The traitor class seeks to destroy distinct communities by degrading and devaluing citizenship. They want the whole world to share their death wish.
2061 search results for: Supreme%2BCourt
Weapons of Despair
Kosta Tsipsis: Arsenal: Understanding Weapons in the Nuclear Age; Simon & Schuster; New York. Freeman Dyson: Weapons and Hope; Harper & Row; New York The peace movement has become a permanent fixture of democratic politics. The movement is most visible when its members are marching in the streets, but it is most effective when there...
How Do You Make $100 Million Per Day?
How do you make $100 million per day? Goldman Sachs did it—and still does it. It even brags about it. Goldman’s net revenues for 2009 were over $45 billion. Most of this—$34.37 billion—came from trading. During the second and third quarters of 2009, Goldman made over $100 million per day on 82 out of 130...
Delightful Murders and Sheer Torture
While “off Broadway” is often the destination for the worst sort of stage-direction anarcho-anachronism, with Othello in spaceships and all-lesbian versions of Macbeth, it may surprise the non-New Yorker to learn that it is often the place to discover classic drama played absolutely straight (in all senses) and flawlessly acted. Such was the case recently...
Whose is the Wrong Rally?
By telling people shouting “Jesus Is Lord” that they didn’t belong at her rally, Kamala Harris demonstrated the deep divide over religion between the parties.
All Play and No Work
A kid today, if he aspires to anything other than slack itself, aspires to one of three “crafts”: acting, sports, or rock ’n’ roll. He wants either to play a part, to play a game, or to play guitar. He wants to be a player. The work ethic has been replaced by the shirk-and-perks ethic: “I’d...
The Importance of Bahkmut
After the fall of Bakhmut, the moment of truth will come if the Ukrainian counteroffensive fizzles out, and especially if the Russians respond by starting a major advance of their own.
Children of the Revolution
We are all children of the Revolution. Wherever we look, in the office or at church, whatever professions we examine or traditions we cherish, we are hard pressed to discover a single significant aspect of human experience that has not been transformed by a perpetual revolution that has inverted all the ancient truths and turned...
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,...
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...
Are We Still Entitled to Some Privacy?
More often than not, current events offer an opportunity for meditation. This is the case today: The friends of a politician turned international financier, now to be tried for rape, have rallied round him, claiming his privacy has been invaded. Though in this case the claim is downright preposterous, by appealing to the right to...
For Now, the American Republic Stands
Before the November 3 election, a foundational principle of the American republic—checks and balances—was on life support. The same inaccurate pollsters who predicted a blowout win for Biden also predicted the Democrats would take control of the Senate. With one-party Democratic control, America as we know it would disappear. The results of the election didn’t match...
Using Howard Stern to Build Hillary’s Dream
As I sit down to write this, on the Sunday afternoon before the second presidential debate, the media feeding frenzy over remarks made by Donald Trump 11 years ago continues unabated. The content of those remarks reminded me of one of the more interesting pieces I’ve read about the improbable rise of Trump, an article...
Netanyahu Overplays His Hand
Following his doomsday speech at the United Nations General Assembly on October 1—in which he warned the world that Iran’s new president should not be trusted and that Israel would attack Iran on its own unless it ends its nuclear program—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent two days in New York on an anti-Rouhani media...
Cannibal Statistics
In debate, it is always possible to be right for the wrong reason. For instance, in supporting the proposition that cannibalism is immoral, I might argue that, historically, cannibalism encouraged the killing of human beings who might otherwise have been kidnapped by Arabs or rival African tribesmen and sold into slavery in the southern United...
Splendid Dishonesty
Stephen B. Presser, Chronicles’ legal-affairs editor, identifies a crisis in American legal education. In his book Law Professors, he shows us why a newly minted graduate of an elite American law school has no clue how to handle a case or provide useful legal services. This is not a matter of just being young or...
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...
A Man Among Mice
Lady Lytton probably summed up the aura of Winston Churchill most effectively when she said, “The first time you meet Winston you see all his faults and the rest of your life you spend in discovering his virtues.” Those who have chronicled Churchill’s life have been liberal about providing a compendium of his faults. Churchill...
Hating Babies, Hating God
When I sat down to write this article, Google reminded me that, when it comes to the issue of contraception, the stakes are very high. To check the date of publication of Dr. Charles Provan’s important work The Bible and Birth Control, I typed “Charles, Provan, Bible, Birth Control” into the mother of all search...
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...
Returning to Reality
And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost . . . On February 28, as Pope Benedict...
Reaping the Red’s Harvest
Diane Johnson: Dashiell Hammett: A Life; Random House; New York. Spade sat down in the armchair beside the table and without any preliminary, without an introductory remark of any sort, began to tell the girl about a thing that had happened some years before in the Northwest. He talked in a steady matter-of-fact voice that...
Trump—Middle American Radical
President Trump is the leader of America’s conservative party. Yet not even his allies would describe him as a conservative in the tradition of Robert Taft, Russell Kirk or William F. Buckley. In the primaries of 2016, all his rivals claimed the mantle of Mr. Conservative, Ronald Reagan. Yet Trump captured the party’s heart. Who,...
Flags as Symbols
At the end of the 60’s, the Establishment began a deliberate campaign to destroy a number of American symbols it considered inimical to black welfare. That these symbols—such as the various flags of the Confederate States of America and the song “Dixie”—are revered by a large section of our country for reasons not connected with...
Greek Jive
“He fell with a thud to the ground and his armor clattered around him.” —Homer War Music, called by its author, Christopher Logue, an “account” of four books of the Iliad of Homer, is not a minor event. Its reception both in its native England, and now here, has been enthusiastic. For, English writing, especially...
The ‘Marxism’ Narrative Has Gone Too Far
Conservatives who fixate on Communism misunderstand the dynamic driving today’s left and bringing it to power. They are defending a Maginot Line around which the left has already made an end run.
Editors’ Round Table on Sarah Palin: Energized—For What?
I will resist the temptation to steal my own thunder for next week’s John Randolph Club meeting in Philadelphia, where I intend to talk about the most important aspect of the Palin Pandemonium: the conservative Christian rejection of the natural order. There are at least two other aspects of McCain-Palin that are troubling: abortion and...
Not Nice
The Negresco is a beautiful rococo, belle époque hotel built around the turn of the last century on La Promenade des Anglais in Nice, in the south of France. Even under today’s plebeian standards, when backpacking and sandal-wearing tourists invade its elegant quarters, it stands as a monument to a world that no longer exists. ...
Crime Story: The Godfather as Political Metaphor
From the October 1992 issue of Chronicles. Probably not since Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind has a popular novel influenced Americans as deeply as Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. Appearing in 1969, the book remains, according to the inflated come-on of its publisher’s blurb, “the all-time best-selling novel in publishing history.” If true, that claim...
Where Are the ‘High Crimes’?
[above: statue of Horace] “Quid pro quo” was the accusatory Latin phrase most often used to describe President Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call asking for a “favor” from the president of Ukraine. New Year’s prediction: The Roman poet Horace’s Latin depiction: “Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus“—”The mountains went into labor, and brought forth a...
How Do You Solve A Problem Like Francis?
Pope Francis is not dumb or naive. He is a subversive determined to destroy the Roman Catholic Church.
On George W. Bush
William Murchison’s take on President George W. Bush (Cultural Revolutions, February) reminded me of a cartoon called “Jim’s journal” that I used to see in one of the student newspapers at the University of Wisconsin. This simplistic drawing, complete with stick-figure characters, centered around Jim and his daily life. For every event, whether mundane or...
The Blind Ape
In the 1970’s, one hardly ever heard the word atheist. One had the impression that the impassive majority never considered the subject long enough to have made the term a part of their active vocabulary; while the typical exception would proffer, with an upraised finger and a coy smirk, something along the lines of “let’s...
Notes on Art Patronage
Art patronage has had a long, uneven, and agitated history, and ideas about it appear to have long ago been settled: we call “great ages” those with intellectual and artistic brilliance, and we also add that these achievements were largely public, since taste and splendor were manifested first of all in buildings, churches, town halls,...
“Child Care”
Childcare is back in the news, thanks to a new study conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a division of the National Institutes of Health. Preliminary results of the study, which has been touted as the “most far-reaching and comprehensive” examination of the effects of childcare to date, were released...
Dishonoring General Jackson
In Samuel Eliot Morison’s The Oxford History of the American People, there is a single sentence about Harriet Tubman. “An illiterate field hand, (Tubman) not only escaped herself but returned repeatedly and guided more than 300 slaves to freedom.” Morison, however, devotes most of five chapters to the greatest soldier-statesman in American history, save Washington,...
Who You Talkin’ To, Robert De Niro?
The actor’s self-indulgent rant in New York is the latest example of the all-too-human temptation to garner admiration through performative outrage.
Tyranny in Our Time
From the December 2013 issue of Chronicles. There is a saying among jurists that hard cases make bad law. Similarly, every book critic knows that the best books make for hard reviewing. Faced with a truly fine work, the reviewer is tempted simply to reproduce the author’s thesis in abbreviation, while scattering as many of...
Polemics & Exchanges
On Weapons of Despair by Brian Murray In his February review of Kosta Tsipis’s Arsenal and Freeman Dyson’s Weapons and Hope, Professor William Hawkins rightly reminds us that both geopolitical rubes and hard-core leftists are well represented in the “no nukes” movement that has in recent years received considerable, not unfavorable, attention in the Western...
A Cold and Distant Mirror
A review of The White Ribbon (produced by Canal+ and Wega Film; written and directed by Michael Haneke; distributed by Sony Pictures Classics). German director Michael Haneke loves to sneer at his middle-class patrons. In Funny Games (1997, remade in the United States in 2007) and Caché (2005), his affluent characters are shown to be...
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,...
A Snap and a Party Gone Mad
Lying With Pictures In any shopping mall, on any day, you can see a grizzling kid yearning for the chocolate-covered candy bar that his/her cruel mother is withholding from the distraught child. You can take a photo of this distressing scene but will not expect to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize, or whatever touches the...
Unconstitutionally Vague
The Univ. of Michigan has not given up. Federal District Court Judge Avern Cohn’s August 1989 ruling that Michigan’s anti-discrimination and discriminatory harassment policy (inaugurated in April 1988) was unconstitutionally vague and overbroad merely sent administrators back to their drawing boards. After implementing an interim policy last September, University President James Duderstadt assembled three committees...
Running Afoul
William “Hootie” Johnson, age 71, poor man, has fallen afoul of public opinion and sensibilities, for which the consequences thus far were entirely predictable: the scorn of the best newspapers; hospitalization for a coronary-artery bypass, an aortic aneurism repair, and an aortic valve replacement; now, news of restlessness on the part of the natives. Might...
Ignoble Savages, Part 2
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images . . . —T.S. Eliot, “The Burial of the Dead,” The Waste Land The body of the hapless American missionary John Chau has...
Women’s Work I
After receiving a number of kind messages, imploring me to continue this discussion, I have decided to ransack some old essays for more material on the question of women. If I do not respond to every writeback, it is because of lack of time. It is a feminist truism that women have always worked. ...
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...
Preparing for the Presidential Games
The presidential games of 1992 are well more than a year away, but wouldbe Republican gladiators are already measuring George Bush for a quick thrust in the belly. Their plans may be premature. Though the President came close to wrecking his party by breaking his promise against new taxes and may yet make a fool...
Impeachment: The Left’s Ultimate Weapon
In 1868, President Andrew Johnson was impeached for violating the Tenure of Office Act that had been enacted by Congress over his veto in 1867. Defying the law, Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, without getting Senate approval, as the act required him to do. In his 1956 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, John F. Kennedy...
Christian Democracy? No Such Thing
Everyone hails democracy as the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but very few realize—or dare realize—that democracy actually represents one of the most perfect forms of tyranny, because it is one the average citizen is loath to acknowledge as such. It is indeed very simply a matter of taking...