NAFTA—the North American Free Trade Agreement—is not unlike the notorious star chamber, where the king and counsellors of medieval England secretly meted out justice without concern for precedent. If Congress approves NAFTA, George Bush’s proudest diplomatic achievement, Americans can expect a heavy dose of star-chamber-style justice in the 21st century. For the average citizen, NAFTA...
2065 search results for: Supreme%25252525252BCourt
Post
Calling Dr. Johnson
The Dear Leader of the United States reminds me of Robert Frost’s quip that a liberal is a man who won’t take his own side in a fight. More precisely, his own country’s side. Barack Obama seems to hate calling anyone our enemy. It isn’t nice. It’s not Christian, as he understands Christianity. Well, Christ...
Post
Super Savior
Superman Returns Produced and distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures Directed by Bryan Singer Screenplay by Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris The American Civil Liberties Union’s executive officers must be on vacation somewhere off the telecommunications grid. This supposition occurred to me as I watched Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. Although the film takes off the wraps...
Post
Are Republicans Born Wimps?
Republican leaders are “a bunch of wimps,” said Jerry Falwell Jr. Conservatives and Christians need to stop electing “nice guys.” “The US needs street fighters like Donald Trump at every level of government because the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps.” So tweeted the son and namesake of the founder of the Moral Majority,...
Post
Sunset in the Head
Proust wrote, in Time Regained, that “Style is a question not of technique, but of vision.” Technique may be said to inform and undergird the style, but the artistic vision has priority: It is the style. In Charles Edward Eaton’s recent collection, his 17th, comprising new verse (some published previously in Chronicles) and a generous...
Post
Cardinal Stepinac: Another View
It pains me to disagree with a writer I like and admire, but Srdja Trifkovic’s piece on Cardinal Stepinac makes no attempt to explain, much less understand, why Catholics respect and admire this brave Croatian martyr. Trifkovic takes umbrage at Pope Benedict’s treating Stepinac as a “saintly figure” and of saying this about him: “Precisely because...
Post
The Shiite Gallows
To taunt and curse a condemned man who is about to meet his Maker is one of the lowest forms of human depravity. The practice, commonly associated with lynching, brings to mind the quasijudicial bestialities of Dzerzhinsky and Roland Freisler’s Volksgerichtshof, Parisian tricoteuses, and various ethno-tribal atrocities down through the ages. The hanging of Saddam...
Post
Debate-o-mania
The wild rhetoric of Harris and Trump in their epic debate-o-mania should be compared with a general ledger of political actions. Election '24 needs an accountant!
Post
The Lion of Idaho
The latest fad among leftist historians, according to the New York Times, is the study of the conservative movement. “By marrying social and political history,” the Times announced, “this new wave of scholarship is revising the history of Americans on the right”—a prospect that is at once depressing and potentially rather promising. The depressing...
Post
Extravagant Abandon
On May 22, the Irish people voted by a large majority to permit marriages between two men or two women. Of the two million people who voted—a 60-percent turnout—62 percent supported same-sex “marriage.” It had been a very one-sided contest, with all the major political parties urging their supporters to vote yes. Only 22 years...
Post
Trusting Whitey
On June 30, 2002, the Rockford school-desegregation lawsuit came to an end. After 13 years of busing; the closing of numerous neighborhood schools, one of which is now a mosque and Islamic school; the construction of several massive (and massively overpriced) magnet schools, ...
Post
Ex-Democracy in America
Let’s skip worrying about democracy in Ukraine, Crimea and Russia for a few minutes. And concentrate on democracy right here in America. Yet another federal judge overturned state laws banning the absurdity of same-sex “marriage,” in this case in Michigan. AP reported: “Federal Judge Bernard Friedman on Friday overturned Michigan’s constitutional ban, the latest in...
Post
You Should Have Been Here Yesteryear
California was imagined and named before it was discovered. In 1510 in Seville there appeared a novel that would have Fabio on the cover today. Written by Garcia Ordóñez de Montalvo, Las sergas de Esplandián is a romance of chivalry that vividly describes the adventures of a fictitious Christian knight, Esplandián. In defending Constantinople against...
Post
Our Triumph in Iraq
Iraq is conquered; unfortunately, winning the peace is proving far more difficult. Bringing down an unpopular, isolated dictatorship in a wreck of a country is one thing. Creating a liberal, multiparty, multiethnic democracy where one has never existed is quite another. Officially, the Pentagon proclaims that we will stay “as long as necessary” and leave...
Post
On Liberty and the Grand Idea
For a long time I thought I knew how to evade the discourse of the Grand Idea. It began when I was in the Yugoslav People’s Army. The war was barely over, but victory brought no greater liberty to those who had suffered the Nazi occupation, and the brainwashing in the barracks grew more and...
Post
The Impoverished Debate
Politics, said Henry Adams, “has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” In recent months, best-seller lists have helped to prove Adams’ point, by featuring many vituperative political tracts from the left and right. The undisputed queen of the genre is Ann Coulter, whose overheated book Slander sold like hotcakes in 2002; lately, she has...
Post
Traveler’s Tales
Coelum, non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt was Horace’s observation on the narrowing effects of travel: “Those who go across the sea change their weather but not their mind.” It is the rare tourist who gets more out of his expeditions than a confirmation of his prejudices. One of the most intelligent visitors to...
Post
Three Strikes and You’re Out
April 2005 will mark the third mayoral election since I arrived in Rockford at the end of 1995. In that first election in April 1997, Rockford’s first (and, so far, only) black mayor, Democrat Charles Box, was running for his third term. For eight years, the city had been under a federal court order to...
Post
To Regulate, or Not to Regulate?
One vocal U.S. political tribe argues vociferously that capitalism is the source of all economic problems. Another tends to ignore that the current economy is not working for all Americans. French economist Thomas Philippon’s work should interest those who aren’t satisfied with either the complaints of the left or the indifference of the right. Philippon...
Post
The Highlights and Lowlights of Last Night’s Debate
While Trump showed some rough edges and had some inarticulate moments, compared to Biden’s performance, he clearly did the better job of making his case to be the next president.
Post
The Cowardly American Corporation
The woke bullies of American capitalism are not really bullies at all. The current corporate aborti-mania is driven by abject fear and quivering compliance with cultural authoritarianism.
Post
Conservative Credo: Abortion, Conclusion
If the state is to protect life at any cost, doesn't this imply a financial obligation to preserve the life of any child, no matter how deformed or hopeless, no matter what it takes? That means a considerable outlay of tax money, and in parallel cases, when the state assumes ...
Post
Our Presidents in Song
Bill Clinton and George Bush, Sr., share something: They are the only presidents since George Washington who were elected without having a campaign song written for them. Perhaps as a reflection of the vacuousness of their platforms, the two candidates used popular songs for their campaigns. George Bush surely made Woody Guthrie spin in his...
Post
Trying Saddam
Robert A. Taft, in a speech delivered at Kenyon College in October 1946, expressed strong opposition to the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials that were just ending. Taft argued that the defendants, the architects of the Nazi regime who had been found guilty of waging a war of aggression and had been sentenced to death, were...
Post
Vivek Ramaswamy and Conservative Victimhood
Vivek Ramaswamy once condemned conservative victimhood, especially Trump's Jan. 6 narrative. Now he's indulging it, in order to cultivate Trump supporters.
Post
The Wasted Century
The Great War and its inevitable successor have been called Europe’s civil war, and there is some truth in this characterization. Divided by language, religion, and culture, the nations of Europe were nonetheless united in a common civilization that developed out of the ruins of the Christianized Roman Empire. Despite the strains brought on by...
Post
Victims of Blunt Force Trauma
Even before the end of the trial of Los Angeles police officer Mark Fuhrman for the crime of white racism, the percentage of black Americans who believed that Officer Fuhrman’s most celebrated victim was innocent had risen from 60 percent before the trial to a whopping 78 percent by the time the prosecution rested. It...
Post
An Epic Bogosity
Edmund Spenser (1554-99) decided while still a student to make himself into the great English poet on the model of Vergil. So he began his publishing career with a set of 12 pastorals, and planned an enormous 24-book allegorical romance-epic, The Faerie Queene, to glorify Elizabeth I and her Britain as Vergil had glorified Rome...
Post
Classical Liberalism Must Endure
The right must defend and restore the early modern-era values of classical liberalism, rather than abandoning them just because they have been perverted by the postmodern left.
Post
The Death of David Reimer: A Case Study in Psychiatric Politics
David Reimer, the 38-year-old man who was raised as a girl (“Brenda”) following a botched circumcision in infancy, committed suicide on May 4, 2004. As the left rushes to validate sodomy by judicial fiat and “homosexual marriage,” perhaps now is an appropriate time to revisit his case. It reveals more about the public-policy effect of...
Post
The Old South, the New South, and the Real South
In April 1968, the University of Dallas Literature Department hosted an Agrarian reunion. We invited John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Andrew Lytle, and Donald Davidson to come together in several private sessions to discuss the history and meaning of I’ll Take My Stand. Ransom, Warren, Tate, and Lytle accepted. Davidson was too...
Post
The Impossibility of a Lasting Arab-Israeli Peace
President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the Holy City has been criticized on many grounds, most of them ostensibly sensible, in America and abroad. In the Western media, over the past two days, we have encountered six chief objections:...
Post
Biden Is Not My President … Or Anybody Else’s
The ship of state is without a captain. The willingness by so many to put party and programs ahead of the best interests of the country is appalling.
Post
On Janet Reno
As this article and this issue of Chronicles go to press, the United States Senate Judiciary Committee will be considering whether Dade County State Attorney Janet Reno is, by her character, fit to serve this nation as Attorney General. My own opinion is, no. In the 1988 Dade County, Florida, general election, I was Attorney...
Post
Sodomy and the Lash
Sodomy and the lash, according to Winston Churchill, were the outstanding features of the British Royal Navy. The United States Navy will be at least half-British, if the American courts have their way. The homosexuals’ battle plan to gain acceptance, which includes taking dates to the Officer’s Club, now involves 100 or so discrimination claims...
Post
The Fun of Brexit
Arron Banks looks out proudly and pugnaciously from the cover of Bad Boys of Brexit like a character in a Hogarth engraving, flanking the equally Hogarthian Nigel Farage in a photo taken as Farage faced the globe’s agog media on the auspicious morning of June 24, 2016. The four men pictured—Banks, Farage, Richard Tice, and...
Post
American Proscenium – Non-Sentimental Education
The magnitude of mental confusion in which this society exists–actually, considered normal and permanent by historians endowed with a sense of humor–overwhelms us on occasion. In August, three months before the election, a Gallup poll found that Walter Mondale and his ultra-liberal Democratic Party are believed by the majority of Americans to be better suited...
Post
Cobden’s Pyrrhic Victory
Bill Clinton and Richard Cobden, a 19th-century English anti-Corn Law crusader, have more in common than consonants in their surnames. As economic internationalists, both trumpeted commerce as the panacea for attaining world peace and prosperity. In their own ways, both bear responsibility for the new international economic order which rests on the twin foundations of...
Post
Burning Bright in the Darkness
I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. To discover, at his memorial service, that Dr. John Addison Howard’s favorite verse of Scripture was Philippians 4:11 came as no surprise to anyone who knew him well. Those who had simply met him once or twice, or never...
Post
Shaming
Knocked Up Produced and distributed by Universal Pictures Directed and written by Judd Apatow Juno Produced and distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures Directed by Jason Reitman Screenplay by Diablo Cody 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days Produced by Mobra Films Directed and written by Cristian Mungiu Distributed by IFC Films Thirty-five years ago,...
Post
Press Cowards’ Hypocritical Lament Over Media’s Lack of ‘Balls’ and ‘Swagger’
Mainstream press critics whine about the demise of journalism’s good ole days, while carefully avoiding writing anything that would offend their paymasters.
Post
An American Life
It is not impossible, merely difficult, for the author of a highly praised first novel to produce a second worthy of its predecessor. Perhaps paucity of imagination is responsible for the failure of many second novels; the writer emptied his quiver the first time or got lucky with a flash-in-the-pan and should not have tried...
Post
The Stupid Party Rides Again
A CBS poll taken in early November showed that only 43 percent of Americans approve of Barack Obama’s performance as President. Obama’s approval rating was even lower on the economy, with 34 percent of Americans approving and 60 percent disapproving. An overwhelming 86 percent said that the economy was in bad shape, and 32 percent...
Post
Domestic Distraction
President George W. Bush’s sixth State of the Union Address was his best so far, rhetorically speaking. As befits a President in deep trouble, his body language was that of a beta male, and he smiled demurely. His tone was calm and conciliatory, at times to the point of pleading. To the uninitiated, Mr. Bush...
Post
Born Again Again
Abortionists are apt to be a mite diffident in speaking of their calling—hardly surprising, given the nature of their work and its attendant hazards. How many abortionists have you encountered socially? None, I’d wager. After all, open avowal of their daily labors would hardly invite exchange of further pleasantries. Picture the scene over the hors...
Post
The Democratic Crusade
In The Hollow Men Charles J. Sykes resumes the brief against American higher education that he began in his widely publicized Profscam, published in 1988. Sykes argues in both books that our best universities, most conspicuously in their humanities faculties, have betrayed their true educational mission: instead of challenging students to think, professors parrot prescribed...
Post
The Grand Illusion
Twenty years from now, when future historians look back at the 1980’s, some of them may be tempted to call it the “Decade of the Grand Illusion.” For not since les années folles, as the French still call the giddy 1920’s, has the Western world lived in such a state of deceptive euphoria. The besetting...
Post
The Other Lindbergh
While the most famous member of the Lindbergh clan is undoubtedly the aviator and World War II-era isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., the qualities for which he won renown—his courage, his Scandinavian severity, his willingness to stand against the tide of popular opinion, his dislike of cities and the elites they spawned, and (most of...
Post
The World Bank’s Green Imperialism
The World Bank is the financial arm by which the liberal international order exercises control over poor and developing nations.
Post
9-11, Six Years Later
On Sept. 7, National Public Radio reported that Muslims in the Middle East were beginning to believe that the 9-11 attacks on the WTC and Pentagon were false flag operations committed by some part of the U.S. and-or Israeli government. It was beyond the ...