“Blacks for Gray, Whites for Fenty,” ran the nuanced headline on page one of the Washington Examiner. The story told of how black Mayor Adrian Fenty, who got rave reviews for appointing Michelle Rhee to save District of Columbia schools, was crushed six to one in black wards east of the Anacostia River, as he...
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Legal Insanity
“Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.” —Thomas Jefferson A society governed by the judiciary—rather than by the will of the majority—displays odd characteristics. On July 29, 1994, a seven-year-old girl in Hamilton Township, New Jersey, was sexually assaulted and murdered. A neighbor who is a...
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Can American Legal Education Be Fixed?
Something has gone radically awry with legal education and maybe even legal practice. For about a decade now, the loudest wailing over the state of affairs has come from Chief Judge Harry Edwards of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, who wrote a landmark article in the Michigan Law Review...
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A Familiar Phenomenon
Judicial tyranny is a familiar phenomenon as judges routinely take charge of school systems and strike down state laws on abortion, pornography, and murder. Recently, one federal judge has even changed the property taxes in Kansas City, MO, while a federal district judge in Des Moines upheld the right of convicts in Iowa to read...
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The Unbanable Book
A recent full-page advertisement in the Chicago Tribune, which no longer calls itself “The World’s Greatest Newspaper,” listed four documents that supposedly are foundational: the Magna Carta, the Treaty of Versailles, the Declaration of Independence, and the Infiniti Retailer Pledge. These four, according to the advertiser, Infiniti, are totally trustworthy, because: “A promise is a...
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Robbing Paul to Pay Paul
After 12 years under federal rule, Rockfordians are looking forward to the end of the People Who Care school-desegregation lawsuit on June 30, 2002. If the district administration and the school board have their way, however, the fat lady may not actually begin singing for another ten years. One of the many elements that has...
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The Flamingo Kid
It is a truism to note that H.L. Mencken, like his great vitriolic predecessor Jonathan Swift, was a thoroughgoing misanthrope. So perverse was Mencken’s vision of human existence that he preferred to read King Lear as farce rather than as tragedy—since nothing, he was fond of saying, could be more farcical than death. But if...
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Does the Federal Government Protect Private Property?
Thirteen of the British colonies in North America declared their independence in 1776 as the only means of preserving the life, liberty, and property of what was then declared to be the American people. It was generally understood, in light of John Locke’s 1690 Second Treatise on Civil Government (widely recognized in the late-18th century...
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A Revolution Delayed
If Donald Trump’s legion of enemies had the same grace they decry him for lacking, they would have had to admit that his re-election campaign was a bravura performance. Facing the combined opposition of the media, academy, entertainment industry, permanent bureaucracy, tech monopolists, and big money generally, Donald Trump crisscrossed the country in the final few...
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An Absurd Episode
Hillary Rodham Clinton wasn’t the only politician at the annual Gay and Lesbian Pride March in Manhattan last June, but she got the most notice. The police had trouble controlling the crowd as she walked behind the Radical Faeries, which featured a man on roller skates who was wearing a silver cape, a tiara, a...
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Land Without Justice
Every month, some corner of the United States becomes the scene of a brutal and bizarre murder: in Jasper, Texas, where rednecks dragged a man to death behind their truck; in Las Vegas, where a high-school student assaulted and killed a little girl as his friend and fellow student looked on without lifting a finger...
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Defining Relationships
The “Defense of Marriage Act” was making its way through Congress as these lines were being written. Having passed the House, the debate was turned, by the “good” offices of Senator Edward Kennedy, into a joint defense of marriage and homosexual rights bill. Gay activists were exultant that their concerns were getting a hearing in...
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On Joe McCarthy
Philip Jenkins’ essay about McCarthyism (“Goodbye, Senator McCarthy,” Breaking Glass, May) was an exercise in retailing received opinions about the Wisconsin senator and his countersubversion efforts. Without offering specific illustrations, Professor Jenkins execrated Senator McCarthy as “a liar and a jerk of the first order” who conducted a “campaign of name-calling, accusations, and smears ....
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The Cassandra of Caroline County
“A crocodile has been worshipped,” wrote John Taylor of Caroline, “and its priesthood have asserted, that morality required the people to suffer themselves to be eaten by the crocodile.” Such was his final judgment on the central government of the United States and the advocates of its power. This prophecy, if such it may be...
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A Nightmare on Elm Street
I have raised up a chosen man from my people, with my holy oil I have anointed him so that my hand is always with him and my arm strengthens him. A year ago, on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Bishop Thomas G. Doran of the diocese of Rockford elevated...
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The Republicans and Abortion
Lucy just pulled the football away from Charlie Brown again. In the budget compromise that averted a government shutdown, it was the Republicans not the Democrats who blinked on the funding of Planned Parenthood, and it was the pro-lifers who look to the GOP and not the abortion supporters who look to the Democrats who...
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Scouting and Sin
[This article first appeared in the January 1992 issue of Chronicles.] The Case Against the Boy Scouts The Boy Scouts of America have recently been accused of sins against Democracy, in the form of discrimination against atheists, homosexuals, and women. Four recent lawsuits have challenged the organizational prerogatives of the Scouts. The families of nine-year-old...
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What Kind of Freedom?
When family and culture are under constant attack, there sometimes seems to be no greater enemy than the American Civil Liberties Union. Yet, when Washington is busy expanding the welfare/warfare state, sometimes only the ACLU seems willing to confront Leviathan. What is someone who loves both liberty and community to do? There is no reason...
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Uncivil Liberties
The United States Commission on Civil Rights has degenerated into an appendage of the Clinton reelection campaign through its attempt to stop, through intimidation, the petition drive in Florida to clamp down on illegal immigration; at stake are 25 electoral votes for the Democratic incumbent. The commission was established under the Civil Rights Act of...
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Drafting Our Daughters
The leftist regime, incarnate in bold and belligerent Democrats and tepid, me-too Republicans, hates women, the same way it hates black people. The way you can tell is that you often hear them screaming (or sobbing) exactly the opposite, as justification for the passage of unprecedented social-engineering laws. Yet judging by the effects of both...
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Fighting Words: Abortion and Civility
Austrian sociologist Hans Millendorfer claims to have discovered, at least in his native Austria, a perplexing correspondence: his statistics show a rise in abortions paralleled by a rise in civility. To those of us who consider abortion a violent and evil act, it seems strange that such violence should be accompanied by an increase in...
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An Obscene Carnival
The obscene carnival of digging up an American hero who died 141 years ago has come to an end. No arsenic was found in Zachary Taylor’s remains, proving that he was not poisoned, which any competent and sensible historian could have told you without this grotesque and impious exercise. (Even if significant traces of arsenic...
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What Made the Founders Happy
[The Pursuit of Happiness in the Founding Era: An Intellectual History by Carli N. Conklin; University of Missouri Press; 254 pp., $40.00] The intellectual roots of the American founding and in particular the Declaration of Independence have long been a matter of debate. Over the years, several major interpretations emerged. The first and most venerable...
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One Moment in Time
“You mean,” said Marina, “you mean that we’re sitting here over Hell?” “Over a hell, conceivably. There are many hells, and the same place may be Hell or Purgatory, depending upon the situation. Most of them are private.” Those words echo in my thoughts as we approach the building. Turner School, built in 1898, is...
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“If I May Interrupt”: Live From the Senate Floor
As any connoisseur of the manifest absurdities that daily emanate from Inside the Beltway is well aware, what we read in the venerable Congressional Record is not necessarily a verbatim account of what was stated, on any given day, by our lawmakers on the floors of the House or Senate. It is common practice to...
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Noncompliance
Noncompliance with the 1990 census was massive: the Wall Street Journal reported on May 21 that only 75 percent of the forms had been filled out and sent in, “down from 90 percent a decade ago.” That’s good. Passive resistance against such intrusions is the least we should expect of ourselves as citizens. Thirty years...
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Reproductive Tyranny
Absolute control of women over fertility has been the unparalleled dream of radical feminists for decades. Millions of women now view this aspiration as their sacrosanct right and have, with the advent of anti-fertility and other reproductive technologies, exercised this new right vigorously. This feminist dream, however, is fraught with irony. Many of the very...
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The New Meaning of Conservatism
One of the most amazing and alarming features of the managerial system in the United States is its capacity to alter the meaning of things without changing their external appearance. This property is essentially what the Old Right political analyst Garet Garrett observed in his insight about “revolution within the form,” a concept he drew...
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The Rise and Fall of the Texas Republican Party
How did the Texas Republican Party, which was in the forefront of the battles to win the Republican presidential nomination for Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980, become a wholly owned subsidiary of Karl Rove and George W. Bush? Today, the Republicans in Texas control every statewide elected office, yet...
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Overturning Roe: A Conservative Legal Triumph and Return to Common Sense
The overruling of Roe v. Wade is a momentous achievement of the conservative legal movement and an act of great courage. The blowback will be fierce, but America is beginning to see a rebirth of the rule of law.
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From Cincinnatus to Caesar
Dr. Clyde Wilson’s new gathering will be of particular interest to readers of this journal, as some parts of it have appeared in these pages and as he has for years maintained a special relationship with Chronicles. Yet I hasten to add that the compelling quality of these essays speaks broadly to the most vital...
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I Remember
For some years I have lived in Québec as a friendly alien from the United States, traveling from time to time back to my native Minnesota and other states to practice law in my fields of interest. I am married to a French-Canadian wife who is a member of the bar and mairesse of our...
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THE UTOPIAN NIGHTMARE
If we cannot expect the peace people to listen to reason, it is because theirs is a movement springing from the decadence of Christian life and from the moral paralysis of those whose lives have been robbed of any transcendental dimension. The curious belief of the peace people that the specter of nuclear annihilation can...
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The State as Rabble-Rouser
Michael Mann has long been the most interesting exponent of what might be called British post-Marxist sociology. In his essays in the Archives européennes de sociologie, his Sources of Social Power (two volumes), and other writings, Mann has applied a four-power model (ideological, political, military, and economic) to historical studies, seeking thereby to overcome Marxist...
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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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The Republicans and Abortion
Lucy just pulled the football away from Charlie Brown again. In the budget compromise that averted a government shutdown, it was the Republicans not the Democrats who blinked on the funding of Planned Parenthood, and it was the pro-lifers who look to the GOP and not the abortion supporters who look to the Democrats...
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Origins and Outcome
To the degree that it is remembered at all, the America First Committee (AFC) has gone down in history as an organization most suspect, at best composed of good people serving a bad cause, at worst riddled with conscious agents of a Nazi transmission belt. During its heyday in the years 1940-1941, some of the...
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Sharia Scores
On November 2, Oklahomans amended their constitution to prohibit their state courts from “look[ing] to the precepts of other nations or cultures” when adjudicating a case. The amendment specifically prohibits consideration of “international law or Sharia Law.” State Question 755, as the amendment is known, garnered the support of 70 percent of the citizenry. A...
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The New Dual Monarchy
Canadians often try to explain the fundamental nature of Canada, both to themselves and to visitors, by comparing it with other countries. The United States most obviously comes to mind, especially since television has increasingly obliterated any differences in American and Canadian popular taste. But there are other analogies that are more instructive. Surface manners...
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A Hero for Our Times?
Lord Louis Mountbatten died in 1979, a victim of IRA assassins. Since then, no fewer than three biographies on the man have appeared (if one includes The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, the book on Mountbatten’s self-orchestrated television documentary, shown in this country as Mountbatten: A Man for the Century). The latest, by Philip...
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Murder in the Wasteland
The mystery novel, to borrow a line from Original Sin, has all the virtues of its defects. “The mystery,” Baroness James explained in a recent Washington Post interview, “deals with the planned murder” and is thus confined to a certain formulaic structure in which a detective protagonist confronts an often unsavory lot of suspects, all...
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Sailing to Urbino
William Butler Yeats was not talking about literally sailing to a literal Byzantium in his famous poem, and I know that Urbino is a mountain fastness, not a port. Even so, sailing to Urbino is necessary, and it does not matter how you do it—only that you do. One way to approach Urbino is through...
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The Ten Commandments of Community
We are sailing into a new world of public policy—a world as strange and new as Columbus discovered. It is a world where infinite government demands have run straight into finite resources. It is an America made up increasingly of diverse people. At current immigration patterns, by 2040, there will not be a dominant ethnic...
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American Nationalism and Western Civilization
Any exploration of American nationalism must begin with the National Question: “Is there such a thing as the American people? And if so, what is it?” Most people do not ask such questions. A Frenchman does not wonder if he is French, nor the Pole if he is Polish, nor—notoriously—the Serb if he is Serbian....
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Origins and Outcome
From the December 1991 issue of Chronicles. To the degree that it is remembered at all, the America First Committee (AFC) has gone down in history as an organization most suspect, at best composed of good people serving a bad cause, at worst riddled with conscious agents of a Nazi transmission belt. During its heyday...
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La Virgen de Guadalupe: Sent Back to Mexico?
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has spilled the beans: She intends to “liberate” Christians, which means Latinos, from their self-imposed delusion—which, surely, is Christianity and belief in God. Mrs. Clinton’s strategy not only calls for undermining Christian-inspired organizations and businesses but aims to “privatize” religion entirely. The best way to achieve these objectives, as revealed in...
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Utopia and Dystopia on the Saint Lawrence
A quarter of Canada’s 30 million people live in the province of Quebec. About five million are French Canadians, largely descended from hardy Norman peasants who came here 300 years ago. A quarter of the five million want to secede from Canada. A larger (but indeterminate) proportion favor as much autonomy as possible without risking...
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Avoiding Democracy
Does America exist anymore, or is the nation only a fantasy concocted out of old Frank Capra movies, civics classes, and pamphlets from the Department of Education? The weight of the evidence suggests the latter. Twenty years ago—ancient history by the standards of the press—a considerable number of young men who refused to fight in...
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The GOP’s Clinton
During the Republican presidential debate on May 15, Ron Paul, the constitutionalist from Texas, flatly stated that the terrorist attacks on September 11 were retaliation for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Rudy Giuliani shot back a mendacious rejoinder: “That’s an ...
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Ireland’s Anti-Christian Revolution
Secular anti-Catholicism can fairly be described as the ruling ideology of the modern Republic of Ireland. In no other country do politicians and the media so openly, persistently, and savagely attack the Catholic Church. In no other country do leading politicians seek to score political points by launching virulent attacks on the Church and all...