The Oklahoma Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, has ordered a monument of the Ten Commandments removed from the Capitol. Calling the Commandments “religious in nature and an integral part of the Jewish and Christian faiths,” the court said the monument must go. Gov. Mary Fallin has refused. And Oklahoma lawmakers instead have filed legislation...
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Family Formation in America
Parents, some say, are people who use the rhythm method of family planning. One might better say that parents are optimists, people who think that the present is good and the future probably better. People who look forward with confidence often have an extra child; those who think that their situation may worsen are cautious...
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Why They Fought
The late Jean-François Revel wrote a once-famous book with the title Comment les démocraties finissent. Revel was not a stupid man, and I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon “we tired the sun with talking,” but as a political philosopher, he was a prisoner of the leftist ideology that treats terms like equality and democracy as substantial...
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Palm and Pine
David Gilmour’s witty and elegant, original and useful book chronicles “Kipling’s political life, his early role as apostle of the Empire, the embodiment of imperial aspiration, and his later one as the prophet of national decline.” Sympathetic yet aware of Kipling’s faults, Gilmour shows that his ideas were more subtle than those of a crude...
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The Media Hype Over Civil War
Sputnik News carried a live interview on Jan. 25 with Srdja Trifkovic on the social and political climate in the United States in the aftermath of President Joseph Biden’s inauguration. We bring you Dr. Trifkovic’s translation of some key segments of that interview. Q: [At 7 min. 55 sec.] How seriously should we take the warnings that America...
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Crimes and Punishments
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover Produced by Kees Kasander Written and directed by Peter Greenaway Released by Miramax Films The Plot Against Harry Produced by Michael Roemer and Robert Young Written and directed by Michael Roemer Released by King Screen Lust, greed, betrayal, murder, and revenge are not at all unusual...
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Treasures From Spain
In an extraordinary gesture of international goodwill, the Spanish Ministry of Culture this past fall selected the rarest books and manuscripts from Spanish libraries for an exhibition at the New York Public Library. Items on display ranged from a 13th-century manuscript on the game of chess to exuberant prints by Joan Miro. Libraries from all...
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The Way We Are, No. 4
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,But leech-like to their fainting country cling—Shelley I have finally reconciled myself to the sad truth that I will probably never get to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom. I’ll probably never get to sit next to Ruth Bader Ginsburg at dinner, shake hands with Rush Limbaugh, or tour...
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Suicide by (Legal) Immigration
I was fortunate to grow up before the Immigration Act of 1965 began an incremental and insidious change in the ethnic composition of America. I had friends whose parents were immigrants. I thought nothing much of it because the parents had all come from countries in Northern or Western Europe and almost immediately became indistinguishable...
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Transplanted Texan
Our literary establishment seems designed to ensure that a writer’s first novel is his best. Norman Mailer, James Jones, William Styron and J.D. Salinger are only a few of the better-known novelists whose first work defined the acme of their creative careers. (In the case of John Barth, the second novel, The End of the...
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Is Biden Prepared to Lose Afghanistan?
Is President Joe Biden prepared to preside over the worst U.S. strategic defeat since the fall of Saigon in 1975? For that may be what’s at stake if Biden follows through on the 2020 peace deal with the Taliban to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 1—just two months from now. ...
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A Man for Our Century
Wilhelm Roepke (1899-1966) is one of the most original, yet least recognized, economic thinkers of the 20th century. One of the reasons for his relative obscurity is that he does not fit well into the prevailing capitalist/socialist dichotomy. Roepke borrows from both capitalism and socialism, yet he goes beyond defining economics in abstract terms and...
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Rome as We Found It
In horse-and-carriage days, foreign visitors to Rome, after an arduous Alpine crossing, commonly entered the city from the north, by the Milvian Bridge which has existed since the second century B.C. Here, on October 28, 312, Constantine had a vision of Christ on the eve of his victory over his rival, Maxentius. Since that time,...
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Out of Africa
But for the death and suffering it has caused to thousands of innocents, the Liberian imbroglio would have an almost farcical quality—Graham Greene meets Lehar. On one side, there was the LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy), a ragtag army of heavily armed but poorly trained and undisciplined rebels. They nevertheless have the upper...
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Lady and the Vamp
“No womman of no clerk is praised.” —Chaucer An old-fashioned historian can be forgiven for feeling a touch of empathy for the bewildered Egyptians upon whom Yahweh emptied the vessels of wrath some 3,500 years ago. The Hebrews’ God plagued the Egyptians for a matter of days, but the stern Minerva who reigns over academe...
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Time for a Conservative Reformation
The fate of conservatism is thought to be hanging in the balance these days, and with it, perhaps, the fate of the country, of a political party, of presidential candidates, of a movement. Well, good. Now is the time for reevaluation or, dare I say it, reformation. “Conservatism isn’t just passivity,” wrote Joseph Sobran in...
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Strange Bedfellows
Last November’s “Rose Revolution” in the Caucasian republic of Georgia made political bedfellows of an unlikely couple: George W. Bush and billionaire “philanthropist” and global meddler George Soros. The apparent cooperation between the Bush administration and Soros in backing the ouster of President Eduard Shevardnadze seems all the more bizarre in light of Soros’ stated...
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Remembering St. Thomas Aquinas
St. Thomas Aquinas is a universally admired philosopher who was able to distill the whole of human discourse. His thought even influenced America's Founding Fathers, as seen in the biblical ordering of the new American nation in the Treaty of Paris.
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Welfare and Illegal Immigration
Two San Diego police officers, responding in the early morning darkness to a call that a school was being burglarized, arrived just as two suspects were fleeing into a nearby canyon. As the San Diego Union reported, the officers did not plunge into the canyon in pursuit—the terrain was dangerous, night visibility almost zero, and...
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Dupe or No
Chronicles falls short of its usual high standards by giving so much space to “Faulkner in Japan: The ‘American Century’” in the August issue (Society & Culture). As far as I can tell amidst all the unanchored theorizing, the author wants to make America’s greatest writer out to be a clueless dupe of postwar “American...
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Faith and Freud in the Bayou
A comic religious novel, North Gladiola treats the same region of southeast Louisiana and some of the same characters that James Wilcox introduced to his readers in his first novel, Modern Baptists (Doubleday, 1983). The protagonist of the first novel, bumbling Mr. Pickens, plays a minor role in the second, as do meddling Donna Lee...
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Israel: Tactical Winner, Strategic Loser
The events in Gaza since July 7 have shown, not for the first time, Israel’s difficulty in coping with the challenges of asymmetric warfare. The problem first became apparent in Lebanon exactly eight years ago (July-August 2006), when Hezbollah – the weaker party by several orders of magnitude – was able to exploit Israeli political...
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Scare Quotes
A tactic the left uses to inspire loathing for conservatives is repeating something a conservative or even nominal Republican says, and then slapping scare quotes around it. That supposedly shows that whatever the conservative said is self-evidently false, and worse, “hateful.” It might run something like this: “Tea Party Senator says ‘Earth revolves around Sun.’”...
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The Lost Tribes of Israel
As Israel enters its 61st year, Israelis may look back with pride. Yet, the realists among them must also look forward with foreboding. Israel is a modern democracy with the highest standard of living in the Middle East. In the high-tech industries of the future, she ...
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Entrepreneurs and Bureaucrats
Despite his Viennese birth, Peter Drucker enjoys a reputation as a leading American social analyst, particularly on industrial and economic issues. In Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Drucker interprets U.S. management theory and practice within the framework of the free market economy and the open society, as he seeks to define entrepreneurship as “a craft” essential for...
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Carrying the Burden
The Help Produced by Dreamworks Pictures Directed and written by Tate Taylor from Kathryn Stockett’s novel Distributed by Walt Disney Studios The Guard Produced by Reprisal Films Directed and written by John McDonagh Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics I went to see The Help fully expecting it would be a travesty of race relations...
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Has the West the Will to Survive?
“If you’re . . . pathetically weak, the country is going to be overrun with millions of people, and if you’re strong, then you don’t have any heart, that’s a tough dilemma. . . . I’d rather be strong.” So said President Donald Trump, on issuing his order halting the separation of children from parents...
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Germany Moves Away From Woke Regime Politics. Will America?
The once-docile German people no longer trust their political establishment to deal rationally with immigration and crime. A growing people’s revolt in Europe may be a sign of things to come in America.
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Prudence Isn’t Fear
Last week saw two particularly grisly Islamic terror attacks of the type that have become all too common: 22 people, mostly children and teenagers, were killed after a bomb exploded at a pop concert in Manchester, England, and 28 Egyptian Copts, including young children, were massacred when ISIS ambushed their bus, which was taking them...
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Foreigners No More
They are coming: on trains, on buses, on foot, all the way from Central America, where they meet up with smugglers who take them across our nonexistent border. This has been happening for decades, but there’s one big difference in the recent wave of illegal immigration: These are children, many under ten years of age—50,000...
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The Unreported Story of Hurricane Andrew
On August 24, 1992, shortly after 3 A.M.. Hurricane Andrew hit the coast at Miami, in South Dade County, Florida. A “Category Four” hurricane on the Saper-Simpson Hurricane Scale, Andrew struck with 145 m.p.h. winds, making it the worst hurricane to hit Miami since 1926. In fact, this was the worst hurricane to hit a...
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John Bull’s Other Island
Jane Ohlmeyer examines how English imperialism shaped Ireland; tangled alliances and cultural identities complicate the story of the Irish nationalist movement.
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Bulgarian Autumn, Part I
Rather than dropping out of the sky into Bulgaria at the Sophia airport as I did, travelers would be better advised to enter by other ways. Driving up from Greece through the Rhodope mountains would be one appealing way. Another fascinating approach would be to sail into the Black Sea city of Varna or the...
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Trifkovic on Russia’s Strategic Crossroads
In his latest RTRS interview (Bosnian-Serb Republic public TV service), Srdja Trifkovic talks about Russia’s complex political and economic power structure, which is mostly at odds with the image of an authoritarian Kremlin monolith presented in the Western media. [Video here—Trifkovic segment starts at 6 minutes. Excerpts, verbatim translation from Serbian.] Q: Professor Trifkovic, you’ve...
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The Bankrupt PIGS of Europe
They are called the PIGS—Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain. What they have in common is that all are facing deficits and debts that could bring on national defaults and break up the European Union. What brought the PIGS to the edge of the abyss? All are neo-socialist states that provide welfare for poor people, generous unemployment,...
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On Bursting Bubbles
Greg Kaza (“Economic Liberty and American Manufacturing,” Views, January) is to be congratulated for seizing hold of two important realities: that the late 1990’s saw a financial bubble of historic proportions, the origins and implications of which are poorly understood; and that incomes for the median- and lower-wage earner, when adjusted for inflation, have seen...
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Cash For Clunkers
When Alan Blinder first proposed the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), commonly referred to as the Cash for Clunkers program, in a July 2008 New York Times op-ed, he foresaw benefits to the economy and the environment, and a “more equal income distribution.” The program has fallen rather short of its intended mark. Most of...
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How, When, Do We Come Together Again?
America suffers from a great divide that goes far beyond our clashing views of Jan. 6 and the Mar-a-Lago raid. Americans need to find common ground again.
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Capitalism: The Conservative Illusion
—“If a temple is to be erected, a temple must be destroyed.” —Friedrich Nietzsche When the Cold War ended in 1991, American conservatives rejoiced over the triumph of democratic capitalism, which had struggled for over half a century, first against the rise of fascism, and then against the Soviet bloc and...
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THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH: July 2007
PERSPECTIVE Ted's Timor Mortis by Thomas Fleming Stumbling past the half-truths. VIEWS Americans Don't Die! by Roger D. McGrath Casualties, from republic to empire. Portraits by George Garrett Some notes on the poetry of growing old. The Last Adieu by George McCartney A wake for the living. A Dirge for ...
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Purging America’s Heroes
With that kumbayah moment at the Capitol in South Carolina, when the Battle Flag of the Confederacy was lowered forever to the cheers and tears of all, a purgation of the detestable relics of evil that permeate American public life began. City leaders in Memphis plan to dig up the body of Confederate General Nathan...
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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...
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The Mythological South
Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law opens with rolling shots of New Orleans townhouses) tenements, the down and out on a crummy side-street. From there we enter into two variations on the theme of domestic disharmony, Jack’s and Zack’s, and on to a story set in a South that never was, by a film maker who,...
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Hope Amid the Ruins
It may possibly be a virtue to maintain a diary, and probably it is no sin to publish one. In the first case, the virtue is enhanced, in the second the potential for sin mitigated, by the diarist having been a regular and faithful one; and in this respect anyway George Frost Kennan is as...
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Tom Fleming’s Complainte
George Garrett used to tell the story of a young writer who visited him in York Harbor, Maine. The writer, who had worked in a prison, wore a cap emblazoned with the letters SCUP, which stood for something like South Carolina Union of Prisons. Sharing some of George’s sense of humor—which bordered on the wicked—he...
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Unseen Places
In Huysmans’ Against the Grain (1884), the precious hero Des Esseintes has “the idea of turning dream into reality, of traveling [from France] to England in the flesh as well as in the spirit, of checking the accuracy of his visions.” He orders a servant to pack his bags, calls a cab, and stops in...
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Burying the Lede on Reopenings
CNN’s recent criticism of the reopening of Texas and Mississippi has once again proven its journalists merely engage in partisan coverage. This time it is accompanied by the added demerit of not understanding the nuances of federalism in America’s governance. With Govs. Greg Abbott and Tate Reeves both deciding it is high time to re-open...
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Looking Forward as the West Declines
Germany’s defeat in World War II was accelerated by Hitler’s unwillingness to accept reports at odds with his increasingly fantastical view of reality. His self-deceptions were believed with such firmness that, by mid-1944, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel concluded that the Führer was living in a Wolkenkuckucksheim (“cloud cuckoo land”). The same diagnosis applies to the establishment Right, both in...
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The Year in the Novel, 1991
What we have here—not even the President has had the effrontery to deny it—is an intellectual recession. I cannot think of a year in which more; bad books received more serious attention. These weren’t just lapses but a pattern, and one need not be paranoid to look for explanations. What people do is, mostly, what...
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Letter From Egypt: The Battle for the Nile (Pt. 1)
My annual Middle Eastern tour this winter is limited to Egypt, mainly due to the less rigid Corona-related restrictions there than elsewhere in the region. An additional motive is the fact that this country of over a hundred million souls faces an unprecedented geopolitical crisis that is not sufficiently known in the outside world yet...