“Liberalism” is the predominant form of snobbery in our time. A child molester is more likely to be a Democrat. A closeted homosexual is more likely to be a Republican. Nothing fails like success. But the opposite is not true—unless you have affirmative action. The USPS will discontinue Saturday mail in August. I can...
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Flipping History
On February 14, Judge Amanda Wright Allen struck down Virginia’s marriage law as unconstitutional. She began her opinion by quoting from a poetic commemorative address, then followed by incorrectly claiming that the phrase “all men are created equal” is found in the Constitution. Thirty years ago, this would have earned Judge Wright the ire of...
Most Black Republicans Aren’t True Conservatives
The Republican Party has been shamelessly embracing blacks on the sole criteria that they embrace capitalism and rehash stale talking points crediting dead Democrats for starting the Ku Klux Klan. Such overtures are acceptable to many, however, because the modern Republican Party rarely articulates a conservative message. The party does excel at something, however, namely,...
McGreevey’s Resignation
Jim McGreevey, who will be resigning as New Jersey’s governor on November 15, cares deeply for the people of the Garden State. (No, not the way you’re thinking!) Despite the admission on August 12 that he engaged in an extramarital relationship with a homosexual Israeli with possible ties to the Mossad—whom, early in his administration,...
Defending the Family Castle, Part II
It was the invasion of property more than the taxes and confiscations themselves that annoyed the Americans and prepared them to resist the Stamp Act. It was not money per se, but the sacred rights of property that were at stake. If a man cannot be secure in his home, he cannot be comfortable in...
The Abortion Gambit
Trying to be the chief intellectual in the Republican Party is probably a little like trying to be an admiral in the Swiss navy, but in the last year or so, that is more or less what Bill Kristol has become. The son of neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol, young Bill made his bones by billing...
Remembering Warren G. Harding
Harding was a consummate conservative governed by humility, kindness, and charity for all: principles that guided him in both his personal life and his political career.
âFamily Valuesâ: Illegal Aliens and Their Sex Crimes
Whatever President Bush says about the âfamily valuesâ of the growing horde of illegal Mexican immigrants, chilling newspaper accounts and cold data tell a different tale. On April 29, 2005, an illegal alien from Guatemala, Ronald Douglas Herrera Castellanos, was power washing a deck at the Nagle home in New City, New York. In her...
On ‘Mary Gordon’
J.O. Tate’s review of Mary Gordon’s “writings” (“Feminist Fatale,” September 1991) provided comic relief when sorely needed. I laughed out loud at his deft phrases, and giggles threaten to erupt when I recall it. I’ve never actually “read” Mary Gordon; I tried to once, I really did. I bought a battered paperback copy of one...
Public Opinion at the End of an Age
One symptom of decline and confusion at the end of an age is the prevalent misuse of terms, of designations that have been losing their meanings and are thus no longer real. One such term is public opinion. Used still by political thinkers, newspapers, articles, institutes, research centers, college and university courses and their professors,...
The End of American Exceptionalism?
Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz have written a book entitled Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America. The Wall Street Journal ran an excerpt on August 29, with the headline “Restoring American Exceptionalism.” In the excerpt, Cheney sought to identify his views on foreign policy with those of Presidents Eisenhower and Reagan. That...
Music, Technology, and Psychological Warfare
“No change can be made in styles of music without affecting the most important conventions of society. So Damon declares and I agree.” —Plato, Republic The late Sam Shapiro used to tell a story about two Englishmen in China who wanted to demonstrate the superiority of their culture to one of the mandarins they had...
Homeless People Do Not Have a ‘Right’ to Camp in Squalor and Invade Our Neighborhoods
SCOTUS is expected to overturn a Ninth Circuit ruling allowing homeless encampments no later than June, freeing municipalities to restore order and safety to their streets. But cities will have the political will to do it.
The Other Pasternak
Sir Ernst Gombrich, for one, is glad to hear the news. The eminent art historian stands in the modestly furnished drawing room of his Hampstead house, leafing through his copy of Leonid Pasternak’s memoirs, recently published in England. The book’s publication had attracted the attention of the Smithsonian Institution, and the first retrospective of the...
“We Hold These Truths”
Is the Declaration of Independence part of the federal Constitution? The short answer, of course, is “no.” For the Declaration to be part of the Constitution, it would have to have been included in the original document ratified by at least nine of the conventions held in the original 13 states between 1787 and 1789,...
Divorce-Court Demolition
In The Respondent, Hollywood actor Greg Ellis reveals the tyrannical horrors of the family court system, designed especially to emasculate men.
The Family Under Assault
Journalist Andrew Sullivan was discovered in 2001 anonymously soliciting partners on homosexual websites. Thus, it might seem odd that Sullivan, who is HIV-positive, now champions marriage. He has not mainstreamed orthodoxy into his lifestyle, however, but is crusading for “gay marriage,” an absurdity that is no laughing matter. Sullivan’s mission is not impossible. While 37...
DEMOCRATISM
The move toward mass, direct democracy in the large nationstate derives much of its appeal from an image of direct democracy reminiscent of the Athenian Assembly, or of the New England town meeting. But such an appeal is mistaken. The social conditions for face-to-face interaction and deliberation present on a small scale are not present...
The Decline and Fall of the Midwest
Even more than Vachel Lindsay, who liked to say that the Mason-Dixon line ran straight through his heart, Booth Tarkington embodied the regional conflict that defined the Midwest. Born in Indianapolis only five years after the end of the war between the regions, Newton Booth Tarkington was descended on his father’s side from Southern Democrats...
Those Enigmatic Steppes
As one sign of Chekhov’s greatness, his very name is invoked (in adjective form) to assess the work of others. But even while Chekhovian has been called into service on numerous occasions—in recent years, for example, to epitomize such disparate playwrights as Lanford Wilson and Beth Henley, or a bit earlier to position Lillian Hellman...
One in Big Brother
On January 2, 2016, I will celebrate 20 years of employment at The Rockford Institute. It seems like a long time in many ways, but a rather short time in others. One of my first acts here was to write a fundraising letter for the Center on the Family in America, explaining why the Defense...
The Neo-Ottoman Empire
Contrary to Washington’s official rhetoric, the U.S. government is an ally, not an opponent, of Islamic extremism—a foe, not a defender, of Western civilization. Not since the Turkish siege of Vienna (1526) has Europe faced the threat of a Muslim occupation of significant portions of the continent; it does so now because of the foreign...
Fillet of Soul
Entertainment industry awards shows are, almost by definition, public orgies of televised backslapping. Still, TV viewers stick with them, not so much to discover what the best movie, TV show, or record is—for each viewer already knows what’s best—but in order to see personalities in environments that put them out of character and in competition...
Sons of Jacob
“I pray you think you question with the Jew.” —William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice The Jews Under Roman and Byzantine Rule has already appeared in German and Hebrew editions by the same polyglot author who has now produced the English translation. Avi-Yonah has mined Greek, Hebrew, and Latin sources and puts into his footnotes...
Slender Threads of Liberty
Although Paul Craig Roberts, a nationally syndicated columnist and Hoover Institution fellow, and Lawrence M. Stratton, a fellow of the Institute for Political Economy, are trained in economic and legal analysis, they have written a book that seeks to appeal to civic virtue at the popular level. They do so mainly by weaving together dozens...
Moments in the Sun
One can no better describe the subject of this book than by quoting the publisher’s press release: Once there was a group of liberals and Leftists. They were Democrats, they were radicals, they were freedom riders. But they became disillusioned by the Left. They moved toward the Right, they opposed the anti-war movement, they made...
Where Is the Right’s Marc Elias?
The right has no moral stomach for a ruthless fight, but in politics, that is what it takes to win.
On Enumerated Powers
My thanks to Stephen B. Presser for his review (“Sacred Texts ’98,” October) of my book Reclaiming the American Revolution. I certainly appreciate such a distinguished legal historian finding the work to merit his attention. One issue raised in Professor Presser’s review is the constitutionality of the Sedition Act (which made criticism of the national...
Parasite Control
One of the few parts of the U.S. Constitution that is still followed by the government concerns the granting of copyrights and patents. Article I, Section 8, reads, “Congress shall have the power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the...
M.E. Bradford and the Barbarism of Reflection
“The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas.”—Joseph Addison This is the first critical study of M.E. Bradford, whose untimely death in 1993 silenced the most eloquent voice ever raised on behalf of the permanent things as they are revealed in the Southern tradition. It would be a...
Bleeding Red, Feeling Blue
When I started this column back in January 2001 (as a “Letter From Rockford”), the United States had just emerged from a presidential election that made this country look anything but united. Red and Blue, until then simply convenient colors used by the television networks to designate which party’s candidate had captured the electoral votes...
A Nation without Community Is a Nation without Value
Communal Americanism needs to make a return for the nation to survive. There is no other remedy.
Memo to Trump: ‘Action This Day!’
“In victory, magnanimity!” said Winston Churchill. Donald Trump should be magnanimous and gracious toward those whom he defeated this week, but his first duty is to keep faith with those who put their faith in him. The protests, riots and violence that have attended his triumph in city after city should only serve to steel...
Every Man a Victim
“Mankind is tired of liberty.” —Benito Mussolini An acquaintance of mine, who is not particularly conservative, once heard a television newsman quack about how bad the 1950’s were. Disgusted, he burst out, “What was wrong with the 1950’s? People were norma/then!” People certainly seem a lot less “normal” nowadays. Charles J. Sykes has written a...
Radical Populism on the Volga
On May 8, 1995, President Boris Yeltsin addressed an auditorium filled with gray-haired war veterans, their chests bedecked with rows of ribbons and medals, and told them of the cost of victory in the Great Patriotic War. Citing new archival research, Yeltsin revealed the “terrifying figure” of 26,549,000 Soviet citizens “lost” in the war against...
Comment
Democracy, its failures, weaknesses, and sins not withstanding, is the only political system in which the entire social body is to decide on who should conduct its affairs in its name. By the electoral process the majority’s opinion is consecrated as a source of legitimate political power. Annals record many variations of democratic societies in...
Innocent Leftists
A recent film festival sponsored by Human Rights Watch at New York’s Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center attracted the hard-core sandalistas of the Upper West Side, who filed in to watch—what else?—the Sandinistas and Contras in a cartoon of a Canadian documentary called The World Stopped Watching. The accompanying flyer asked, “What happens to...
Myths to Kill For
“I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list,” twitters the Lord High Executioner in a famous line of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, and indeed these days who doesn’t have one? Abortion protester Paul Hill seems to have had a little list of his own, and early in the morning on July 28 of...
Progressivism Versus Popular Sovereignty
Our 21st-century civilizational battles are those waged between the popular sovereigntists and the globalist progressives who cling to every would-be "crisis" or "emergency" in a desperate attempt to attain and weaponize ever-more power.
Journalists and Other Turncoats
America’s journalists enjoyed their finest hour during Vietnam—indulging in reporting that overwhelmed all objective presentation of American military action. A recent book about Robert Garwood by two former reporters for the Washington Star suggests that our newspapermen are not done yet. Marine Private First Class Robert Garwood, captured by the Vietcong in 1963 and released...
China: Xi in Charge
In the aftermath of last week’s finale of the Communist Party of China’s (CCP) 19th congress, many commentators have opined that President Xi Jinping is now the country’s most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping. This is incorrect. Xi is the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong at home, and arguably the most influential Chinese player...
No More Nonsense About Elites
A fish starts rotting from the head, it is said. That a society starts rotting from its head needs to be much better understood. Blaming the decline of Western society on a “revolt of the masses” absolves elites, who must bear the brunt of the blame. Catering to popular tastes is not the result of...
Jack and Jill, or Why I Am Not a Conservative
He who has seen the present has seen everything, said Marcus Aurelius, and this is why the floor of my study is made concave by the aggregate weight of all the newspapers and magazines I have acquired since moving to Cambridge: I simply cannot bring myself to throw away a single page of newsprint. In...
Pork Politics
“There is no distinctly native American criminal class, except Congress.” —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar Mark Twain, responsible for the foregoing, was being funny. His remark, however, is steadily becoming a little more true and a little less funny. The U.S. Congress, through indirection and guile rather than by overt vote, has managed to give itself a...
Dua Lipa, like Pope Benedict, Strives to Give Eros Dignity
The artist’s new album is panned by critics who miss the point of her commentary on real and lasting love.
Copperhead Road
I grew up in Alden, New York, a small town about 20 miles east of Buffalo. My parents still live there, and they (especially my mother) are very active in the town historical society and its museum. In that museum is a worn old wooden desk, unremarkable except for the sign that explains that it...
The Hell With Spinach!
In the early years of the Republic Americans focused their efforts on democratic government, geographic expansion and settlement, and a program of national improvements intended to promote them. In the decades immediately following the War Between the States they concentrated on industrializing and amassing national wealth. Then, in the 1880’s and 90’s, they began to...
The War Over America’s Past
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” That was the slogan of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s “1984,” where Winston Smith worked ceaselessly revising the past to conform to the latest party line of Big Brother. And so we come to the battle over history books...
American Empire
Developed nations should assist poorer states by doing no harm. Washington should end government-to-government assistance, which has so often buttressed regimes dedicated to little more than maintaining power and has eased the economic pressure for needed reforms. The United States should stop meddling in foreign affairs which matter little to America; the result is usually...
Marines on Okinawa
Okinawa’s Governor Masahide Ota has learned what it means to be governor of a Japanese prefecture; precious little. When Mr. Ota stood up for Okinawans who no longer wish to lease their land to the American military, he was asserting an ancient Okinawan belief in private property: “It’s yours, do with it as you see...