The message of the thoughtful and beautifully written articles in Chronicles (December 1990) on “good news” seems to be this: things are very bad and bound to get worse, but if you resign yourself to the inevitable and concentrate on family and friends you may, with God’s help, get through it. If this is “good...
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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...
Calvinism Without God
Forget the “culture wars” and the assault on Christianity. The real conflict in America is thoroughly secular—between environmental and ecological “religions”—or so says Robert Nelson. He makes the argument, long known to conservatives, that religion never really goes away. Modern secular religions, like these two, borrow heavily from the Christian tradition. As such, they inherit...
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...
Trouble With Iran
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on October 26 that “Israel must be wiped off the map.” Invoking the words of Ayatollah Khomeini, he told an audience of 4,000 cheering students that a new conflict in Palestine would soon remove “this disgraceful blot from the face of the Islamic world.” The statement, made in the midst...
Ron DeSantis Joins the Fight for Sanity Against the Foreign Policy Blob
The truth is that the vitriolic reaction to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this week says everything about the foreign blob’s personal and vocational insecurities, and nothing about DeSantis’ call for measured prudence in Eastern Europe.
The Dream Dealer
When I hear of the books in the history of publishing that were self-published, I react like Lenin, who, on hearing of the 5,000 print run of Mayakovsky’s poem 150,000,000, scoffed that it was “a colossal waste of paper.” E.E. Cummings, for instance, published The Enormous Room at his own expense, petulantly dedicating it to...
Voting for Monarchy
Presidential elections in the United States sometimes seem more like the Wars of the Roses than political contests. The resemblance to dynastic conflict goes beyond the predictable acrimony between two sets of political interests: the taxpayers of the Republican Party and the tax consumers on whom the Democrats rely. It is true, of course, that...
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...
Secure of Private Rights
“For who can be secure of private right, If sovereign sway may be dissolved by might?” —John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel Dryden’s question, posed more than 300 years ago, supposes a just distinction but also a connection between one kind of rights, which he calls “private,” and another, “sovereign sway,” or legitimate public order. The...
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...
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...
Democrats, Not ‘Democracy,’ at Risk Today
Democracy is not on the ballot. What is on the ballot is a huge slice of the leadership and ruling class of the national Democratic Party. Democracy has not failed America, the reigning Democrats have failed America.
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...
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,...
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...
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...
Fatal Amendments
Enthusiastic defenders of the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution are fundamentalist cultists—and women and minorities are their victims. At least, that is the thesis of University of Miami law professor Mary Anne Franks’ new book, The Cult of the Constitution, an unforgiving disparagement of the Constitution’s white male origins and the allegedly unwoke...
Dabbling in DAPA
In mid-February, U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen issued an injunction enjoining the Obama administration from implementing the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program (DAPA). Under DAPA, over four million illegal aliens present in the United States would be shielded from deportation and would be eligible to receive work permits,...
Done Away With
The boy choir of Duke University has been done away with, apparently at the behest of one of the campus ministers, a woman who had never even attended any of the services at which the choir performed but who complained that the group was one of the “subtle and not so subtle vestiges of male...
Chuck Older
Recently, a younger acquaintance of mine, an actor on stage and screen, mentioned with disgust the circus-like atmosphere that pervaded the trial of O.J. Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife. I noted that early on in the trial, Judge Lance Ito simply lost control of the proceedings, and the “Dream Team” of defense attorneys...
On Loving the Patria
Thomas Fleming’s “Love the One You’re With” (Perspective, January) is the kind of writing that first attracted me to Chronicles and The Rockford Institute. It is for this caliber of discussion that I return every year to the Summer School. When I read Dr. Fleming, I can be sure that English is being properly used,...
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. ...
Diplomats, Dupes, and Traitors
Election ’88 has been so far a political flea circus in which the issues are as microscopic as the candidates. The one interesting candidate has been the Rev. Jesse Jackson. If you have seen his very effective commercials, you will remember the pictures of Jackson meeting with President Assad of Syria, and the voice-over reminding...
A Balkan Travelogue
It’s been some years since Tom Fleming and I have indulged in seven-day mad dashes across the Balkans, speaking, lecturing and giving interviews, meeting interesting people over good food and drink. Last week’s tour, which took us to Belgrade and Banja Luka, had the tempo and feel of the old times, but it was...
Immigration Restriction Then and Now
A new book offers some important insights on the enduring and legitimate reasons for immigration restriction even as it proposes some less compelling ones.
Mayday
“Revolutions often succeed,” wrote historian Lewis Namier, “merely because the men in power despair of themselves, and at the decisive moment dare not order the troops to fire.” For four days in May last spring, revolution or something frighteningly close to it rapped hard on America’s door. Not only did the “man in power”-namely, President...
The GOP’s Impossible Dream of Swaying Black Voters
Blacks are intensely devoted to the Democratic Party and to corrupt Democratic machines in urban areas, at least partly because they hate Republicans, the white man’s party. It makes no difference how often Fox News tells blacks they are living on the “Democratic plantation,” or that the Democrats are the party of slavery defender John C....
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, “It’s happened there; can it happen here?” Along much of California’s coastline runs the “ring of fire,” which stretches round the Pacific plate, from Australia, north past Japan, to Russia, round to Alaska,...
Monumental Stupidity
There is a scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 classic North by Northwest in which the characters look out at a brooding Mount Rushmore from the dining-room terrace of the Sheraton-Johnson Hotel in Rapid City, South Dakota (since renamed the Hotel Alex Johnson). There are Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, and Theodore Roosevelt peering back, and shortly after...
A Doctor in Spite of Himself
On December 3, 1989, the London Telegraph included a piece of academic news from the United States: “Researchers in his native Georgia must soon decide whether to reveal that the late Dr. Martin Luther King, murdered in 1968, was—in addition to his other human failings—a plagiarist. There is now much doubt as to whether his...
Guns of Delusion
Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware partake in academia's mass handwringing over the indigenous “right-wing terror threat”—allegedly represented by the Jan. 6 riot.
A Promising Year
On this month’s form, 2018 will be an interesting year. So far it has brought rich rewards to us world affairs aficionados. The overall global tempo is accelerating, affrettando, like de Falla’s Danza Ritual del Fuego. What would have been considered bizarre if not outright insane but a few years ago is now commonplace. Take...
“Trifkovic on Europe’s crisis and the threat of migration” – Nya Tider
On February 9 Sweden’s right-leaning newspaper Nya Tider (“New Times”) published an interview with Srdja Trifkovic which focused on the deepening crisis within the European Union and the ongoing migrant invasion of Europe. Here is the English translation. NT: How do you assess the problems of Europe and the impact of the migrant crisis, terrorism,...
The Renaissance Weekend
“He was just kidding,” our waitress said about her coworker, the sometimes banquet waiter Marcus Burrizon, age 21, who was just hauled away in shackles and leg irons by Secret Service agents. It was “Renaissance Weekend” in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and President Clinton and about 1,600 top achievers were getting together for beach fun-runs...
FARC Meets the Junior League
Saturday afternoon, my sister-in-law, Carolina, called from Bogotá. She asked me how we were doing—repeatedly, the way her mother does—then she asked to speak to my wife. My wife wasn’t home, so Carolina asked me to have her call, since “we have a little problem.” Carolina sounded fine, so I didn’t understand why my wife...
Sadly for Adlai
“Madly for Adlai,” proclaimed the campaign buttons in 1952. But Adlai Ewing Stevenson II wasn’t the kind of politician who aroused mad affections, or, for that matter, hostilities. He was a Stevenson. Passion isn’t the Stevenson thing; service is—service conducted with objectivity and a certain fidelity to the public weal. Jean Baker, professor of history...
The New Yorker Under the Glass
The first issue of The New Yorker (February 21, 1925) showed on its cover a dandy in top hat, high collar, and morning suit gazing through his monocle at a butterfly. The drawing is reproduced yearly, and butterflies became a cover motif. Whatever tastes, affectations, or snobbery the artist, Rea Irvin, wanted to suggest, it...
Election Explained
Reasons for voting Democrat: More freebies, welfare, government jobs, grants; satisfaction of leftist ideological malice; if you are a minority, the pleasure of sticking it to Whitey. Reasons for voting Republican: Unless you are a big capitalist, a defense contractor, an employer of illegal immigrants, or a politician hoping for the perks of office,...
A Desert Idyll
For Héctor, Las Vegas was the American city. The Strip at night suggested, Héctor thought, an explosion in a fireworks factory—all the flashing, soaring, running, bursting lights in every color of the universe; the gaudy hotels, like upended cruise ships; the fancy stores, luxurious casinos, and romantic cocktail lounges; his compatriots crowding everywhere and jabbering...
On ‘Homeschooling’
Help! M’aidez! Salve! While perusing your excellent September 1992 issue, I was horrified to see two articles espousing inaccuracies about homeschooling. First, E. Christian Kopff. In his article “Ignorance and Freedom,” he repeatedly states (without any source) that “‘Bible-believing’ Christians are strongly opposed to learning [Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and German] and allowing their children to...
The Never-Trumpers Are Never Coming Back
With never-Trump conservatives bailing on the GOP and crying out for the Party of Pelosi to save us, some painful truths need to be restated. The Republican Party of Bush I and II, of Bob Dole and John McCain, is history. It’s not coming back. Unlike the Bourbons after the Revolution and the Terror, after...
The President’s Painted Corner
A prudent power will always seek to keep open as many options as possible in its foreign-policy making. An increasingly rigid system of alliances, coupled with mobilization blueprints and railway timetables, reduced the European powers’ scope for maneuver in the summer of 1914 and contributed to the ensuing catastrophe. The United States, by contrast, entered...
Wrecking Ball
Donald Trump has upended the GOP presidential primary process and turned it into the most entertaining reality show yet. If The Donald’s road to the White House is blocked—either by the Republican elites or by his own tendency to go too far—and he returns to TV land, he’ll have a hard time topping this one....
The Tragedy of Mexico
Twenty-eight years ago, in the summer of 1980, I moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, to take a job teaching English and journalism at a university there. The job ended just as soon as it began: On the first day of classes, the university, a private institution with connections to the country’s thriving neofascist movement and, thence,...
A Balkan Tragedy
For the past two-and-a-half millennia, our civilization has cultivated tragedy as an art form that articulates some of the key problems of our existence. Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III—these works speak timeless truths in an ever-contemporary language. In the case of Serbia’s former president Slobodan Milosevic, reality has proved equal to inspired imagination. His life, which...
Kamala Harris is a Bad Bet for Democrats
Harris has no excuses, no substance, and nothing recommending her other than convenience and enthusiasm for her race and gender among people who insisted until only a short time ago that Biden was perfectly fine. He wasn’t, and neither is she.
The International Jewish Conspiracy
Any conversation about conspiracy theories inevitably turns to “the Jews.” On one hand, the critics of “international Zionism” claim that U.S. foreign policy (or the world’s resources) are being devoted to promoting Israel’s interests; on the other, there are those who warn against an “international Jewish conspiracy.” The second group can be traced at least...
Romney’s Last Chance
If we can believe most pollsters, President Obama has the election sewn up and in the bag. He is leading in most of the crucial swing states, and, insiders are saying, Governor Romney’s only chance is a knock-out blow in one of the debates. Given Romney’s rhetorical clumsiness, this is unlikely. Obama is not...
The Left’s Convenient Epiphany on Border Security
The anti-borders left will never truly abandon its plan to bring America to its knees through unsustainable levels of illegal immigration. It will only change its spots temporarily, repackaging itself as the solution to the problem it created.