“In the Name of the most Holy & undivided Trinity.” A Thus begins the Treaty of Paris (1783) by which Great Britain formally conceded the existence of the independent United States of America. This matter-of-fact invocation of the Triune God of Christianity stands in sharp contrast to the stirring tributes to human authority in the...
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Carolina, I Hardly Know You
In the primary of June 10, the Republican voters of South Carolina gave a comfortable victory to Lindsay Graham, one of the most notorious and repulsive of the current “invade the world, invite the world” brand of U.S. Senators. Friends from elsewhere have questioned me repeatedly: how could this happen in such a traditionally conservative...
Pictures Into Words
Readers of Chronicles already know that David Middleton is an extraordinarily accomplished poet. For much of the rest of the reading world, unfortunately, he is a well-kept secret. Living in Thibodaux, Louisiana, and teaching at Nicholls State University, he is far removed from the centers of literary power and influence. Even if that were not...
I Love to Tell the Story
My old teacher, the classicist (and Scots Nationalist) Douglas Young, once interrupted a boring conversation about television by declaring loudly, “Speaking of Aeschylus . . . ” When one of his naive colleagues insisted, “But Douglas, no one was speaking about Aeschylus,” Young responded, “Yes, but I want to be speaking of Aeschylus.” This month,...
The Era of Our Discontent
In scientific culture, every subject is accepted as a legitimate one for quantifiable study, including subjects no wise man would venture to approach in such a manner. Hence academic researchers, boldly rushing in where mystics and poets fear to tread, feel encouraged to establish themselves as experts in matters to which the concept of expertise...
After Strange Gods
In Hungary last October, U.S. diplomat André Goodfriend noted that Americans’ “right to express their views would be protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.” Making clear that his sympathies lay not with U.S. citizens arrested in Budapest but with the Hungarian officials who had arrested them, he hastily added, “We’re glad to...
Obama’s West Point Address
President Barack Obama’s commencement address at West Point on May 28 managed to displease pretty much everyone in the nation’s commentariat. Before making an overall assessment of its significance, it is necessary to examine the validity and implications of Obama’s individual statements. “[B]y most measures America has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of...
A New Path to Peace
Israel’s recent siege of Lebanon, which has imposed a crippling humanitarian, economic, and psychological setback on her northern neighbor, may return Syria to the center stage of Middle Eastern politics. Considering Syria’s enduring influence over Lebanon and the Palestinians and her close ties to Iran, ignoring Syria no longer serves America’s (or Israel’s) interests. Even...
Election Year Smoke and Mirrors Magic from the Left
A notable decline in the antics of far-left oddballs suggests they’ve received an order from on high to cool it.
The New Bulwark of Christendom
During the centuries of struggle between European Christianity and Islam, various countries were referred to as “Antemurale Christianitatis,” the bulwark of Christendom. Today, with the torrent of mostly Islamic “migrants” heading toward Europe only increasing, that title belongs to Hungary. Hungary was roundly condemned in the international press for seeking to enforce EU rules, which...
How to Write a Novel
Cormac McCarthy is so fine a writer-for my money the best novelist in America today-that he and his work must be accepted pretty much on their own terms. Criticism therefore, in the case of Mr. McCarthy, is reducible largely to questions of taste. He has published now six novels, all of them distinguished for reality...
Surveying America: A Plan for Growth
Latin America has repeatedly failed to achieve the kind of settled distribution of property that could support a middle-class society. This is a disjunction of subtle but increasing cultural importance as the United States becomes more of a Latin country. With Jeb Bush running for the 2016 Republican nomination based in part on his ties...
A City on a Hill—With Transgender Toilets?
A little over 30 years ago, I was attending a conference in a faraway place when disaster struck. I became sick, really sick—the sort of illness where one can barely crawl out of bed, let alone attend conference sessions. Lacking care of any sort, I lay in bed for two days, waiting for some semblance...
Polemics & Exchanges: December 2024
Chronicles readers comment upon and critique recent pieces by Geoff Shepard and Jeremy Carl.
Trump’s Road Still Open
At stake in 2016 is the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate and, possibly, control of the House of Representatives. Hence, Republicans have a decision to make. Will they set aside political and personal feuds and come together to win in November, after which they can fight over the future of the party, and...
The Profiteering Migrant-Industrial Complex
Migrants complain about rotten food. The worst rot is inside the Adams administration's handling of this emergency.
Peace in the Land of Sojourn
When Ariel Sharon, facing strong international pressure, proposed a withdrawal of settlements from Gaza, the settlers’ response was predictably hostile. For some, the motive is predominantly economic—the settlements represent affordable housing; for others, nationalist politics is the driving force: Israel, they say, is Israel, and no part should be subtracted. These arguments can be countered...
Forgetting Colin Kaepernick
Colin Kaepernick, the former star quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, made the decision during the 2016 NFL preseason to kneel during the playing of the National Anthem. Other athletes quickly followed suit, some by kneeling, others by raising a fist to protest “racial injustice” in America. Outrage predictably followed, with opinion polls suggesting that...
The Well Wrought Life
This book is certainly a book—the book—for those interested in its subject, but I believe that it is a book, too, for those who have no particular interest in Cleanth Brooks (1906-1994), or in criticism. In telling the story of a man’s life, Mark Winchell has also, by placing that life in context, addressed many...
Kavanaugh Hearings Have Become a Farce
As Chief of the Pentagon’s Criminal Law Division, I tried or supervised hundreds of rape cases, and my aggressive prosecutions earned me a place on the Army General Staff. I demanded that my JAG lawyers prosecute the toughest sex crime cases, regardless of evidentiary challenges. But I also insisted that they firmly believe that each...
Secularism and the Mosque Flap
Let's say the mosque (you know what mosque) gets built, as it certainly might, public opinion notwithstanding. What's the next theological concession America's Christian churches get to make in the name of brotherhood, sisterhood, pluralism, world peace and amity, the reconstruction of America's image, etc., etc.? First it's one thing, ...
A Textbook Case
Texas Politics, by Wilbourn Benton, professor of political science at Texas A&M, is a textbook that surveys the constitution of the state of Texas, with heavy emphasis on the written, legal structure of how the state is run. Much of the book is a dry summary. When he can, the author tells the story of...
Rumors of War
“Shall I weep if a Poland fall? Shall I shriek if a Hungary fail?” -Tennyson Robert Kee: 1939: In the Shadow of War; Little, Brown; Boston. Gordon Brook-Shepherd: Archduke of Sarajevo; Little, Brown; Boston. Neither Robert Kee nor Gordon Brook-Shepherd has written a masterpiece. Both men cover well trodden fields of research: one, the events of l939 that Winston Churchill aptly called “the Second Thirty-Years...
Wrongthink About Israel Is America’s Thought-Crime
Although Israel has been forced into asymmetrical warfare with Hamas in Gaza, labeling Americans who question U.S. involvement in this affair “anti-Semitic” is an overreach of equally asymmetric proportions.
Bella Sicilia, Clara e Oscura
The rugged mountains lifting into the vaporous cloud cap that repeated their tumultuous form on the aerial plane looked familiar enough—sky islands, we call them in the American Southwest. Only these were real islands, rising from blue sea rather than sere desert floor, and the clouds surmounting them were more than atmospheric; they were Homeric. ...
Tech Oligarchs Assault ALEC
In Chronicles two years ago I defended the American Legislative Exchange Council against assaults by George Soros-funded groups seeking to shut down debate. ALEC works with local and state legislators to craft “model legislation,” such as for gun rights and voting integrity, that outrage the Left. Now tech oligarchs so rich they make Soros look...
Iran: The Score, the Options
In recent weeks the proponents of an American war against Iran have been getting impatient with President Obama’s apparent unwillingness to get with the program. Joe Lieberman, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman, and Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, now press the President to impose a short time limit on the...
Honest Journalist
Why are the phrases “honest journalist” and “free press” so often greeted with a snicker? Of course, everyone exempts his own columnist or talking head from the general condemnation, but most Americans also exempt their own congressman from the universal condemnation of Congress as a body made up of toadies and swindlers. To see the...
The Flawed Attempt to Make a Religion for the Right
In these troubled times of pandemics, racial conflict, and economic instability, disagreements over American conservatism may not sound particularly important. Yet, when “cancel culture” tactics are being applied to the right, the meaning of conservatism is no longer just an academic talking point. This hostile climate has rekindled robust debate on what exactly conservatism means....
Does Our Diversity Portend Disintegration?
After nine people were shot to death by a public transit worker, who then killed himself in San Jose, the latest mass murder in America, California Governor Gavin Newsom spoke for many on the eve of this Memorial Day weekend. “What the hell is going on in the United States of America? What the hell...
The Case for Laissez-Faire Capitalism
Under laissez-faire capitalism, government is limited to armies, which keep foreign bad guys from attacking us; police, to quell local criminals; and courts, to determine guilt and innocence. This is roughly the position of minimal-government libertarians, or minarchists. The foundation of law in this system is the non-aggression principle (NAP). The NAP provides that anyone...
Pro-Life: The Political Disadvantage
Pro-life Republicans must somehow convince their opponents that opposition to abortion is a deeply held belief about human life—not an attack on women.
An Appeal from Thomas Fleming
Your mind is a terrible thing to waste—which is what will happen if Chronicles and its web go under because of lack of support. The election is over, and the Republicans have won their much predicted victory. It was only a matter of days before GOP legislators began to run away from the big issues:...
At the End of Italy
I am writing this from a cottage near Santa Maria di Leuca, on the southernmost tip of Italy in the Adriatic. As the luggage, including my maps and guidebooks, only arrived yesterday, I cannot really be expected to say anything worth believing about the land or the people. As for the curious inner workings of...
U.S. Attorney Sassoon’s Dubious ‘Principled Resignation’
Former federal prosecutor Danielle Sassoon’s stated reasons for resigning rather than dropping charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams are legally suspect.
Texas Gov. Abbott Fumbles on Border Security
Two Texas National Guardsmen sat in a “non-tactical” vehicle near the Mexican border and south of Laredo, Texas on the morning of Jan. 18. The Army Times reported that the men got out to assist Border Patrol in stopping a Chrysler 300 after it was seen picking up six migrants. As they approached, the driver, a suspected smuggler,...
Digging For Truth in Pravda
I confess—I know Russian. This ability has been causing me a lot of irritation lately. I have been bombarded with questions from people who don’t know the language, about what is really going on in Moscow now. In my answers, in order to be absolutely unbiased, I always rely on “Pravda.” I mean not just...
Books In Brief
Twilight of the Elites: Prosperity, the Periphery, and the Future of France, by Christophe Guilluy (New Haven: Yale University Press; 184 pp., $25.00). The French dislike what they call “Anglo-American economics” even more than they dislike English and American cookery; also, more recently, progressive Anglo-American views regarding the supposed identicality between the sexes. Christophe Guilluy,...
#MeToo: Stalinism in Drag
We live in a Puritan country, in which self-righteousness is eternally wedded to cheap theatrics. This explains the dual phenomena of Meryl Streep and Hollywood’s earnest commitment to distributing her films to every country on the planet. Like all good Puritans, self-righteous Americans are sure to be the most depraved of anyone. So when Tinseltown,...
Comeback Time for Christians
The Holy Father—Pope Benedict XVI—offers to let Episcopalians and other Anglicans of Catholic disposition join the Roman Catholic Church, while retaining characteristics of their Anglican identity. And who in the booming pagan market cares a flying broomstick what the pope does about anything? Not the Wiccans, an estimated 340,000 strong. ...
Anglo-Americana
From the October 1990 issue of Chronicles. In 1858, as British and French forces pushed their way to Peking in the Opium Wars, Josiah Tatnall, commander of the neutral American naval squadron, intervened to save the British ships from Chinese guns and tow them safely out of range. When asked why he had abandoned his...
A Vast White-Wing Conspiracy?
I like reading about hate crime: It is such a cheering feature of American life. And while I am always happy to see the excellent news about this kind of offense—ever-rising numbers, more and more crimes in ever-broader areas of the country—I wish we could get those statistics even higher. The reasons for mv satisfaction...
America as a Proposition Nation
There is a popular superstition that defines America as a “Proposition Nation,” created and proclaimed by the obiter dicta about “all men” in the second sentence of the 1776 Declaration that the 13 colonies “are and of right ought to be free and independent States.” Is America a Proposition Nation? No, for the very simple...
Living in a Glass House
In January of last year, Chilean actress Danielle Tobar made international news by moving into a glass house in downtown Santiago. During the short course of “Project Nautilus,” the intimate details of her daily life were open to the (largely prurient) curiosity of onlookers. After only six days, Tobar abandoned the house, claiming security concerns....
Tulsi at the Turning Point
Tulsi Gabbard's farewell to the Democratic Party sounds more like a declaration of war. Most of her remarks would pass muster at a Trump rally.
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...
Transatlantic Rifts
In the immediate aftermath of September 11, Europe was closer to America, politically and emotionally, than at any time since World War II. For a moment, the threat of Islamic terrorism had rekindled a dormant awareness on both sides of the Atlantic of just how much the Old Continent and the New World have in...
Church Shopper
Like the French, we Americans live in, to borrow from Claude Polin, a “me-first” society. Each and every man is the measure of all things, his own arbiter of that which is beautiful, true, and of good report. Reared on the Disney principle (You can be whatever you want to be, or, Be true to...
Bridge of Hope
In 1958, when the first barbed-wire barricades were rolled out by the British colonial government across Ledra Street in the capital of Cyprus, it seemed inevitable that the seeds of division would yield a bitter harvest of intercommunal conflicts, regional tensions, and, finally, the partition of the whole island. Where minarets and churches once jostled...
Democrats’ America: The Heart of Darkness
If it was the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that black and white would come together in friendship and peace to do justice, his acolytes in today’s Democratic Party appear to have missed that part of his message. Here is Hakeem Jeffries, fourth-ranked Democrat in Nancy Pelosi’s House, speaking Monday, on the holiday...