Times of crisis are not distinguished by respect for rights—although, paradoxically, all revolutions claim to be mounted in the name of rights. During our War of Independence, criticism of the patriot cause was an invitation to a lynching, and Jefferson defined the Tory as “a traitor in thought, if not in deed.” In 1773 George...
Few people have been so hated that their enemies have disrupted their funeral processions in an attempt to throw their coffins into a river, but that is precisely what happened to Pope Pius IX on the night of July 12, 1881. Amid the heated debate surrounding Pio Nono’s beatification this past September 3, a few...
Bitter attacks, tenacious defenses, and great promotion—not to speak of the best TV in a generation—have made David Brock’s book on The Real Anita Hill a best-seller. As Brock admits, he proves neither Clarence Thomas’s innocence nor Anita Hill’s perfidy. But by scouring the transcript of the Senate hearings, he does show that Hill’s reputation...
Yes, Virginia, there is a religious war going on. It is for the soul of America. And traditional Christianity is besieged. In a January visit to the Vatican, American bishops were warned by Benedict XVI that
As he completes his third week in office Donald Trump has already stunned the world with his “shock and awe” campaign to keep promises made when he was a candidate. The mere fact of a politician doing what he said he would do seems to have unsettled the nerves of his opponents. What is called...
Chronicles readers discuss Taki's controversial December column on Palestinian misery, also, some praise for Stephen Presser's recent review, "Scalia Gets the Biography He Deserves."
In Washington, D.C., access and influence go hand-in-hand; they are the stock and trade of the lobbyist, the lawyer, and the political advisor. They are, as well, the biggest “skill” current officeholders and staff members can take with them when they leave the government. —from Pat Choate, “Puppets for Nippon,” May...
“The compact which exists between the North and the South,” proclaimed William Lloyd Garrison in an abolitionist declaration of 1843, “is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.” When the Southern states concluded that they were no longer bound by what their enemies regarded as a compact with the devil. Garrison and his...
In March, Americans braced for the nationwide “March for Our Lives,” and what they witnessed was the latest battle in the culture war, with children paraded through the capital as nouveaux Jacobins. “This is the beginning of a revolution,” declared anti-Second Amendment activist David Hogg, a teenage peddler of leftist propaganda who has taken on...
Almost alone among the peoples of the world, the United States has largely been spared—at least until recently—the bitter conflicts that plague countries whose citizens do not share a common language. Since the early 17th century, immigrants from diverse backgrounds have settled here. In the past, it was understood that in exchange for enjoying opportunities...
While violent criminals are given a pass to victimize and reoffend, the everyday American finds himself under the heel of an increasingly invasive and oppressive state.
President Joe Biden recently accused Trump voters of embracing "semi-fascism." Friendships can be forged across partisan lines, but it's rather difficult to befriend a "semi-fascist," isn't it?
“O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.” —Walt Whitman I first heard about “brain freeze” from an amiable fellow who was vending Italian ices. He pointed out that, if the ices were not consumed carefully, the freeze would penetrate the palate into the brain. In fact, I did experience brain freeze that way. But...
I sure wouldn’t want to cross Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. In his semihysterical, mean-spirited diatribe (Cultural Revolutions, January 1992), he manages to charge Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with perjury, perversion, and racial opportunism. And that’s just for openers. Although I probably lost count, there are some twenty-five negative references to Thomas’s character, ideology, or...
Ever since Hugo Black succeeded in incorporating his anti-religious prejudices and Thomas Jefferson’s “Wall of Separation” into Supreme Court jurisprudence, Americans have known how a story like this is supposed to end: A parent who comes into a community objects to expressions of that community’s religious traditions in its schools. There is no indication that...
In the most famous defense of the U.S. Supreme Court’s power to declare acts of the federal and state legislatures unconstitutional, Alexander Hamilton argued that it was the Court’s job only to implement the will of the people as expressed in the Constitution. If the Court went beyond that—interpreting the document to include things that...
The highlight of my time in law school – three years of varying degrees of dreariness and constant irritation was the visit of US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The great jurist came to my nominally Catholic second-tier alma mater – I cannot help, but shudder at the latter word, so inappropriately used to describe...
An uncomplimentary picture takes shape in the mind: the Senate’s Democratic minority (save for a higher-minded handful) standing in a row, thumbs affixed to noses, fingers waving provocatively in the air, mouths emitting a rude sound commonly known as “the raspberry.” Think we’re going to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court?! Think we’re going...
Who’s afraid of being labeled homophobic? A great many people, that’s who, importuned incessantly by the liberal media and other keepers of the woke flame of proper public behavior. That behavior trends ever more left-wing, collectivist, and anti-Western—following Barack Obama’s “arc of the moral universe.” The Supreme Court’s recent decision to enshrine anti-discrimination protections for...
Supreme Court Justice Rufus Peckham put it best, in the Trans-Missouri Freight Association decision in 1897. Broadly interpreting the Sherman Antitrust Act as a means to reign in large economic organizations that had spun out of control, Peckham acknowledged that bigger businesses, because of economies of scale, could occasionally reduce prices to consumers. He went...
“A tremendous victory for property rights”—that’s how the Castle Coalition described voter approval of Initiative 31, which placed limitations on the power of eminent domain in Mississippi. The November 8, 2011, results made Mississippi the 44th state to modify the power of eminent domain in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Kelo v....
Let’s give credit where it’s due. Linda Greenhouse, retired Supreme Court correspondent for the New York Times, is a brilliantly qualified journalist: hard-working, creative, dedicated to the needs of her profession as she understands them. Which seems really to be the problem here; a problem large and grave, requiring critical analysis. Greenhouse’s very personal sense...
Chief Justice John Roberts' rejection of the racial discrimination of affirmative action is one of his greatest Supreme Court rulings. But unfortunately he left in a giant loophole that will allow colleges to continue to privilege blacks and Hispanics over Asians and whites.
No political phenomenon can be so creative and so destructive as nationalism. Nationalism can be a metaphor for the supreme truth but also an allegory for the nostalgia of death. No exotic country, no gold, no woman can trigger such an outpouring of passion as the sacred homeland, and contrary to all Freudians more people...
Four days after he described Christine Blasey Ford, the accuser of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, as a “very credible witness,” President Donald Trump could no longer contain his feelings or constrain his instincts. With the fate of his Supreme Court nominee in the balance, Trump let his “Make America Great Again” rally attendees in Mississippi know...
The Kelo v. City of New London Supreme Court decision has brought the abuse of eminent domain to the forefront of the public’s awareness. In Florida, private-sector developers and their allies in municipal-planning and economic-development departments are moving ahead on a number of projects that will force hundreds of retired mobile-home dwellers, and residents in...
In the most famous defense of the U.S. Supreme Court’s power to declare acts of the federal and state legislatures unconstitutional, Alexander Hamilton argued that it was the Court’s job only to implement the will of the people as expressed in the Constitution. If the Court went beyond that—interpreting the document to include things that...
Chief Justice John Roberts left U.S. Supreme Court watchers dumbfounded. Before the release of the opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, pundits expected the healthcare case to turn on the Commerce Clause and for Justice Anthony Kennedy to be the usual swing vote. If Kennedy sided with the conservatives (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas,...
The Democrats’ drive to defeat Neil Gorsuch is the latest battle in a 50-year war for control of the Supreme Court—a war that began with a conspiracy against Richard Nixon by Chief Justice Earl Warren, Justice Abe Fortas and Lyndon Johnson. By June 1968, Nixon, having swept his primaries, was cruising to the nomination and...
During the next four years, the Clinton administration will appoint dozens of federal judges, in addition to (perhaps) two or three Supreme Court Justices. In the confirmation procedures for these individuals, issues of gender politics are likely to predominate. Abortion will obviously be one such question, as may sexual harassment, but we should also hear...
Wired: The Short Times & Fast Life of John Belushi by Bob Woodward; Simon and Schuster; New York. Bob Woodward is an aggressive journalist who has helped reveal the secrets of Supreme Court Justices and a president. Like his previous efforts, Wired is a best-seller full of gossip and intrigue. Excerpts have appeared in the Washington Post, New York...
Post-Christian beliefs permeate the culture. A stroll across the majority of university campuses, five minutes of channel surfing, the U.S. Supreme Court’s First Amendment case law, popular behavior and that of the American elite—these are proof positive that Christianity in the 21st century bears little resemblance to the Christianity of America’s not too distant past. ...
Joe Biden may have declared victory, but whether he or Donald Trump officially wins the presidency may remain undetermined for weeks, even months, and even then we may see the election brought before the Supreme Court. Who knows? What we do know is that this election has delivered a mess not seen since 2000, when...
“First Things Last” (March 1997) evinces the sharp analysis and pungent criticism we have come to expect from Samuel Francis. However, I disagree with him on one point. Francis contends that the controversial “laws” made by the Supreme Court are merely “permissive” in nature. Thus, unlike Sir Thomas More, who was commanded to sign an...
“This is a Christian nation,” said the Supreme Court in 1892. “America was born a Christian nation,” echoed Woodrow Wilson. Harry Truman affirmed it: “This is a Christian nation.” But in 2009, Barack Hussein Obama begged to differ: “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.” Comes now a Pew Research Center survey that reveals...
The senator attempts to revisit and relitigate the heinous and thoroughly discredited allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and me.
Though America’s academics tend to the dyspeptic and hypercritical, on one day this past year, the campus mood was extraordinarily sunny. This past June, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, declaring unconstitutional a law prohibiting homosexual conduct. In the eyes of most academics, Lawrence represented an act...
The Supreme Court missed the mark last year in unanimously shooting down a St. Paul, Minnesota, statute imposing criminal liability on those engaged in “hate speech.” The problem with the Court’s decision in R.A.V. v. St. Paul is that it dwelled on legal niceties rather than recognizing the time-tested, historically proven method for dealing with...
In June, the Supreme Court greatly augmented executive power by holding that the president has the exclusive right to grant formal recognition to a foreign sovereign. This decision further pushes presidential power in the direction of royal prerogative through which monarchs enjoy the exclusive care over foreign affairs to the detriment of the people’s representatives....
Like it or not, gay marriage is here to stay. The Supreme Court ruling matters little. That was the case well before oral arguments were heard, and not for legal reasons. Yes, the fact that some states had already recognized it played a part, but the real reason gay marriage is now a permanent part...
Those suffering from endless COVID shutdowns may find a spark of hope in the words of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. While the governors of Minnesota, Michigan, Oregon, and other states were preparing new restrictions during the pandemic, Alito gave a speech to The Federalist Society, calling such lockdowns “previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty.” I’m now going to say...
Daniel Patrick Moynihan and others have written volumes about how the Great Society destroyed the American family. But the pivotal role played by Republican appointees on the U.S. Supreme Court, in nullifying laws intended to encourage the formation of two-parent families, has gone largely unremarked. The lightning rod for change was a Connecticut statute which...
As Pro-Lifers now face a monolithically pro-abortion federal government, it might be useful for them to look at last year’s Supreme Court decision about Guam. Despite robust opposition from Justice Anthony Scalia, the Court refused to hear Guam’s abortion case, which means the ruling of a California court striking down all of Guam’s restrictions on...
William J. Brennan, Jr., has retired from the Supreme Court. In three decades on the nation’s highest court Brennan did more, perhaps, than any other American politician except for Lyndon Johnson to promote the agenda of the liberal left: the antiwhite racism of the “Jim Snow” system, radical feminism, the reduction of the authority of...
Our cultural disorders weren’t caused by the Supreme Court’s prayer decisions—I’ll admit it. The implication that school prayer, by fortifying Young America, might have forestalled the rampage at Columbine High School, and those rampages preceding it—well, I wouldn’t push the matter too far, that’s all. Still, it’s nice to see the American Civil Liberties Union,...
The elevation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court formalizes state-sponsored injustice in the very institution charged with upholding justice.
British statesman Enoch Powell began his most famous speech with this observation: “The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils.” I thought of Powell’s cogent dictum often over the last week or so, as Rod Dreher (and others) have been loudly insisting that Trump’s moral failings prevent Christians from voting for him,...
Gay marriage is once again in the news. This time, the rumblings come not from the Sandwich Islands, but the Green Mountains of Vermont. In a riding handed down right before Christmas, the state’s governing body, the Vermont Supreme Court, instructed the legislature to extend the benefits and protections of marriage to homosexual couples. The...
At the moment the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of states to enact parental consultation abortion statutes, the abortion-advocacy organizations went into high gear. The Hodgson v. Minnesota and Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health decisions “endangered teens,” they claimed, and NOW President Molly Yard charged that the Court had “thrown down the...
Dressed in a dark business suit, wearing a tie and a brand-new trenchcoat, Troy Canty was led manacled in front of New York State Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Crane. His head clean-shaven, Canty looked sullenly at TV cameras, out in force to register the latest twist in the Bernhard H. Goetz case. On December...