From the September 2015 issue of Chronicles. Two thousand fifteen was the year that we Americans broke history. By “breaking history,” I do not mean something like “breaking news,” or “breaking records,” or even “breaking the Internet” (though the Internet certainly played a role). Yes, the “historic moments” of the Summer of #LoveWins and #HateLoses—the...
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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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What’s Paleo, and What’s Not
In a recent Townhall commentary, the young author Michael Malarkey marvels over “the resurgence of refined paleoconservatism.” Supposedly Donald Trump has absorbed quintessential paleoconservative positions and is now putting them into practice. This now triumphant creed is “a political stance that posits the importance of strong borders, economic protectionism, and vehement anti-interventionism.” According to Malarkey,...
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Variations on a Theme
I pretty much devoured the “Minority Cultures” issue (February) in one sitting. Every issue is stellar, but the great thing I find again and again is that reading all these fine writers is like loving so many different works of a particular composer that it is hard to make up one’s mind as to which...
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So Far From God
The poor United States of America: so far from God, so close to Mexico. President Franklin Roosevelt, in his First Inaugural Address, announced what became known as the Good Neighbor Policy. “In the field of world policy,” Roosevelt said, “I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects...
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Restoring Island Park
The great Yellowstone caldera, home to Old Faithful and Mammoth Hot Springs, last exploded some 600,000 years ago. With a power more than one thousand times greater than Mt. St. Helen’s, it threw boulders the size of Greyhound buses nearly to Kansas. Pressure is building up again. The Yellowstone caldera is bulging in preparation for...
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The Summer of Italian Discontent
“The only thing that keeps the ruling coalition together is the loathing of Berlusconi,” Sylvia Poggioli, NPR’s veteran Rome correspondent, told me over the morning coffee last week, “and the fear that after the next election they’d no longer be in power.” In other ...
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Still Sorry After All These Years
With all the mud spattered on the Confederate Battle Flag of late, you knew it wouldn’t be long before Ol’ Virginny scrubbed up for Jamestown’s 400th anniversary with a grandiloquent apology for slavery. And Georgia, New York, and other former colonies of the original 13 will soon join the state in the confessional tub and...
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Shooting One Another in the Land of the Free
Gods and Generals Produced and directed by Ronald F. Maxwell Screenplay adapted from Jeff Shaara’s novel by Ronald F. Maxwell Released by Warner Bros. Opening in 2003, director Ron Maxwell’s Civil War film, Gods and Generals, was swept from the multiplexes within two weeks by a torrent of critical hysteria. “Jingoistic goat spoor,” raged one...
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The Nationalist Moment
Ever since the end of the Cold War, the standard of respectability in politics has been clear. Respectable politicians are those who believe in international trade agreements, sing the praises of mass immigration, and insist that military force should be used to advance some abstract notion like democracy—whether under the auspices of the United Nations...
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Only a Madman Laughs at the Culture of Others
The opening sentence of Herodotus’ Histories, which recount the wars fought between Greece and Persia in the early fifth century B.C., unrolls like a long musical phrase rising to its Homeric crescendo and then dying away into momentary quiet: Herodotus of Halicarnassus here publishes the results of his research, in order that the actions performed...
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Mexico’s Supreme Court Changes Provide a Warning for America
There seems to be a new trend that when a new leftist government is elected it attempts to change or undermine its country’s court system to remove it as a barrier to consolidating power. During the U.S. election cycle, there was much talk of how an incoming Democratic administration might reshape the Supreme Court. Thus...
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International Community
In April, Condoleezza Rice made a stunning display of her keen analytical mind and verbal agility. During a joint press conference with the Hungarian foreign minister, the secretary of state found herself defending the Bush administration’s decision to abstain rather than veto a U.N. resolution turning over crimes committed in the Darfur region of the...
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Essentials for a Lasting Peace in the Middle East
No solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is possible unless we clearly define the obstacles that can and must be surmounted. This conflict, which culminated in open warfare in 1948, is rooted in the incompatible claims of two distinct groups regarding the same territory and resources. In 1947, the United Nations partitioned...
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Occupying Iraq
Beirut’s occupation in 1983 by U.S. Marines may provide a small-scale sample of what a prolonged U.S. occupation of Iraq could be like, should the Pollyannaish postwar scenarios of some members of the War Party fail to materialize. Of course, the two situations are, in some ways, very different. Beirut, for instance, is just a...
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The Suicide Strategy of the West
Americans, it has been observed, have little or no strategic sense. Strategy, as any schoolboy used to know, comes from a Greek word meaning “generalship” in the broad sense of the art of “projecting and directing” (OED) a campaign as opposed to the tactical abilities needed to marshal men on the battlefield. The American can-do...
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The Intersectional Constitution Comes Alive
The death of the sainted George Floyd has proven to be the ideal pretext for the left to accelerate its campaign of dismantling the markers of American historical identity. With lavish corporate and philanthropic support, radical activists are “resetting” America. This means mandating the instruction of Critical Race Theory in public schools; replacing the American...
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CRAP Happens
My summer vacation along Lake Superior’s western shore into Canada took place just before the anniversary of a milestone, although it was marked by no celebrations or remembrances, and nobody I saw on mv quick stay in Thunder Bay showed any sign of acknowledging it. The anniversary was not the subject of conversation in the...
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Reforming the Invisible Primary
We have just completed another round in a continuing national experiment in political theory—the primary selection process as it has been revised in several waves of democratic reform. I believe this experiment, filled with noble intentions, has largely been a failure. From the standpoint of democratic theory, the presidential selection process should be both representative...
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Hollywood Does Bush the Lesser
I forced myself recently to watch Oliver Stone’s movie takedown of George W. Bush called W. I have a morbid curiosity about cataloging trends among the pseudo-intelligentsia. This film, like previous productions of the same auteur, is doubtless providing multiple thrills for the type in America and Europe. As readers here are well aware, I...
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On the Declaration
I disagree with Stephen B. Presser’s statement (The 225th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence: A Chronicles Roundtable, June 2001) that the Declaration of Independence is not part of the U.S. Constitution. True, as the professor says, the Declaration was not adopted by conventions in the 13 states in the manner prescribed in the seventh...
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The Stone Wall Has Crumbled
Last June, the tradition of 157 years at single-sex Virginia Military Institute was changed by the vote of seven Justices in Washington. The statue of Stonewall Jackson still guarded the parade grounds, but the general who stood like a stone wall at Manassas could not prevail against those seven Justices. His slogan is still emblazoned...
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Biden’s All-of-Government Vote-Buying Scheme
A decade after Barack Obama pioneered it, Joe Biden is tasking every agency and department of the federal government to promote voter engagement.
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Short Views
Some people love to go to Washington. The sight of so much power and wealth is exhilarating, especially for young conservative writers who discover that their names are recognized on the Hill. For many, however, the reaction is just the reverse. Within a few hours they are mulling over certain scriptural passages in Eliot—”Oh my...
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William Lundigan
Of our 20th-century wars World War II stands alone. In a sneak attack early on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, Japanese naval forces bombed Pearl Harbor. As reports were broadcast throughout the day American shock turned to anger. The following day Congress, with but one dissenting vote—pacifist Jeannette Rankin—declared war on Japan. We were a...
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Discovering Japan
Away on the western brink of the Pacific Rim lies a land so mysterious to most Americans that it might as well be mythical. There, according to popular understanding, thrives a breed of 122 million fantastically rich people who through black magic have siphoned off the wealth of the Western world. They need no sleep....
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Are the Good Times Over for Biden?
Are the Democrats headed for their Little Bighorn, with President Joe Biden as Col. Custer? The wish, you suggest, is father to the thought. Yet, consider. On taking office, Biden held a winning hand. Three vaccines, with excellent efficacy rates, had been created and were being administered at a rate of a million shots a...
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The Mystery of Arthur Koestler
“It is notgood to look too long upon these turning wheels of vicissitude, lest we become giddy.” –Sir Francis Bacon It was apt that 1984, the Orwellian Year, should see the reissue of Arthur Koestler’s two-volume autobiog raphy (first published some three dec ades ago) and that the year should also see the...
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Memoirs of a Reagan Hack
The sensitive conservative. An oxymoron to most liberals. An eye-averting embarrassment to many conservatives. And, it would seem in 1994, an irrelevancy. Who needs sensitive conservatives when Democrats in power can assure tolerance and sensitivity? All in all, it’s a dubious time to be a touchy-feely man of the right. Just my luck. Actually, I...
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The Chechen War Far From Over
The Chechen War, as the Russian leadership discovered in early March, is far from over. On the night of March 2, a convoy of nine trucks, carrying about 100 Internal Ministry special forces troops from Grozny to the strategically important crossroads village of Pervomayskava, was ambushed by an estimated 40 Chechen boyevikiy (“fighters” or “warriors”)....
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Books in Brief: April 2024
Short reviews of The Myth of Left and Right by Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis, and Myth America by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer.
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Dirtiest Campaign in Recent Memory
Campaign 1998 was the dirtiest in recent memory. The bottom of the slime-pit was reached by Al D’Amato and Chuck Schumer, who got into a spitting contest to determine which was the sleaziest politician in the history of the U.S. Senate: Schumer won. Elsewhere, leftist Democrats pulled out all the stops, blaring the message: A...
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Books in Brief
Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America, by James E. Campbell (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 313 pp., $29.95). This book is probably too academic to suit the taste of the general reader. It is, however, eminently sensible and notably well written for an academic text. Campbell argues that the polarization of American politics began...
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Trump Is Right About “The Squad”
Last Sunday President Trump triggered off a major controversy with a series of tweets directed at Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA). The president berated the far-left quartet for “telling the people of the United States…how our government is to be run,” and suggested that they should...
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Yes, We Have Bananas… in All Shapes and Sizes
“Yes, we have no bananas” was a hit song from the 1920s. Here a Greek fruit vendor answers all questions with “yes,” even when the answer is negative. In today’s America, we have lots of bananas. First, of course, are the curved yellow fruits sold in bunches. You may be living in Alaska or Massachusetts, with a...
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The Way Our World Ends
“This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper,” wrote T.S. Eliot in the closing couplet of “The Hollow Men.” Eliot’s poem was written after the Great War of 1914-1918 had carried off 9 million soldiers, wounded twice as many more, brought down the Romanov, Hohenzollern and Habsburg empires, and ushered...
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The Problems of Contemporary Journalism
Contemporary Journalism suffers from many problems; to help us understand them, a quick imaginative exercise might be useful. Not too long ago, the South Carolina legislature had to decide on the emotive issue of whether to remove the Confederate battle flag from atop the state Capitol. The issues involved were complex, and too familiar to...
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“A Scientific Faith’s Absurd”
Science, that is, natural and physical science, is supposed to be pure. Those who do science keep their work free from any taint of political belief or social prejudice. The scientific method is itself value-free, beyond good and evil. That, at least, was the theory. In practice, however, scientists are not always so pure. They...
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The Coming Belgoslavia?
What was meant to grow separately cannot last long as an artificial whole. This prehistoric wisdom seems to be forgotten by advocates of multiculturalism—which is just a misleading euphemism for polyethnism and multiracialism. The unpredictable side of multiracial conviviality seems to be deliberately overlooked by political elites in multiethnic and multiracial Belgium, a miniscule country...
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Circuit Rider
A town without a saloon is like a woman without a heart. I made Blanding, Utah, before sundown, checked into the Best Western Motel, and rang up the front desk from my room. “Is the Elk Ridge Restaurant within walking distance from here?” “It’s just half a block away.” “Do they have a liquor license?”...
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Baghdad or Pyongyang?
Last October, North Korea announced that it has a nuclear-weapons program. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld confirmed that North Korea already has a “small number” of nuclear weapons, and a Pentagon official later added that the United States thought Pyongyang had two nuclear bombs. The stunning revelations sent shockwaves around the world, but the White House...
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Toy Story
As federal cannon boom from the smoky ridge to the west, a rebel foot soldier darts through underbrush, scrambles over a fence and crouches warily behind a tree. Raising his rifle to fire, he takes a volley of grape-shot in the chest. Tumbling, tragically, from the coffee table, he lands on the floor among the...
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California’s Mythologized Bandido
On the wintry morning of February 20, 1853, more than a hundred Chinese miners were working their claims near Rich Gulch. Without warning, five mounted and gun-brandishing bandidos swept down upon the Chinese. Taken by surprise and without arms themselves, the Chinese could do little but comply when ordered to hand over their gold. An...
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Americans Before the Fall
For those of us who love the Old Republic, a new book by David Hackett Fischer is a cause for celebration. His newest will not disappoint the high expectations created by his previous work. Washington’s Crossing is really a successor volume to Paul Revere’s Ride (1994), about the battles of Lexington and Concord and the...
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Left’s Latest Demand: Race-Based Reparations
Having embraced “Medicare-for-all,” free college tuition and a Green New Deal that would mandate an early end of all oil, gas and coal-fired power plants, the Democratic Party’s lurch to the left rolls on. Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren both called last week for race-based reparations for slavery. “Centuries of slavery, Jim Crow,...
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Gaslighting Ireland
No one is persuaded when the media describes as an Irish national an Algerian man who stabs Irish children. The gaslighting may only radicalize people in the end.
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Jerks on a Shopping Spree
“He who dies with the most toys wins.” Every year on Black Friday, American shoppers brave the bad weather and go out to do battle with other shoppers in a contest that will determine who pays the least for the most stuff they are better off without. Twenty years ago, the worst these...
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Our Demographic Destiny
If dispassion is the tone best suited for writing about contentious ethnic and demographic issues, this lucid survey of the numbers question across much of the Northern Hemisphere deserves every plaudit. With palpable restraint and sometimes maddening equivocation, demographer Michael Teitelbaum and historian Jay Winter survey the intertwined issues of birth rates, immigration, and other...
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A Gutless Persuasion
On Nov. 18, the Rupert Murdoch-financed New York Post ran an opinion-piece by its star columnist, Karol Markowicz, on left-wing anti-Semitism. Like the rest of the Post editorial staff, Markowicz is upset that at least part of the Jewish left has turned emphatically against the Israeli Likud government and is demanding the return of the West...