald, the great historian of the American founding and early Republic, passed away on January 19 at the age of 89. Born in Orange, Texas, McDonald earned his doctorate from the University of Texas-Austin in 1955, and taught at Brown University, Wayne State University (Michigan), and the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. He retired to...
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Lepanto: A Category of the Spirit
There are days and places in history when time seems to stand still and, in the space of a moment, the fate of future centuries is decided. At dawn on October 7, 1571, the spectacle would have made a strong impression on anyone who looked out at the waters breaking upon the straits that join...
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Biden’s Inexplicable Victory
Eleven months after the 2020 American presidential election, the official results remain so incongruous, they merit an empirical exegesis. The political establishment’s narrative is that Biden won an unexpectedly close race, and the outcome requires no further examination. Yet, Biden’s victory is so statistically suspicious, so riddled with ahistorical outcomes, that a detailed data examination...
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Honest Words
It may be an embarrassing admission for somebody who has been a book review editor for the last 14 and a half years, but the truth is I had never heard of Tony Hillerman until May 1989, when I began traveling in the Southwest in connection with a book-writing project I am working on and...
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Storming the Castle Doctrine
Americans have been captivated by the February incident in Sanford, Florida, that resulted in the death of Trayvon Martin and the eventual arrest and charging of George Zimmerman. If the case could be resolved today, Trayvon Martin’s family would still be without a son, George Zimmerman—even if exonerated—will never live a normal life, Sanford Police...
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Comment
The Editorial Comment was presented as a speech by Dr. Carlson, Executive Vice-President of The Rockford Institute at the April 16, 1984 meeting of the Philadelphia Society. Whole forests have been sacrificed in the last two years to the latest phase of this nation’s perennial debate on education. Yet the debate swirling about us has...
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Of Monkeys and Mermaids
February 3, 1843 My Dearest Sabrina, Having momentarily sated what you once aptly termed my “Herculean appetite for lethargy,” I rouse myself dutifully to pen this somewhat belated missive, all too aware that you, my beloved sister, must be starved for news of your Charleston friends. Everyone inquires about you, of course, & I invariably...
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Reflections on Immigration Reform
The most significant event of President George W. Bush’s second term (thus far) has been the defeat of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S.1348). This bill was initiated by President Bush in collaboration with the Democratic congressional majority, over the opposition of the Republicans and a few rebellious Democrats. The real winners of...
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The Long Retreat in the Culture War
The Republican rout in the Battle of Indianapolis provides us with a snapshot of the correlation of forces in the culture wars. Faced with a corporate-secularist firestorm, Gov. Mike Pence said Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act would not protect Christian bakers or florists who refuse their services to same-sex weddings. And the white flag went...
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What We Are Reading: February 2024
Short reviews of The Life of Samuel Johnson, by James Boswell, and How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, by Batya Ungar-Sargon.
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Two Centuries of Resolve
This year is the bicentennial of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, the foremost formulations of the compact theory of the United States Constitution. By 1798, the Republicans faced an 11-year losing streak. Federalism had reigned supreme in American politics from the end of the Revolution. Even before the institution of the government of...
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On Hometown Steel
I had to chuckle when I read Scott P. Richert’s “This Is Your Hometown” (The Rockford Files, March). Did it never occur to him that manufacturers in his own hometown might be hurt by a higher steel tariff? The trouble is that some conservatives have ceased being conservatives and have become ideologues on the issue...
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Does America Have a Future?
On Monday, Oct. 5, our occasional contributor James G. Jatras gave a lecture at the Institute of European Studies in Belgrade entitled “Does America Have a Future? Options Before a Declining Hegemon.” He presented a complex and rather bleak picture of America’s condition to an audience of some 30 scholars and analysts from Serbia’s leading research...
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Serbia Betrayed by Her Leaders
Talking to CKCU 93.1FM in Ottawa, Dr. Srdja Trifkovic considers the extraordinary readiness of the government in Belgrade to compromise Serbia’s national and state interests in order to demonstrate its subservience to the “international community.” A recent batch of Wikileaks cables from the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade drastically illustrates the extent of institutionalized political...
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Robert Frost: Social and Political Conservative
Robert Frost published 11 books of poetry, won four Pulitzer Prizes, established himself as the unofficial poet laureate of the United States, and acquired a national and international literary reputation. Despite his fame as a poet and public speaker, and because of his friendship with such liberal Democrats as Vice-President Henry Wallace and President John...
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Stop the Migrant Invasion
The Left insists migration is a humanitarian crisis. Wrong. It’s a lawless invasion. Europeans are fighting back. Americans should, too.
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Love Thy Neighbor
Ben Lummis was not in a mood to write this morning. He wanted to be outdoors, and, because he was an outdoor writer, being outdoors was as legitimate a part of his job as writing about having been outdoors was after he’d been there. His work had two stages, outdoor and indoor, and in the...
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The Diner’s Refrain
With former president Bill Clinton settled into his new headquarters on New York’s 125th Street, in central Harlem, the danger for the culinary crowd is that he may now take to hanging out at Sylvia’s, the famous soul-food restaurant barely three blocks away on Lenox Avenue near 126th. For almost 40 years, the family-owned restaurant...
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Hollywood and Bethlehem
Hollywood loves Christmas, or Winterfest, or whatever they’re calling it these days. This is because many Americans make it the most wonderful time of the year for the studios, offering them gifts of gold. For example, on December 25, 2015, we gave Buena Vista/Disney $49.3 million for the right to spend 2 hours and 16...
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John F. Kennedy: Character and Camelot
John F. Kennedy first gained national attention at the age of 23. His book Why England Slept, published in 1940, became a best-seller and earned the new Harvard graduate plaudits as a man of learning and thoughtfulness. Kennedy was heard from again in the summer of 1944 when the New York Times carried a front-page...