My good friends at Catholic Answers in San Diego invited me to be a guest on their excellent radio program last Monday to discuss the tensions between being a “good” American and “good” Catholic. You can listen to the show at their website, although in one short hour, ...
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A New European Identity
In Europe today there is a youthful yearning for a new genesis and a desire to overcome the legacy of World War II. While a facile model of one generation rejecting the last is a tempting one to offer as explanation, in fact, the emerging “New Right” seeks both a connection and a rejection to...
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Is America Led Today By Anti-Americans?
How can America unite again to do great things if we are led by people who believe America suffers from a great sickness of the soul, an original sin that dates back to her birth as a nation? Consider. After his long night of prayer for “the right verdict” to be pronounced—Derek Chauvin was convicted...
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America’s First and Best Economist
Practice free trade. Avoid government debt. Keep the government and the banking system separate from each other. These quaint and long-rejected policies were Condy Raguet’s prescription for American peace and prosperity. Now largely forgotten, Raguet (1784-1842) was one of our earliest and best political economists. Unlike some later advocates of a free economy, Raguet was...
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Donald Sterling and The Whole Ball of Wax
“Race in America is always an inflammatory, volatile thing,” chirped NPR sports commentator Tom Goldman on this morning’s “Morning Edition. Goldman was sounding off to David Greene on the woes of Donald Sterling, owner of the LA Clippers, who expressed himself too candidly on matters of race in a private phone call. The word “always”...
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Beware of Big Bathroom Brother
Big Bathroom Brother is here and it's clothed in public service and public safety, sacrificing your children's autonomy, and serving its Silicon Valley masters.
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Sanity Begins at Home
To begin on a positive note: anyone who shuddered at the prospect of a barely thirty-something Edward Kennedy in the U.S. Senate cannot be wholly without redeeming social value. The year was 1962, and H. Stuart Hughes, grandson of the 1916 Republican presidential nominee of the same surname and devotee of a SANE foreign policy,...
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Observing American Decencies
Joe Gould’s Secret Produced by First Cold Press and October Films Directed by Stanley Tucci Screenplay by Howard A. Rodman, from an article by Joseph Mitchell Released by October Films American Psycho Produced by Single Cell Pictures Directed by Mary Harron Screenplay by Mary Harron, from a novel by Bret Easton Ellis Released by Lions...
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By the Numbers, a Failing President
If the left believed that draping the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, around the neck of former President Donald Trump and the party that refused to repudiate him would sink the GOP, it appears to have miscalculated. For, as the left painted the Capitol riot as an “armed insurrection,” “domestic terrorism,” “attempted coup,” and...
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How the Market Stamps Out Evil
In the year before the 1994 election, Ralph Reed announced that the Christian Coalition would broaden its focus. It would go beyond traditional social issues like abortion and school prayer and include economics. He made the case that the security of the American family, a central concern of any Christian political organization, is affected by...
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Religious Rights and Wrongs
The Vice President was in Russia in September, trying to persuade Boris Yeltsin to amend legislation giving the Russian Orthodox Church a privileged position. Al Gore was just the man to explain religious toleration to the Russians. In the 1996 campaign, he revealed himself as an affirmative action fundraiser, willing to solicit donations from anyone,...
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Contemptible Familiarities
“Would you guys like somethin’ to drink?” I could not help smiling at the lady and two men sitting across the table from me in this California restaurant injected into the middle of North Carolina. We had just been deploring the use of this unisex slang expression to mean “ladies and gentlemen” and debating the...
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Unbaptized America
The Godless Constitution is a self-described polemic against those who believe that the United States was, is, or should be a “Christian nation.” Essentially a historical analysis of the religious influences on the Kramers of the Constitution, the book explores the superficially curious omission of God, even the simplest and most formal invocation, from that...
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The Genesis of Tourist Traps
According to the 1940 census, Framalopa County had a population of slightly over 8,000. About half of these lived in town, and the other half lived in the country: truck farmers and cattlemen who came to town on Saturdays to buy the few necessities they couldn’t raise themselves. At that time, Florida was the second-largest...
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Afghanistan and Oil
Writing in the New York Times on September 26, Paul Krugman insisted that the war against Afghanistan would not be “a war on behalf of the oil companies; not even a war on behalf of SUVs and McMansions.” It was, though, going to be a war “over a natural resource that is more vital than...
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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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We’re Not as Dumb as They Think
It’s gone just about too far this time. In the past year, North and South Dakota were included in a group of states described as “America’s Out back” by Newsweek. As if that weren’t bad enough, both states were also left out of a Rand McNally photographic atlas. (The editors smiled urbanely, one imagines, and...
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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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The Zoophiles of Gaza
A video, reportedly shot by an Israeli drone over the war-torn Gaza Strip has been circulating on various social networks. The footage shows several Hamas fighters, decked out in kuffiya headscarves, having sexual intercourse with a goat or a sheep. Stunningly revolting, but hardly surprising. After all, zoophilia was always quite common, if not widespread...
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Caravan Puts Trump Legacy on the Line
Our mainstream media remain consumed with the grisly killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and how President Donald Trump will deal with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Understandably so, for this is the most riveting murder story since O.J. Simpson and has strategic implications across the Middle East....
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Give Me That Old-Time Religion
In my 1950’s childhood, boys and men, hair slicked down with tonic, girls and ladies in mantillas and hats primly veiled with mesh worshiped at small country churches against which lapped the green and white fields of late-summer tobacco. On Easter Sundays, prissy and full of ourselves on such a special occasion, my sister and...
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Save the Children
Modern Americans are going to live forever. We must believe that; otherwise we would not rise up in spontaneous outrage whenever a stuck accelerator causes a car to crash or a surgical procedure goes awry. Science and technology have made our world not only foolproof but death-proof, or at least they would have, were it...
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‘-30-‘: An Ending, but Not the End
It's not "big government" that waged this war on my career. It's a constellation of vindictive wrong-think police in the private sector and "conservative" swamp creatures such as Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, and Ben Shapiro.
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Remembering Jim Traficant
Donald Trump made headlines when he warned of illegal-immigrant drug runners and rapists pouring across the U.S.-Mexico border. But he wasn’t the first to do so. Ohio Rep. James Traficant, Jr., was well-known for voicing similar comments on any given morning from the floor of the House. Before there was Trump, there was Jim Traficant—the...
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Rehabilitating Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was the finest American writer to be transformed into a “personality” in his own lifetime and, like François Villon, to be known less for his work than for his person. As is so often the case with figures of public celebrity, the facts of Poe’s life have been obscured by layers of...
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Later, Not Better
The work of a longtime author on social problems, on the deteriorating relations between blacks and Jews, and on Philadelphia civic life who also served as a Reagan appointee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Murray Friedman’s history of the neoconservative ascent to power is neither scholarly nor balanced. Nor is it a book I...
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Unholy Dying
“In the midst of life we are in death.” The old Prayer X Book’s admonition has never been more true or less understood than it is today. Modern man, despite his refusal to consider his own mortality, is busily politicizing all the little decisions and circumstances that attend his departure. Death penalty statutes, abortion regulations,...
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Moscow Rules
Spending the first three days of spring in snowy Moscow, especially after being in balmy Yalta and Sevastopol, is not my idea of fun. It is useful, however, when you write on foreign affairs and there’s a first-rate crisis under way between “Putin’s Russia” and the West. The overriding impression is that Moscow no longer...
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The Heart’s Own Instinct
Presbyterians have a particular reputation. We are a rather staid bunch, more comfortable in the environs of the country club than those of the chicken farm, more atuned to the hoity-toity, less to hoi polloi. We’re called the frozen chosen, more for accuracy’s sake than for endearment. We read old and dusty books about doctrines...
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The Unvanquished Family
This is the story of a real Texas family. Locations and names have been changed to protect the family’s anonymity. Notes from a casual conversation between office coworkers: He: “What are you gonna do this weekend?” She: “Host a family reunion.” He: “How many will be there.” She: “466.” He (surprised at size and exactness...
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The Black Nationalism of George S. Schuyler
Decisions, decisions. Such is the life of a black man in America today. Whether to be a black nationalist, a black Muslim, an Afrocentrist, or simply a color-blind Christian—a.k.a. an “Oreo,” a traitor to the black race. Such choices are not new; they were made by black Americans in earlier generations, dramatically in the ease...
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Not ‘Woke’ and Not Sorry
“Woke” is the concept that everything must be inclusive and inoffensive. Oh dear! Being hyperaware of everyone’s sensitivities makes one a hell of a bore. I recently flew down to Charlottesville, Virginia, where I had gone to university, to speak at a memorial service for my friend Willy von Raab. The other speaker was P.J....
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Don’t Have a ‘Merry Little Christmas’
I was sitting in my local coffee shop when “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” began playing over the café’s speaker. Perhaps because this Christmas is so fraught with fear and uncertainty, this song caught my attention. I pushed aside my other thoughts and gave my full attention to the music, hunting down the lyrics...
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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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The School of History
“We feel bound to disagree with these prophets of doom.” —John XXIII Nestled in the foothills below Saddleback Mountain in “the O.C.” there is an abbey of priests and a small boarding school. There is nothing there that would remind one of the lubricious television program that made the initials of Orange County, California, proverbial;...
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Why Trump Must Not Apologize
“Never retreat. Never explain. Get it done and let them howl.” Donald Trump has internalized the maxim Benjamin Jowett gave to his students at Balliol who would soon be running the empire. And in rejecting demands that he apologize for his remarks about the La Raza judge presiding over the class-action suit against Trump University,...
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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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Life in the Happy Valley
My friend Dr. Bob grew up in a coal town called Packard in eastern Kentucky, a place that was abandoned years ago. All that is left these days is kudzu growing over old foundations. He’s a neurosurgeon in Louisville now, and an amateur Kentucky historian, and my favorite tale of his is about the blue...
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Rome Revisited
“What is the theme of your conference?” asked a potential traveler to Rome. “How republics perish,” I replied. “Don’t you mean democracies?” he persisted, referring to the title of a good but far-from-profound book by Jean-François Revel. I congratulated him on getting the point of the title of our second Rome Convivium. After all, I...
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Trivializing Rape
Last spring I picked up our student newspaper to read this sentence in a front-page story: “Statistics show that one out of every four UNC females will be sexually assaulted while in college.” Wow. The University of North Carolina has roughly 15,000 undergraduates (leave the graduate students out of it), something over half of them...
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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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Rendezvous With Billy
The established church in Washington didn’t know what to make of Billy Graham. By “established church,” I don’t mean the main-line Protestant churches: They were too busy trying to convert their churches into instruments of Democratic foreign policy to care very much about religion. The only established church that counts in Washington, as everyone knows,...
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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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Alex Dragnich, R.I.P.
The death at age 97 of Prof. Alex N. Dragnich, a leading American expert on Serbian and Yugoslav history, marks the departure of one of the last witnesses to an era in which this country’s involvement in Southeastern Europe was neither contrary to her traditional values nor overtly harmful to the region’s inhabitants. His dozen...
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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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Biden vs. Biden on ‘Is America a Racist Country?’
“Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country.” So declared Sen. Tim Scott, a Black Republican, in his televised rebuttal to Joe Biden’s address to Congress. Asked the next day what he thought of Scott’s statement, Biden said he agrees. “No, I don’t think the American people are racist.” Vice President Kamala Harris also...
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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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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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Details, Details
Dancer in the Dark Produced by AV-Fund Norway, Arte France Cinéma, and the Danish Film Institute Directed and written by Lars von Frier Distributed by Fine Line Features The Contender Produced by Battleground Productions Directed and written by Rod Lurie Distributed by DreamWorks Distribution Best in Show Produced by Castle Rock Entertainment Directed by Christopher...