Contrary to Washington’s official rhetoric, the U.S. government is an ally, not an opponent, of Islamic extremism—a foe, not a defender, of Western civilization. Not since the Turkish siege of Vienna (1526) has Europe faced the threat of a Muslim occupation of significant portions of the continent; it does so now because of the foreign...
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Man, Man, and Again Man
“Qualis aitifex pereo” -Nero I cannot remember a time when I was not what would be called an environmentalist. I spent much of my childhood on an earth unconstricted by concrete streets and unburdened by the weight of buildings. I was never happier than when I was out fishing with my father or picking berries...
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The Pit—And the Pendulum
Our Founding Fathers understood that they had inaugurated a republican federal union unique in its balance and distribution of powers. Unlike their descendants, who self-indulgently congratulate themselves on their democracy, the Fathers also understood that the preservation of such a regime was a daunting and demanding task, requiring virtue (in the masculine Roman sense) on...
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Outgrowing the Past
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Kelo v. City of New London, a chill wind blew across the rural South. The Court upheld the decision of the city fathers of New London, Connecticut, to grant a private development corporation the right to condemn a middle-income residential neighborhood, evict the property owners,...
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The People’s Republic of California
One-party rule in California means fiscal lunacy, hazardous living conditions, and dubious elections, among other bad things.
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Normal Germans, Nervous Europeans
The saga of Europe’s debt crisis can be dispiriting for anyone interested in the future of the Old Continent. There is, however, another, perhaps larger story lurking beneath the tales of billions and bond yields, and that is the story of Germany’s changing role. Although French President Nicolas Sarkozy gladly rushes toward any camera or...
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True Love Ways
For the past 40 years, Rockford’s Midtown district has seen more downs than ups. Centered on Seventh Street from First Avenue to Broadway, southeast of the main part of downtown, Midtown—once a bustling commercial and cultural center at the heart of a Swedish neighborhood—was, for far too long, a haven for prostitution and drug use. ...
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Be Angry at the Sun
Peace is busting out all over, and along with the prospect of peace comes the debate over how to spend the so-called “peace dividend,” supposing there is such a dividend. The administration doesn’t think there is, and Secretary of Defense Cheney has warned against spending the money saved on defense until it is in the...
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The Mafioso
According to some theorists, most of America’s woes began with the arrival of big government in 1932. Before that time, so the story goes, liberty was the rule, the work ethic was alive and well, God was in the classroom, and all was well with the world. As with all ideologies, this one presents an...
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Up From Objectivism
It was sort of like being caught in a raging stream, and swimming hard against the current, inch by inch, to reach safety. The time was many years ago, when, as a college freshman, I fell into the currents of liberalism. And they were powerful. Just go with the flow, and you could get approval,...
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The Constitution, R.I.P.
On July 22 of this year, the Washington Times published, as the weekly installment of its “Civil War” section, a long article by a gentleman named Mackubin Thomas Owens, described as “professor of strategy and force planning” at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, under the headline, “Secession’s apologists gut Constitution, history.” The...
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Of Paradigms and Penectomies
“Conservatives engage in rebellions, not revolutions.” How true, and what a way to begin a book. The Conservative Rebellion is part memoir, part intellectual and political history by a scholar who came of age in the revolutionary 1960’s, when fashionable people viewed rebels as Parliament viewed the Boston Minutemen. (King George III, however, considered George...
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Trump and the GOP Border War
In the 2016 race, June belonged to two outsiders who could not be more dissimilar. Bernie Sanders is a socialist senator from Vermont and Donald Trump a celebrity capitalist and legendary entrepreneur and builder. What do they have in common? Both have tapped into what the bases of their respective parties believe is wrong with...
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Crime and Moonshine
The jurors who tried the 14-year-old black boy who shot and killed three widows last year, one of them my own dear neighbor, found him guilty and gave him several life terms. By law, he got the maximum. He is too young for the death penalty. It is beyond me. If you are old enough...
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Biden’s Debate Lies
Biden’s political future may be in doubt. But no matter what becomes of him, he can rest assured that his lies will never be exposed by the self-appointed guardians of “Our Democracy™.”
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The Untold Story Behind The Passion of the Christ
What could a world-famous multibillionaire Hollywood star like Mel Gibson have in common with an unknown, cash-strapped, freelance journalist based in Rome? Virtually nothing, it would seem. Yet there is a common denominator: We are both Catholics and cherish the traditional Latin Mass, the primary liturgy of the Church before its post-Vatican II transformation into...
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Will Justice Amy Star in ‘The Five’?
By nominating Federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Donald Trump kept his word, and more than that. Should she be confirmed, he will have made history. Even his enemies would have to concede that Trump triumphed where his Republican predecessors—even Ronald Reagan, who filled three court vacancies—fell short. Trump’s achievement—victory in the...
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Lincoln, the Leiber Code, and Total War
The American Civil War was an unparalleled tragedy for the United States and the world. For it ensured that, thereafter, civilians everywhere were treated as “legitimate” targets in time of war. As in all wars, the victor wrote the official history of the conflict to extol its virtue and to demonize its opponent. Unlike in...
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Getting the Scoop
“All we want are the facts, ma’am.” —Sgt. Joe Friday Not long ago I was sorting through old papers for disposal. I came across a clipping saved for some forgotten reason. On the reverse was this headline: “NAACP Chief Says More Assistance Needed.” This headline might have appeared in my hometown paper today (though I...
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The Fear of the Original
The demands of life are endlessly self-contradictory. It is a supreme compliment in intellectual life, for example, to be called original; but it can be alarming to discover something—so alarming that people have been known to turn tail and run when they do. To take a philosophical instance: Leibniz, as Bertrand Russell tells in his...
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Reservations Required
This month I’m writing from the lower right about what works out to be the far left: San Francisco. (My first visit, not long ago, with wife and daughter. OK, lots of people have been to San Francisco. Some even live there. But they’re not writing this column.) Let’s give credit where it’s due: the...
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The Voice of the Turtle
“Niuno è solo l’april!” Mimì tells Rodolfo in Act Three of La Bohème. Mimì didn’t survive until April, and if she had she might have felt alone without Rodolfo anyway. Still, spring, like sex, is exuberant, irrational—rather, it’s suprarational. And unignorable, like a 70-mile-an-hour wind, which is what spring amounts to in most of the...
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A Not So Wonderful Life
“To us your good Samaritan was a fool to risk the security of his family to help a stranger.” —Joey Tai in Michael Cimino’s Year of the Dragon It has been more than a year since we put out the March 1989 number of Chronicles, “A Nation of Immigrants,” in which it was suggested that...
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Armenians in Peril, Again
The ongoing war between Azerbaijan and Armenia threatens the existence of Christian communities in the Near East. The Biden White House is unlikely to intervene in any way for fear of losing support from Turkey.
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Letter From North Carolina
One morning recently, National Public Radio offered its listeners an interview with a Texas mass murderer to go with their cornflakes. This monster, who had confessed to 250 or so murders, told the reporter that some of them were “sacrifices to Satan.” Aghast, the reporter asked, “You don’t really believe in Satan, do you?” (He...
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After the Deluge
“Who would call in a / foreigner—unless / an artisan with skill to / serve the realm, / a healer, or a prophet, or / a builder, / or one whose harp and song / might give us joy. / . . . but when have beggars come by / invitation?” —Homer It should be...
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Europe Is Not What It Seems
It would be logical for me to say that, returning to the United States after another four months this summer and fall in various countries of Europe, east and west, I found a great many misconceptions about the continent in American media and public opinion. Yet it would not be fair to limit myself to...
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Is 18th Century Liberalism to Blame for All Our Problems?
Many conservatives insist that some distant, long-past event supposedly causes all our current woke silliness. I call this the "inverted Whig interpretation of history."
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The Cow in the Trail
Even in mid-September you cannot go comfortably by day into the deserts of southeastern Utah. Together the late Edward Abbey and I rented horses and rode into the La Sal mountains, following what began as a dirt road and ended as a trail at an elevation of approximately 10,500 feet. From the mountain pass, we...
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No Other Epitaph
Written documents should be interpreted with an eye toward discerning the intent of the author. When the Constitution of the United States is the text under consideration, the relevant intentions are those of the men who drafted and ratified the document. This proposition reflects a long-established canon of construction: common-law judges as far back as...
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Merkel’s Flawed Attempt
Angela Merkel is not a charismatic leader. She lacks Margaret Thatcher’s zeal, Benazir Bhutto’s looks (Berlusconi once commented on her lack of feminine charms in his inimitably discourteous manner), or Indira Gandhi’s carefully cultivated caring touch. She wears one of her dull jackets with dark trousers every day. When asked about her biggest youthful...
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The Real American Dilemma
This remarkable editorial by Chronicles’ longest-serving editor offered one of the first and best analyses of America’s immigration problem.
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From the Family of the Lion
“There is a kind of revolution of so general a character that it changes the tastes as well as the fortunes of the world.” —La Rochefoucauld There is a popular myth of Abraham Lincoln, our 16th President, that is known to most Americans. According to the orthodox version of this highly sympathetic...
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Deep as Dante
Brenda Wineapple’s new biography of the most brilliant flower of the New England Renaissance reminded me that it was time to reread Hawthorne. She delineated the man very well, got his politics almost right, but barely did justice to his work. Writing in 1847, ten years after the publication of Hawthorne’s first collection of stories,...
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Going for the Extra Yardage
Hours—or, rather, weeks—spent with the 2006-07 NCAA football bowls may suggest something wrong not only with the priorities of higher education but with the imperial rituals of the nation. There are a lot of cheerleaders and fight songs and marching bands and rowdy fans and excruciatingly bad renditions of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and excellent tailgate...
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The Angry Summer
Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight . . . —Psalm 144:1 According to the Washington Post, McAllen, Texas is an “all-American city,” albeit one “that speaks Spanish.” So it’s small wonder that “immigration isn’t a problem for this Texas town—it’s a way of life.” ...
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Canadian Populism: Alive and Well
“October Revolution” is probably an apt description of Canada’s 1993 parliamentary elections, as the month marked the enthronement of a left-oriented political establishment and the ejection of the ruling Conservatives. The Liberal Party’s sweep to an absolute majority meant the relegation of the Tory Progressive Conservative Party to virtual extinction (it now holds only two...
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Nationalism, Old and New
In the course of American history, nationalism and republicanism have usually been enemies, not allies. From the days of Alexander Hamilton, nationalism has meant unification of the country under a centralized government, the supremacy of the executive over the legislative branch, the reduction of states’ rights and local and sectional parochialism, governmental regulation of the...
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The Struggle for the Gate of Tears
Houthi attacks on Israeli allied vessels in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait are disrupting the world economy and prompting the U.S. to intervene. Known as "The Gate of Tears," this strait is the gateway for much of the world's commerce.
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The Shooting of George Wallace
On May 15, 1972, I was a nine-year-old Little Leaguer determined to become the next Johnny Bench. As I headed home from the playground after baseball practice, our neighbor, Willie Kines, waved me over to his car. I remember thinking it odd that he would be picking me up, given that I lived only three...
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The Quandry of Tribal Sovereignty
Native American resistance, resilience, and perseverance remain prevalent. The limits of Native American sovereignty remain mysterious.
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A Tale of Two Cities
Of all the cities of which I have some personal experience, but to which I have no personal connection, Charleston, South Carolina, is the only one in which I’ve seriously thought I could live. The attraction is not the climate (my Polish and German genes and my Upper Midwest upbringing make me long for a...
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The Executioner’s Tale
This “celebration” of his intense love affair with America will not likely teach Norman Podhoretz’s devotees anything new. For the most part, it incorporates material that can be found in earlier autobiographical writings and in Podhoretz’s other published recollections about life in New York literary circles. My Love Affair With America includes an extended description...
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Nobody’s Bagboy
Something curious happened in South Carolina on June 10. While Sen. Lindsay Graham easily prevailed over his challenger, Buddy Witherspoon, garnering two thirds of the vote in the Republican U.S Senate primary, the Democrats (voting on the same day) chose a candidate who everyone admits is well to the right of Graham himself. Of course,...
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Imagining the West
“The curious have observed that the progress of humane literature (like the sun) is from the East to the West. . .” —Nathaniel Ames As both a reality and an interpretive problem, the American West has retained its long-established hold on the attention of our scholars. And the same is true of Western American literature:...
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We’ll Get Him Next Time
After two years and tens of millions of dollars, the Mueller investigation ended in a shattering anticlimax for Democrats. On March 22, Special Counsel Robert Mueller sent Attorney General William Barr his report, and Barr promptly informed Congress that Mueller found no collusion between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. Mueller recommended no prosecutions—though Barr’s...
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Six Midterm Reflections
As the Midterm Election returns came in, one thing became clear: There would be no “blue wave.” The Democrats secured the House of Representatives, though not by a wide margin, and the Republicans held the Senate, gaining a few seats. The House Democrats and their GOP “NeverTrump” allies still skulking about the Beltway bubble will...
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Rule by Assassination
“Justice has been done,” chortles President Obama and his spokespeople. ”Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, good bye,” chanted the proles on the streets of New York. There are already T-shirts on sale saying “Obama got Osama.” I am surprised not to have heard of a procession of little people in...
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Lincoln, Diplomacy, and War
In the tumultuous six months between his election in November 1860 and the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, Abraham Lincoln rejected all diplomatic efforts to resolve the deepening crisis peacefully. In the political dispute with the newly constituted, but militarily weak, Confederate States of America, there would be no meaningful negotiations. No...
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Melting Down Art and History
After the Civil War, former North Carolina governor Zeb Vance became a U.S. senator. His Northern colleagues enjoyed his affable nature and sense of humor, and some of them invited him to Massachusetts during a break in government business. While there, Vance attended a party, and eventually required a visit to the outhouse, where his...