A successful War of Independence established 13 free and independent states in North America in 1783. This was followed, unfortunately for us, by the French Revolution and then by the 19th century, preeminently a time of violent government centralization. Subsequent events, as well as nationalist emotion and propaganda, have seriously damaged our ability to see...
As the Air Croatia plane began its descent into Zagreb, it came to me that I had no idea where I was going. The Chesterton Society conference was to be held downtown at Europski Dom, but the participants were being put up at a Jesuit seminary. In a city of nearly a million, the Jesuits...
In 1935, as president of France, Pierre Laval banned “weapons of war” and decreed that all firearms should be registered with the government. In 1945 he was tried and found guilty of treason for his collaboration with the German occupation. Between those two years, Hitler built his strong war machine, and in 1940 he invaded...
There are lots of freckles, red hair, and Celtic names in Catron County, New Mexico. Though almost everyone in the county has some Indian or Mexican blood, this is home to the families and culture which David Hackett Fischer describes in Albion’s Seed as Scotch-Irish, double distilled, first by the Highland clearances and then by...
Short reviews of Dollars for Life, by Mary Ziegler, and The Encyclopedia of Confederate Generals, by Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr.
In a Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump race—which, the Beltway keening aside, seems the probable outcome of the primaries—what are the odds the GOP can take the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court? If Republicans can unite, not bad, not bad at all. Undeniably, Democrats open with a strong hand. There is that famed...
The three pillars of liberal morality are engagement, compassion, and inclusiveness; its corresponding demons apathy, hatred, and exclusiveness. The shorthand word for the three cardinal virtues is niceness; for the three supreme vices, meanness. Nice is a word familiar among middle-middle class Americans, who have been liberalized whether they know it or not: the sort...
The California Supreme Court, in striking down the state’s ban on same-sex “marriage,” has issued a declaration of independence from the human race. Progressives have inevitably compared it to the legalization of interracial marriage, but the same progressives just as inevitably will hail the legalization of cross-species marriage as the next giant step for mankind. ...
Harvard’s Cass Sunstein recently complained that conservatives’ slippery-slope arguments about the left’s latest push to codify and enforce radical equality are intellectually “lazy.” Sunstein and his followers give the example of conservative opposition to gay marriage, which often includes the observation that “the Supreme Court shouldn’t force states to recognize same-sex marriages because, if it...
PERSPECTIVEBeastie Boysby Thomas Fleming VIEWSFederales, Gringo Styleby Roger D. McGrathThe exponential growth of federal police. Do We Want a Federal Police Force?by William J. QuirkThe Supreme Court and Congress versus the people. Jack Bauer, Agent of Anarcho-Tyranny, U.S.A.by R. Cort KirkwoodAmerica’s most wanted. NEWSThe Surge “Success”by Ted Galen CarpenterTriumph of hope over experience. REVIEWSTowers of...
Thank God for Republican presidents who appoint strict constructionists to the U.S. Supreme Court. Otherwise, the Court today might have upheld ObamaCare.
On Saturday morning, September 22, I switched on Fox News and there witnessed a gaggle of five garrulous women, all talking at the same time, all vacuous and empty headed, and all saying basically nothing—a so-called “panel” discussing the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and the last-minute and largely-unfounded accusations hurled...
Here it is 2008, and everything else is old news. The provisional and absentee ballots, recounts, scores, and statistics of 2000-2007 are all in the history books, along with Afghan and Iraqi elections and constitutions, insurgencies, hurricanes, disgraced mayors and governors, and Supreme Court, lobbying, earmark, wiretapping, and energy and cartoon ruckuses. Since Barack Obama...
The recent harassment of Supreme Court Justices is a continuation of years of abuse and violence against conservative public figures in both public and private spaces. Some of us can't even dine in peace.
In October 1950, as U.S. forces were reeling from hordes of Chinese troops who had intervened massively in the Korean War, a 5,000-man Turkish brigade arrived to halt an onslaught by six Chinese divisions. Said supreme commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur: “The Turks are the hero of heroes. There is no impossibility for the Turkish Brigade.”...
We here at Chronicles are Constitutional Fundamentalists. We swear allegiance to the Constitution of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, and not the Constitution of Warren, Brennan, and Souter. We do not believe that the Constitution is a “living document” that must be altered by successive Supreme Court justices to keep pace with the times. The Constitution...
Last October I journeyed to Moscow by invitation for a conference on conversion from military to civilian production. Upon arrival, my colleague, Professor Constantine Danopoulos of the political science department at San Jose State University, and I were informed that the meeting had been shifted to December to coincide with the Congress of the Supreme...
Pitting the state of Texas against four students who had been denied admission to the University of Texas School of Law because of their skin color, the recent Hopwood v. Texas case could spell doom for racial preferences in public education if affirmed by the Supreme Court. The Sth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, whose...
PERSPECTIVE Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off by Thomas Fleming The right to an opinion. VIEWS Educated at Home by Hugh Barbour, O.Praem. The pleasure that comes with struggle. The Supreme Court, Globalization, and the Teaching of Religion by Tom Landess Shaping society. Education to the ...
When the 80th annual convention of the NAACP gathered in solemn conclave in Detroit last July, the delegates listened approvingly to Executive Director Benjamin Hooks’ call for “civil disobedience on a mass scale that has never been seen in this country before.” Mr. Hooks was upset that the Supreme Court recently delivered itself of some...
The lives of the babushkas in Chernobyl are evidence that God exists everywhere, and that while destruction can often reign supreme, creation, however small, affirms our propensity for the good.
On Monday, the Supreme Court in Arizona v. United States struck down three of four challenged provisions of Arizona’s S.B. 1070, eliminating the law’s penalties and therefore leaving a shell of the former law in place. Not satisfied with this overwhelming victory, the Justice Department has helpfully set up a hotline for Arizona citizens who feel their “civil...
On the same day last year that the Supreme Court sliced a few ounces of flesh out of its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision on abortion, it also carved up an American tradition governing the public observance of Christmas. In the case of Allegheny v. ACLU, the Court held that Allegheny County in Pennsylvania could...
“Russia Assumes Mantle of Supreme Power Broker in the Middle East,” proclaimed Britain’s Telegraph. The article began: “Russia’s status as the undisputed power-broker in the Middle East was cemented as Vladimir Putin continued a triumphant tour of capitals traditionally allied to the US.” “Donald Trump Has Handed Putin the Middle East on a Plate” was...
Same-sex marriage still does not exist. Yes, the Supreme Court of the United States issued an opinion, 5-4, covering Obergefell v. Hodges and three other cases, which effectively makes “same-sex marriage” the law of the land. But five “justices” or 50 million Facebook “likes” cannot change what is woven into the fabric of creation. Of...
When the Supreme Court declared Christmas a secular occasion, to be celebrated for its lowest-common-denominator cultural value in the public schools, I expected serious Christians to protest. Here a powerful public body officially secularized what for the history of Christianity has represented a most sacred moment. But so deeply have the forces of secularization, organized...
When Sonia Sotomayor decided, in the last hours of the last day of last year, to issue a temporary stay on the enforcement of the ObamaCare contraception mandate, she surprised a lot of people, but likely no one more than the man who had appointed her to the U.S. Supreme Court. Barack Obama prefers his...
[This piece has been adapted and expanded from Alfred W. McCoy’s new book, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power.] For the past 50 years, American leaders have been supremely confident that they could suffer military setbacks in places like Cuba or Vietnam without having their system...
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES On Writ of Certiorari to the Court of Appeals June 21, 2017 Justice Breyer delivered the Opinion of the Court. Sheila X is a single woman living in San Diego. Shortly after giving birth to a child, she received her Law School Admission Test scores. ...
Title X funds to “family planning” clinics that dispense abortion counseling were prohibited last summer as a result of the Rust v. Sullivan U.S. Supreme Court decision, which single-issue organizations indignantly denounced. It is ironic that the very people who claim that government should stay out of abortion decisions are the very same people who...
Last Saturday, Honduran soldiers marched into the presidential palace, bundled up President Manuel Zelaya and put him on a plane for Costa Rica. The ouster had been ordered by the Supreme Court and approved by the Congress, as Zelaya was attempting an illegal referendum to change the Honduran constitution so he could run for another...
This is for you writers out there: if you’re not canceled, you’re no good. The good Dr. Seuss is out, as is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; Adolf Hitler is still in, although I can’t say the same for William Shakespeare. Everyone who is anyone is getting canceled, so I was glad to see Captain Cook...
Since the 60’s, liberals have been talking about “victimless crimes,” offenses that are prosecutable by law but that liberals claim “hurt no one.” Prominent among these were homosexual encounters, which over the next several decades were decriminalized by most states and eventually recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as acts of love, and finally conjugal...
What are people for? —Wendell Berry We shouldn’t care a bit who occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Who musters a majority on Capitol Hill (it is, after all, merely a “hill”), nor who warms the benches of the Supreme Court. If we concern ourselves with what happens in Washington, we give credence to their fatuous claim...
Following the Supreme Court's overturning of higher education affirmative action, there have been a rapid succession of righteous pushbacks against the academic commissars who collectively comprise America's DEI regime.
Christine Blasey Ford is out with a memoir no one asked for about her experience testifying against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Her unconvincing story remains the same, but her face appears to be the beneficiary of her substantial cash windfalls.
Continuing legal education is imposed on lawyers by the Missouri Bar Association and the Missouri Supreme Court, and right before the November election I took a day to fulfill the requirements. The only CLE show in town at the time was a seminar presented by the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys on using a vocational...
Not surprisingly, the U.S. Supreme Court seems to be saving the worst for last as it releases its decisions for the 2014 term. A ruling on challenges to bans on homosexual “marriage” in Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan, and Kentucky was not among the decisions handed down on Monday, June 22, and while the Court may hand down...
Well. I really can’t believe I am saying this. The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to tell us what marriage means. Not speculate; not explain. Tell: as in, “Wipe that smile off your face and listen to what I’m telling you.” We are at a remarkable moment in human affairs: one we would hardly have...
On June 25, 2015, in a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court saved ObamaCare once again. Appropriately, Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the first opinion saving ObamaCare (see “Earl Warren Rides Again“), authored the latest one as well. The case involved the federal subsidies received by those who purchase health insurance through ObamaCare. The...
Before Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church appeared to be a fortress against the raging tide of modernity, a supremely self-confident institution that attracted converts of the caliber of Evelyn Waugh, G.K. Chesterton, Ronald Knox, and Christopher Dawson. After Vatican II, the Church’s attitude toward modernity changed, vocations dried up, and entire countries came close...
President Barack Obama surprised even battle-hardened pro-life Americans with his official remarks on the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that has, since 1973, littered garbage dumps across America with the corpses of 50 million babies, 32 percent of them African-American. In a White House press ...
The Supreme Court’s recent Casey decision on abortion is a memorable example of sociological balderdash. The joint decision began, “Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt,” to which Justice Scalia fired back in his dissent, “Liberty finds no refuge in this jurisprudence of confusion.” Scalia’s observation becomes painfully clear when one reads the...
If not for the COVID-19 pandemic, it is likely that Donald Trump would have won reelection. He achieved a growing economy that was seeing more wage gains at the bottom than the top, he refused to start another foreign war, and he appointed three Supreme Court justices and nearly a third of all active federal...
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, has struck down all remaining state bans on gay “marriage.” The decision was authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, a putative Catholic and a Republican appointee. That such a decision was coming should have surprised no one; the only question was how far-reaching that decision would be. Just...
The case called Planned Parenthood v. Casey was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992. At the time there was some thought that it might be the vehicle for overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that made abortion a constitutional right. But Casey only made things worse: it reaffirmed Roe, and added an...
A great deal of ink is being spilled on the two Supreme Court cases taking up same-sex marriage, but the effect is rather like the ink released by a cuttlefish to cloud the vision of its enemies. To anticipate my conclusion, let me go on record as saying that family-values conservatives have done vastly...
Léger Peter de Francia: Fernand Léger; Yale University Press; New Haven, CT. During the fabulous, legendary, supreme outburst of artistic creativity that occurred during the first three decades of this century, concentrated in Europe between Vitebsk and Pyrenees and called “avant-garde” (or the School of Paris, modern abstraction, fauvism, cubism, futurism, expressionism, constructionism, suprematism, surrealism,...
In terms of any traditionally understood calculus of national security, the United States is the most invulnerable country in the world. America is armed to the teeth, sheltered on two sides by oceans, and supremely capable of projecting her power to the distant shores. Unlike Russia, China, and India, she has no territorial disputes with...
Over at Crisis Magazine, I’ve offered up some thoughts on “Taking Back Marriage” that echo a piece I wrote for Crisis in June 2013 (“Where Do We Go From Here?“), when the U.S. Supreme Court last weighed in on the subject of gay “marriage.” Two years ago, my proposed solution—that the churches, led by the...