A burbling controversy of Olympic proportions has found its way to Moscow via Lausanne. On one side the forces of evil are arrayed behind the stallion-riding Vladimir Putin and his “anti-gay” law (which sailed through the Duma in June). On the other are the forces of absolute equality, led by the bribe-swilling International Olympic...
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Science and Religion
I gather that the Texas Board of Education has done something commendable, but I don’t know exactly what because the Washington Post (my source) was too busy deploring it to describe it. I assume it was something great because it reduced the Post to stammering incoherence. “Unbelievable” was only the beginning; “worse than silly ....
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Jack Bauer, Agent of Anarcho-Tyranny, U.S.A.
Jack Bauer is an American hero—of sorts. He tortures suspects. And executes them. And decapitates them. “I’m gonna need a hacksaw,” he famously declared after dispatching a pervert who knew the men behind a planned nuclear attack on Los Angeles. If you have never watched the television program 24, you should try it for two...
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Fundamentalism on the Left
Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us by Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro Princeton University Press 336 pp., $29.95 Fundamentalism has long been considered a religious phenomenon, a narrowmindedness that only afflicts Bible-thumping extremists. Yet fundamentalist thinking is everywhere today, and leads naturally to the authoritarian mind and the one-party state....
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The Best Government Money Can Buy
All of our history is now “indoctrination by historical example.” The academicians who write the officially approved, politically correct distortions of it have failed history, and us. They are of two types: the courtiers, smiling sycophants such as “presidential historian” Michael Beschloss and the insufferable Doris Kearns Goodwin; and their envious colleagues, politically correct pedants,...
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Loyal Opposition
In the two years since Muslim terrorists murdered over 3,000 of our citizens on September 11, Americans have been taking one side or the other in the debate between the partisans of security and public order, led by Attorney General John Ash-croft, and the partisans of free speech, championed by the ACLU and other groups...
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Is It Time to End Prohibition?
The lessons of history are never quite definitive. History repeats itself, but not exactly, and the trick is to know where the differences come in. Nevertheless, in the case of drug abuse and its control we have as good a lesson and as close an analogy as history ever provides—Prohibition. Unfortunately, our politicians have no...
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Un Hombre, Un Voto
“Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.” This line from Section 2 of the 14th Amendment must have seemed fairly straightforward to its authors. In light of the first section’s elevation of blacks to full citizenship...
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The Pygmies Squeak … Again
Neocon intellectual midgets continue to smear Sam Francis long after his death because his writings represent an effective opposition to the ruling class.
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American Delusions
“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie . . .” —2 Thessalonians 2:11 American public life thrives on delusions treated as facts: *That you can have a First World economy and military with a Third World population. *That the U.S. government, which has almost unlimited access...
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Judicial Taxation Without Representation
There is an unattributed quotation that says, “The average taxpayer is the first of America’s natural resources to be exhausted.” The American people have turned away from a big, activist federal government because they feel they have been forgotten; in fact, taxpayer resources have long been exhausted. Today, average Americans, forgotten by the bloated bureaucratic...
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Joe Sobran’s Timeless Lesson on America’s Role in the World
I met Joe Sobran in early 1997 at a conference near Chicago on the American intervention in the Balkans. It was not his area of primary interest, but he understood all of the key issues because he understood U.S. foreign policy and its domestic roots. His diagnosis, which applied then, in Bill Clinton’s second...
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Trifkovic on Ukraine Peace Prospects: RT International Live
RT: Joining us in the studio now is Srdja Trifkovic, foreign affairs editor of Chronicles magazine. Thank you very much for joining us at the studio of RT International. So, we have the new peace plan that includes the greater autonomy for eastern Ukraine. Do you think this is something that can really work in...
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Exporting Political Correctness
During the early days of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House frequently trotted out Laura Bush to laud our soldiers’ heroic efforts to “liberate” women. These were not wars of aggression or conquest. They were wars for “education,” the former schoolteacher averred: “The United States government is wholeheartedly committed to the full...
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Of Apes and Yahoos
Instinct Produced by Spyglass Entertainment and Touchstone Pictures Directed by Jon Turteltaub Screenplay by Gerald Di Pego and Daniel Quinn Released by Buena Vista Pictures Pushing Tin Produced by Art Linson Productions, 3 Miles Apart Productions Ltd., et al. Directed by Mike Newell Screenplay by Darcy Frey and Glen Charles Released by 20th Century Fox...
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Democrats Are Stuck with Joe Biden as Their Presidential Nominee
Democrats have no choice but to take a deep breath, pray to the deity they probably don't believe in, and roll the dice with their impotent current ticket.
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The Chinese Exclusion Act
In 1882 Congress took steps to control Chinese immigration with the passage of “An Act to execute certain treaty stipulations relating to Chinese.” The act later became known misleadingly as the Chinese Exclusion Act. In high schools and colleges it’s taught that the act was simply another example of American racism. The real story is more...
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Washing Onto the Pages
A new word, “hazing,” has washed onto the pages of the Soviet press with the wave of glasnost. It denotes the harassment, oppression, and humiliation suffered by new conscripts, “greenhorns,” at the hands of “grandfathers”—the Soviet term for soldiers who are nearing the end of their conscription term. The subject was broached by Yuri Polyakov...
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Greek Diary II
The Plaka was once the heart of modern Athens, first Ottoman Athens and then the Athens built largely by German kings and queens and their philhellenic architects. It was ruined by the work of brilliant American archaeologists who tore out the heart of the neighborhood in digging up the ...
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On Tearing Down the Wall
In “Freedom of Conscience” (Perspective, December), Thomas Fleming states that Thomas Jefferson’s “‘Wall of Separation’ existed only in his mind.” This phrase, of course, was included in Jefferson’s 1802 letter to a group of Baptists from Danbury, Connecticut, as Dr. Fleming has pointed out in previous Perspectives. Rather than implying exclusionary intent, the “Wall of...
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Phonic Booms
In Forked Tongue, her important new public policy study-cum-expose whose proposals seem as likely to create new problems as to solve some old ones, Rosalie Pedalino Porter doesn’t get down to root causes. That is, she nowhere notes that when activist judges create new opportunities for turf-hungry bureaucrats the result is similar to what it...
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America Through the Looking Glass
Not so long ago anticommunist conservatives used to rail against the mirror fallacy, the leftist assumption that the Soviet Union could be studied in Western terms. If only we could strengthen the hand of the doves and “responsible” elements, we could keep the country from falling into the hands of the hard-liners and hawks—the Soviet...
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Blue Christmas
The November election results were all about the war, the chattering classes told us; and in this case, there’s probably more truth to popular opinion than not. For those of us who have opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning (and even before), this seems a rather strange moment. After all, what really changed...
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Pro-Life: The Political Disadvantage
Pro-life Republicans must somehow convince their opponents that opposition to abortion is a deeply held belief about human life—not an attack on women.
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How Berkeley Birthed the Right
In December 1964, a Silver Age of American liberalism, to rival the Golden Age of FDR and the New Deal, seemed to be upon us. Barry Goldwater had been crushed in a 44-state landslide and the GOP reduced to half the size of the Democratic Party, with but 140 seats in the House and 32...
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Anarcho-Tyranny: The Perpetual Revolution—April 2005
PERSPECTIVE Synthesizing Tyrannyby Samuel Francis The last word. VIEWS The Real Fight Is Here at Homeby Roger D. McGrathFallujah, California. Global Anarcho-Tyrannyby Srdja TrifkovicA game of chess. Samuel T. Francis, R.I.P.Clyde Wilson and Thomas Fleming remembertheir fellow Tarheel conspirator. NEWS Final Solutionby B.K. EakmanThe hostile takeover of America’s schools. REVIEWS My Favorite Justiceby Stephen B....
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The Unbearable Bulldozers of Walmart
A theory about the mafia that was advanced in these pages by the late Samuel Francis about 15 years ago explains how Walmart, Costco, and Home Depot drive out your corner grocery, the local pharmacist, and Joe’s Hardware. The national expansion of these blights isn’t free enterprise. It’s more akin to the nationwide expansion of...
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After Lee: Charlottesville and Beyond
Was it for this That on that April day we stacked our arms Obedient to a soldier’s trust? To lie Ground by the heels of little men, Forever maimed, defeated, impugned? —Donald Davidson, “Lee in the Mountains” There are times when I feel as though I’ve awoken in a madhouse, a madhouse that cannot possibly...
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The American Covenant
“It is extremely frustrating to write history today because so much effort must go toward correcting the countless distortions that have been inserted into accounts of our heritage by militant secularists who twist facts to suit their narrow anti-religious political agendas.” So writes Benjamin Hart near the end of Faith and Freedom: The Christian Roots...
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You Shall Be as Gods
“It’s awesome”: A young relative of mine loves the word and uses it profusely. Since she applies it to a restaurant or a vacuum cleaner she finds extraordinary, I doubt she realizes its real meaning. This is a typical instance of the degeneracy of a word caused by the search for quick superlatives, and mainly...
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Covert Policing in Modern America
When the former communist bloc disintegrated, the opening of secret police files in several European countries demonstrated the incredibly thorough hold that the clandestine state had possessed over ordinary citizens. In East Germany, for example, State Security (Stasi) files revealed the existence of vast networks of control and surveillance in any area of life that...
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Why Johnny Shouldn’t Vouch
For some time now, the panacea offered by conservatives and libertarians for improving the education of American youth has been vouchers. There is no question that government schools are failing miserably. There is plenty of teaching about the wonders of diversity and multiculturalism, but not enough instruction in the basic skills required for work or...
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What in Heaven’s Name Goes On?
At its best, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke’s high-octane assault on religious freedom calls for brandy and an extended lie-down in a dark room. That’s the best that can be said of it. Its worst has to do with the disdain a midlevel presidential candidate exhibits for supernatural religion. That’s if he really meant what he...
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Downsizing Detroit Motown’s Lament
Detroiters have a deeply ironic way of looking at their beloved city. The irony is evident in a once-popular T-shirt that showed a muscular tough gripping a ferocious dog around the neck while holding a loaded gun to the animal’s head. “Say Nice Things About Detroit,” the T-shirt read. The T-shirt is a commentary on...
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A Niagara of Print
“It used to be one of our proudest boasts that we welcomed the downtrodden, the oppressed, the poverty-stricken, the fit and the unfit to a land of freedom, of plenty, of boundless opportunity. Our hindsight tells us that this boast was fatuous.” —George Horace Believe it or not, Chronicles was not the first magazine in...
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New England Against America
“The fiction of Mr. Simms gave indication, we repeat, of genius, and that of no common order. Had he been even a Yankee, this genius would have been rendered immediately manifest to his countrymen, but unhappily (perhaps) he was a Southerner…. His book, therefore, depended entirely upon its own intrinsic value and...
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Caesar’s Column
If anything could make the modern presidency look good, it is the modern Congress. Intended by the Framers, through a misinterpretation of the British constitution, to offer a check to the executive branch, the federal legislature has in fact evolved into merely its partner and more often its lackey. The President now openly intervenes in...
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Who Owns the Future? Dems or GOP?
For Republicans, the returns were mixed on Nov. 3. Though he carried burdens unrivaled by a president since Herbert Hoover—a plague that has killed 230,000 Americans in eight months and crashed the economy to depths not seen since the ’30s—Donald J. Trump amassed 72 million votes, the largest total in Republican Party history. And while...
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Rockefeller Republicans
Is the Republican establishment losing it? Is the party leadership capable of uniting a governing coalition as Richard Nixon did before Watergate and Ronald Reagan resurrected in the 1980s? Observing the hysteria and nastiness of Karl Rove and the GOP establishment at the stunning triumph of Tea Party Princess Christine O’Donnell, the answer is no....
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Where the Action Is
Between now and the turn of the century, 16 eastern and southeastern states will celebrate 200 years of statehood. Here in the hinterlands, seven more states will have their 100th birthday. Then there will be just five state centennials left, with Alaska and Hawaii as late desserts in 2059—when many East Coast states will be...
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The Maastricht Mystique
Even an expert must be mystified by the legal structures of the European Union Parliament and the European Commission. The EU Parliament has roughly 620 deputies, elected every five years from 15 Western European states. Voters from ElU countries have no decision over the election of other countries’ deputies to the EU Parliament. The president...
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The Satan Club
At last, the Tacoma Public Schools’ board has recognized the obvious educational potential of the Prince of Darkness. For years, this hopelessly hidebound and reactionary institution has restricted itself to providing what it calls “a welcoming, nurturing environment [to] . . . provide the knowledge and skills for students to become respectful, responsible life-long learners...
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Biblical Values—or Vegas Values?
Almost all of the declared and undeclared Republican candidates for 2016 could be found this weekend at one of two events, or both. The first was organized by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, and held in Point of Grace Church in Waukee. Dominated by Evangelical Christians, who were 60 percent of Republican caucus-goers in...
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Conservatism at Midwinter Spring
[What follows is a meditation on T.S. Eliot’s poem “Little Gidding.” All indented quotations, with apologies to their author, are taken from Eliot.] What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from . . . The first step,...
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The Judgment of History
Satire is a difficult form these days. Reality keeps calling, and raising. Let me tell a story that illustrates the difficulty. Last November, when President Reagan’s Teflon began to wear thin, pundits began to write about how his “place in history” was being jeopardized. My buddy Tim, a historian, casually suggested that a President really...
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A New Logic of Human Studies
Consider the following paradoxes. A welfare system designed by well-meaning politicians guided by the advice of the wisest sociologists and economists available, costing billions of dollars, whose net effect is radically to increase the numbers of the poor, especially women and children, and to deepen their misery, incapacity, and despair. A stock market which rises...
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More Maxims of American Life
Silence is unhealthy and un-American. Everybody has a right to talk and play their media as much as they want to, anywhere any time. Every child has the right to a quality education. A college education is the key to a well-paying job. Same-sex couples have the same right to government benefits as everybody else....
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Bad Hombre Gets His
Only one thing would have been more gratifying than watching a filthy scumbag like José Ernesto Medellín wince as he felt the chilling gush of sodium thiopental run into his arm. That would have been watching him wiggle like a Mexican jumping bean as 2,000 volts of lightning fried him like an Old El Paso...
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The Conservative Search for Order
The terms liberal and conservative (nearly always paired in that descending order) are now so confused as to be almost entirely useless. Originally, liberal was used to denote the ideology that aimed at the liberation of human individuals from the restraints of Church establishments, aristocratic and monarchical privileges, and legal restrictions on business and international...
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New England Against America
“The fiction of Mr. Simms gave indication, we repeat, of genius, and that of no common order. Had he been even a Yankee, this genius would have been rendered immediately manifest to his countrymen, but unhappily (perhaps) he was a Southerner. . . . His book, therefore, depended entirely upon its own intrinsic value and...