In June 2017, the European Union fined Google a record-breaking €2.42 billion for abusing the dominance of its popular search engine while building its online shopping service. Brussels found that Google illegally and artificially endorsed its own price-comparison service in searches. (In plain English, Google’s search results were biased in favor of its own services.) ...
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Devil Trouble
Prince of Darkness directed by John Carpenter screenplay by Martin Quatermass Universal Pictures. When they hear about Prince of Darkness, unsuspecting moviegoers may envision a thrilling story of the occult. Some person will probably release Satan from his underworld domain, either deliberately or unwittingly; the demon will run rampant over the globe for a short...
News From Nowhere
Talking recently to a Polish friend who has lived in both Canada and the United States, trying to explain the vitality of my countrymen to him, I said finally, “Unless you’re an American, you don’t know what being alive is!” To which he gloomily replied, “And no one knows what death is till he moves...
Remembering the Twenty-Teens
Decades provide a useful, if not infallible, structure for organizing and understanding our historical experience. However frayed and disputed their limits, terms like “the twenties,” or “the eighties” each conjure their particular images and memories. Whatever we call the decade we have just completed—the twenty-teens?—it is one with landmarks arguably as important as any in...
Vocation and the Humane Economy
I once sat on the honors orals of an economics major who had applied a standard mathematical model to immigration. The mathematics and data collection were well done, but the thesis was premised on the assumption we can understand immigration by analyzing a sufficiently large sample of economic data with a reputable mathematical model. Were...
The Kingfish of Caracas
Venezuela, once the beauty queen of Latin American democracies, has lost her good looks. Today, the oil-rich country is more often compared with communist Cuba than with democratic Costa Rica. Venezuela’s dramatic fall from grace has many causes, but most would blame Hugo Chávez Frias, her president since 1998 and, today, Latin America’s most successful...
Comprehending the Absurd: The U.S. Balkan Policy
Over the past two decades the decisionmakers in Washington have acquired and internalized a bias in Balkan affairs that falls outside the parameters of rational debate. As Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute has noted, such policy is not as inconsistent as it seems: “Time after time the U.S. policy makers would ask what...
Hell Is Other People
Remember Kate Millett? She made the cover of Time in 1970 after her dissection of literary machismo, Sexual Politics, became a blockbuster best-seller and won her the title of leading feminist spokesperson. It didn’t last. Although she was married, she soon announced that she was a lesbian, which split the women’s movement and destroyed her...
A Province of the Republic
“Literature is an avenue to glory ever open for those ingenious men who are deprived of honors or of wealth.” —Isaac D’Israeli These volumes—one of letters, the other heavily dependent on correspondence—document and analyze, respectively, episodes of American literary history that feature three brilliant personalities. These volumes will surely attract readers on that basis, for...
Playing Possum
Mr. Navrozov is a serious man and his political concerns, no matter how improbable they may appear, must be taken seriously. He believes, first, what has been happening in the Soviet Union since March 1985, namely its visible decomposition, is a KGB disinformation achievement, that the “collapse of communism” (he puts the phrase in quotation...
Donald Trump, Europe’s Best Friend
According to the media machine and pundits on both sides of the Atlantic, President Trump’s recent attendance at two summits—in Brussels (NATO) and Sicily (G7)—went very badly. He went through many tense encounters, made a number of statements his interlocutors did not like, notably on the uneven burden of defense costs, on his dislike of...
The Walk Up Cemetery Ridge
The private-school league’s middle-school basketball playoffs were home games for Prep. Prep is the town’s most expensive private school, and their gym is beautiful: spacious, air conditioned, the wall by the entrance made of plastic so the new, impressive weight room is visible on the other side of a hall. We met them in the...
The Lowdown on Music Appreciation
Music Appreciation is a revealing phrase: It doesn’t mean what it says. It doesn’t mean that music is getting more expensive, though it is true that music is appreciating. It doesn’t mean even a proper regard, as in “I appreciate your efforts.” What it does mean is a matter more of pedantry than of anything...
The Pursuit of Happiness
Mass shootings of the sort that happened recently in Florida and Nevada, whose only conceivable motive is the perpetrator’s compulsion to make his satanic and nihilistic hatred of other people and of existence itself a compelling item in the international news, have become almost monthly occurrences here, though they are rare in more mentally and...
Proceed With the Neverendum
It would be fun to write a Westminster column that wasn’t about Brexit. I’m afraid I can’t. Brexit is Britain, to a large extent, these days, at least as far as the news is concerned. It has made the political and media classes go mad. Normal people, those who don’t spend their lives reading the...
Return of the War Party?
Is a vote for the Republican Party in 2012 a vote for war? Is a vote for Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich a vote for yet another unfunded war of choice, this time with a nation, Iran, three times as large and populous as Iraq? Mitt says that if elected he will move carriers...
Clueless in the Congress: The Reauthorization of a Reckless Bill
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the No Child Left Behind Act are up for reauthorization again. This process typically entails legislators tweaking the bill—a caveat here, a zinger there. Almost always, it translates into more money. Representatives George Miller (D-CA) and Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) of the Committee on Education and Labor recently...
The Mexican Bailout
The Mexican bailout was a bipartisan scheme, meaning that its details were kept shrouded in secrecy. The White House and the congressional leadership conspired with the banking industry, and Alan Greenspan even telephoned Rush Limbaugh and ordered him to support it. Limbaugh did not need to be told. Almost alone, Senator Alfonse D’Amato started looking...
Jerks: The Natural Man
“La plupart de jeunes gens croient etre naturels, lorsqu’ils ne sont que mal polis et grossiers.” La Rochefoucauld’s caustic observation on the false simplicity of young people who mistake crudeness for nature tells us that the cult of the primitive antedates both Rousseau and the Romantic writers who wrought so much mischief. Society...
All Is Hype for the Biden-Putin Summit
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Karl Marx’s comment came to mind as President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought to equate their tete-a-tete at the G7 confab in Cornwall, England, to the Atlantic Charter conference of 80 years ago. Those were historic days, to which these days cannot compare....
From Mothers to Killers
There’s no way a man can sidestep trouble writing about the prospect of women as combat troops. You know, mowing the enemy down with machine guns; blowing up things, not to mention people; cutting, slicing, jabbing, stabbing, whatever it takes. For such is war, the elements little different in a high-tech age from those prevalent...
Steeped in Islamic Orthodoxy, Hamas Is Israel’s Permanent Enemy
It is necessary to be aware of the ambitions of political Islam and to harbor no illusions about its goals.
Not ‘Woke’ and Not Sorry
“Woke” is the concept that everything must be inclusive and inoffensive. Oh dear! Being hyperaware of everyone’s sensitivities makes one a hell of a bore. I recently flew down to Charlottesville, Virginia, where I had gone to university, to speak at a memorial service for my friend Willy von Raab. The other speaker was P.J....
The Pilgrimage of Malcolm Muggeridge
In the second segment of the several-part BBC documentary on his life, Malcolm Muggeridge smoothed his white feathery hair away from his cherubic face, smiled cryptically, and said in his deep, rolling, gentle English voice, “There’s nothing in this world more instinctively abhorrent to me than finding myself in agreement with my fellow humans.” And...
Trump’s Global Vision and Challenges
Translated excerpts from Srdja Trifkovic’s latest interview with the RTRS (the Bosnian-Serb Republic public media service). [Video] Q: There’s a whole host of generals among Trump’s appointees. Is he creating a junta? ST: First of all, we should differentiate between political generals and true soldiers. Men like Wesley Clark and Colin Powell, or even David Petraeus,...
Crossing the Line
On April 29, 1993, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs held a confirmation hearing for Roberta Achtenberg, President Clinton’s nominee for the position of Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. Like most nominees, Miss Achtenberg brought along members of her family to lend her support...
Fiddling Around
All of the enchantment of the violin and its repertory, the provenance of Russia and specifically of Odessa, the pedagogy of Leopold Auer (who also taught Jascha Heifetz, Efrem Zimbalist, and Toscha Seidel), and decades of international celebrity—that’s a lot in common. But these books, one about Mischa Elman and one by Nathan Milstein, are...
Vote Claudius: He’ll Leave Your Sons Alone
When Edmund Burke called perfect democracy “the most shameful thing in the world,” he was not referring to the mixed forms of popular government that had existed in ancient Greece and Rome, much less to the newly liberated English colonies that had been struggling to form “a more perfect union” on the Eastern seaboard of...
Truth Against the Grain
“Zeus gives no aid to liars.” —Homer Richard Gid Powers’ history is a powerful, even brilliant, piece of scholarship which documents one of the most bizarre political phenomena of the 20th century. While Soviet communism, in its 70-year dictatorship, was probably guilty of every conceivable crime against humanity, it was yet able to escape the...
How Do I Hate Thee? Let Me Count the Ways
The cinders of the World Trade Center had barely fallen to the earth before George W. Bush had it all figured out. “America was targeted for attack,” the President explained to the nation barely 12 hours after the first plane hit the Manhattan skyscrapers, “because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the...
They’re Back
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines Produced and distributed by Warner Brothers Directed by Jonathan Mostow Screenplay by John Brancato, Michael Ferris, and Tedi Sarafian The Hulk Produced and distributed by Universal Pictures Directed by Ang Lee Screenplay by John Turman, Michael France, and James Schamus Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black...
Sylvan Socialism: The U.S. Forest Service
The U.S. Forest Service has custody over 192 million acres of national forest and rangeland—an area nearly equal to Texas and Louisiana combined. Like the National Park Service, the Forest Service is commonly viewed as a stellar example of Progressive Era legislation. However, the Forest Service clearly and recurrently violates the spirit of its stewardship...
The Matter of Money
Over the last year, the doings of the media have occupied center stage in the media themselves, an obsession that seems harmless if somewhat incestuous. There has been a tournament atmosphere surrounding the issue of whether the damsels CBS or ABC would fall to one or another suitor, and a sense of awe at the...
A Deserved Death Denied
A new plea deal spares the life of three surviving masterminds of the 9/11 terrorist attack. It's indicative of our legal system’s refusal to mete out fitting punishment for even the most vile criminals.
Stupid Conservatives
“A Conservative is only a Tory who is ashamed of himself.” —J. Hookham Frere On page 62 of this book, the author recalls with irritation having once been accused by Murray Kempton of dishonoring the “legacy” of His Master’s Voice, H. L. Mencken, by “conformism.” How, Tyrrell demanded incredulously, was it possible for him to...
Claudine Gay Is Not a Martyr
The disgraced former president of Harvard University is representative of the DEI regime and the massive undertaking it will be to dismantle it.
Rich Man, Poor Man
When the late Tony Snow stepped down from his position as President George W. Bush’s press secretary, he explained that he simply could not “make it on $168,000 a year.” The comment didn’t play well in Peoria. The media downplays the enormous wealth enjoyed by disgraced chief executive officers of bankrupted companies, special-interest moguls, lobbying...
Clichés Revived
Hell or High Water Produced by Film 44 Directed by David Mackenzie Screenplay by Taylor Sheridan Distributed by CBS Pete’s Dragon Produced and distributed by Walt Disney Productions Directed and written by David Lowery Hell or High Water has won extravagant praise from mainline film reviewers. This, I suspect, has to do more with its...
Time for Arafat to Go
It is not necessarily a bad thing for a national leader to remain at the helm for a very long time, provided that he is successful. Otto von Bismarck’s 28 years as Prussia’s and then the Reich’s chief minister were marked by unification and consolidation internally, nifty diplomacy and overall stability of the European balance-of-power...
What Was, and What Might Have Been
Most Americans appear to have spent their second September 11 anniversary paying tribute to the American ideals of open borders and acceptance of all forms of diversity—religious, ethnic, sexual, moral, and intellectual. I spent it in Novi Sad, attending a conference on Islam and the West. The one-day conference, part of the Rockford Institute convivium...
Caving Into Lunacy
“I’m tired of having to go to the office armed,” my wife said one day last March. She was not alone in going armed—especially not since the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union had entered the case of the “Center City Stalker,” a young black man who had committed a series of robberies...
The War on Homeschoolers
Homeschooling is one of the many fronts in the state’s war against the citizen. Despite the efforts of organizations such as the Home School Legal Defense Association, the Rutherford Institute, and Eagle Forum, as well as longstanding laws that protect family autonomy, homeschooling parents are still viewed as neglectful if not downright abusive. With methods...
The Pilgrimage of Malcolm Muggeridge
From the December 1992 issue of Chronicles. In the second segment of the several-part BBC documentary on his life, Malcolm Muggeridge smoothed his white feathery hair away from his cherubic face, smiled cryptically, and said in his deep, rolling, gentle English voice, “There’s nothing in this world more instinctively abhorrent to me than finding myself...
Greater Than the French Revolution
On July 15, 1870, the French Empire mobilized its armed forces, and the following day, the North German Confederation—led by Prussia—followed suit. Once the Franco-Prussian War was declared, actual combat began with startling rapidity. The Prussians won a decisive victory at Sedan at the start of September, capturing French Emperor Napoleon III. Even so, the...
Confessions of a Cleveland Sports Fan
Recently, the national media focused its attention on my hometown. As is generally the case when that happens, the focus was not positive. Here is AP reporter Tom Withers, offering his objective analysis of the event: “New York, Chicago, New Jersey, Los Angeles and ...
Memo to Trump: Declare an Emergency
In the long run, history will validate Donald Trump’s stand on a border wall to defend the sovereignty and security of the United States. Why? Because mass migration from the global South, not climate change, is the real existential crisis of the West. The American people know this, and even the elites sense it. Think...
Dominion Mosque
If the definition of a liberal is a person who won’t take his own side in a fight, Adam Ebbin and Kaye Kory, Democrats who represent Virginia’s 49th and 38th districts in the commonwealth’s House of Delegates, should have their pictures next to the word in Webster’s. Ebbin, a homosexual Jew, invited Johari Abdul-Malik, a...
Wogs
A review of Iron Man (produced by Marvel Studios; directed by John Favreau; screenplay by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby; distributed by Paramount Pictures) and The Visitor (produced by Groundswell Productions; directed and written by Thomas McCarthy; distributed by Overture Films) [amazonify]B00005JPS8[/amazonify]It is always reassuring when a big-budget superhero film fulfills its responsibility to edify...
Memorial Day
We used to go there on every Memorial Day—a small national cemetery off the road a piece in the woods. It was usually warm; the woods, deep, green, and moist. We would walk down a dirt path to the stone wall encircling the graves, sometimes passing others who had just visited there before us. My...
Simple Goethe
Last summer, I read simultaneously Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit, his autobiography up to the time of writing Werther, his collected travel diaries, and his life by Emil Ludwig. Of the three biographical works, my unhesitating judgment is that Ludwig’s book is the disappointment: it compares to Goethe’s own narrative of his youth as the description...