When I was a junior at the Trinity School in New York, Mr. Clarence Bruner-Smith, head of the Upper School, assured me that I had an excellent chance of being accepted at Yale if I accepted the editorship of the school literary magazine. I thought that a ridiculous reason to be accepted anywhere, and that...
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The Unbearable Illegitimacy of American Law
For some time now, American law and lawyers have had a legitimacy problem. Most Americans must wonder how it is that unelected federal judges have the power to declare that no state government can punish consensual homosexual relations, prohibit abortion, or permit prayer in the schools (to mention just a few of the striking things...
Revisions – The Wild (and Tranquil) West
American intellectuals have spent much of this century blaming the frontier experience for everything from cultural poverty (John Crowe Ransom) to “our lawless heritage” (James Truslow Adams). The high rates of violent crime in modern cities, they insist, cannot be caused by anything we are doing now that is, hamstringing the law enforcement system, handingout...
Why Lenin Is No Longer Relevant
Today’s woke leftists would find the Soviet dictator far too muscular and manly to make room for him in their pantheon of girly government apparatchiks and petty tyrants.
Send in the Clowns
Karagiozis is a mythical Greek character created sometime during the Ottoman occupation (1455-1827). He manages to outwit the Turk at every turn by being funny, dishonest at times, and a very quick thinker. For example, he discusses a business with a Turk and proposes an equal sharing of the wealth. “What’s yours is mine,” he...
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...
Trump, the West and the Left
The political left really, really, really doesn’t approve of Western civilization. If you doubt it, reference the maledictions poured out by the left on Donald Trump’s Warsaw speech last week. Trump had the effrontery to say, “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” Followed by rhetorical inquiries:...
Who Cares Who’s Number One?
President Obama, in his State of the Union Address last January, called upon American students, teachers, scientists, and business executives to “out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.” We are living, the President announced, in a “Sputnik moment.” As polls show the majority of the country considers the United States to be rather...
Credulous Creatures
“If the world will be gulled, let it be gulled.” —Robert Burton Who now reads Alfred Kinsey? Almost no one. Who now remembers the great media event set off in 1948 by the publication of his “monumental” book of 804 pages on Sexual Behavior in the Human Male? Most Americans over 40 probably do, while...
Empire States of Mind
Imperial Legacies: The British Empire Around the World by Jeremy Black Encounter Books 216 pp., $25.99 Although this relatively short book is closer to an extended, episodic essay than to the comprehensive history of the British empire implied by the title, it is an excellent example of the author’s style. Jeremy Black takes a broad...
The Remnants of Realism
Philip Roth: The Anatomy Lesson; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; New York. Louis Auchincloss: Exit Lady Masham; Houghton Mifflin; Boston. In the opinion of Tom Wolfe, “the introduction of realism into literature…was like the introduction of electricity into machine technology. It was not just another device. It raised the state of the art to a new magnitude.” If...
Ukraine’s Dilemma
Speaking at the end of the meeting of the EU-Ukraine Cooperation Council in Luxembourg on June 24, European Enlargement Commissioner Štefan Füle warned Ukraine that “time is running preciously short” for the government in Kiev to meet all European Union conditions in time to sign a free trade and association agreement in November. “Ukraine has made...
Always Something to Say
There are very few neoconservatives, people disagree on who they are, and they have no popular following or definite organizational structure. Even so, they have deeply affected American public life for 40 years. Their influence has not gone unopposed. The term neoconservative began as an insult and remains one. Opponents tie the tendency to foreign...
A Spectacle of Joy, With a Touch of Discomfort
Over the weekend of March 11, our daughter, Virginia, was married in the Arches National Park near Moab, Utah. She said she wanted to be married in a place surrounded by natural beauty, well away from trite tourism. After some web-surfing, she picked the Delicate Arch (one of the most photographed natural arches in the...
Is Trump Right About NATO?
I am “not isolationist, but I am ‘America First,'” Donald Trump told the New York Times last weekend. “I like the expression.” Of NATO, where the U.S. underwrites three-fourths of the cost of defending Europe, Trump calls this arrangement “unfair, economically, to us,” and adds, “We will not be ripped off anymore.” Beltway media may...
Revolution in the Air
Thanks to a November election upset, Kafka, South Dakota—home of Lagado University—is poised to become the vanguard college town of 21st-century America. Joe Steele, a Lagado University English Department adjunct running as a candidate of the Farmer-Activist- Worker-Grad Student Alliance (a coalition of the Revolutionary Democratic Workers’ Party, the Workers’ Party of Democratic Revolutionaries, the...
Boethius and/or Cassiodorus
American conservatives used to be fond of saying that the United States have entered a decadent period something like that of the Roman Empire. Since American conservatives do not read history, they were never very clear on the period they had in mind, but let us assume they mean the third century, when the empire...
In the Old Days
The Insensitivity Squad has struck again: this time against a board game and a marching band. Parker Brothers, venerable producer of board games, was recently denounced by the head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, left-Republican Susan Engeleiter. It seems that its new game, Careers for Girls, for ages 8-12, lists six “careers” for the...
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. ...
A Threat to Our Very Way of Life
Here’s a heresy for you. A grave danger is lurking among us, caused by certain people who are spreading lies—and in the name of Christianity! So grave is this danger that it threatens our very way of life. And, as one of our great leaders once said, “The American way of life is not negotiable.”...
A Letter from Switzerland: Alpine Redoubt Stays Neutral
Switzerland provides a model for a morally neutral foreign policy based on pragmatic interests rather than “defining values” and self-proclaimed exceptionality. Americans need to learn from the Swiss.
No Party for Old White Men
For Nancy Pelosi, 78, Steny Hoyer, 79, and Joe Biden, 75, the primary results from New York’s 14th congressional district are a fire bell in the night. All may be swept away in the coming revolution. That is the message of the crushing defeat of 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley, who had aspired to succeed Pelosi...
Foreign Aid That Ain’t So Foreign
As 1995 drew to a close, Senate Democrats and Republicans were still debating Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms’ legislation to restructure the State Department and its ancillary agencies. Helms wanted to jettison the United States Agency for International Development, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the United States Information Agency, fold their functions...
American Historians and Their History
This article is drawn from the author’s speech on accepting The Rockford Institute’s first John Randolph Award at the historic Menger Hotel in San Antonio, a short distance from the Alamo. For this occasion, I have been asked to reflect on “the historian’s task” and “the American republican tradition.” To do so could be a...
Be Afraid of Virginia Woolf
The Hours Produced by Scott Rudin and Miramax Films Directed by Stephen Daldry Screenplay by David Hare from Michael Cunningham’s novel Distributed by Paramount Pictures Confessions of a Dangerous Mind Produced by Andrew Lazar and Miramax Films Directed by George Clooney Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman from the book by Chuck Barris Distributed by Artisan Entertainment...
Leave Dr. Seuss for Dead
One of the most prominent children’s book authors of the 20th century, Dr. Seuss, suffered a double blow to his legacy this month. His estate said they would no longer publish six of his children’s books that contained depictions of Africans and Asians that are “hurtful and wrong.” The Biden administration followed by unceremoniously dumping...
Bouillabaisse by Ear
Years before many Americans noticed him, France’s socialist president made a career while provoking contrary sentiments. He evidently prefers not to be understood. Conservatives governing America must nonetheless decide what to think about a ruler who supports us and opposes the Soviets in Europe while opposing us and supporting Soviet allies in Latin America. This biography...
The Tarantulas
“‘That precisely for us is justice, that the world be filled with the tempests of our revenge’—so speak they to each other.” —Friedrich Nietzsche Ortega y Gasset once judiciously observed that “Man reaches truth with hands bloodied from the strangling of a hundred platitudes.” One such commonplace is the popular belief that virtually all of...
Crimes and Punishments
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover Produced by Kees Kasander Written and directed by Peter Greenaway Released by Miramax Films The Plot Against Harry Produced by Michael Roemer and Robert Young Written and directed by Michael Roemer Released by King Screen Lust, greed, betrayal, murder, and revenge are not at all unusual...
After the Confederates, Who’s Next?
On Sept. 1, 1864, Union forces under Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, victorious at Jonesborough, burned Atlanta and began the March to the Sea where Sherman’s troops looted and pillaged farms and towns all along the 300-mile road to Savannah. Captured in the Confederate defeat at Jonesborough was William Martin Buchanan of Okolona, Mississippi, who was...
The Stuffed Grape Leaf Standard
Danger lurks everywhere these days, even in five gallon plastic tubs of feta cheese. The containers of feta delivered to our restaurant come embellished with sketches of a baby falling headfirst into a bucket of cheese, which is preserved in liquid, and therefore comes complete with grim warnings of possible drownings in English and Español....
American Italics, or Revelation According to P.T. Barnum
As in some picaresque dream, the carousel that has been spinning out a tale of broken hearts and mistaken identities begins to slow down, the roulette wheel grows disenchanted with the last bourgeois revolution, and all of a sudden even the drum of the concrete mixer that is shadowing the Venetian’s limousine all the way...
Room to Pass
Few people read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) much anymore. Lines from his poems were once on the tips of tongues the world over. Students used to memorize “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” and lines from “Evan-geline” and “Hiawatha.” Longfellow’s once-great literary reputation rivaled that of Tennyson and Dickens, and, after his death, the American...
Bribemasters
‘The devil’s boots don’t creak.’ —Scottish proverb Many who take money from him, attend his conferences, or publish their articles in his publications will point to his anti-Communism. Others support the civil liberty issues he seems to embody. Some reassure themselves by seeing the influential people with whom he travels. A few employ the rationale...
Perilous Panacea
Books like this one frighten the intelligent reader, while raising the hopes of the naive. By taxing demand deposits at 3 percent per year, Mr. Dahlberg promises to erase all the evils that have tortured this economy for decades. No more inflation, budget deficits, poverty, or unemployment Unfortunately, he is not the first to offer...
A Self-Contained World
Pascal Bruckner is a French version of the Cold War liberal, updated for the age of jihad. In general, his views would be at home in blue-state America. He is pro-E.U. and pro-affirmative action, takes a more positive view of the free market than is common in France, is generally pro-Israel and pro-American, and favors...
Sexual Perversity West of Chicago
This summer, Lagado University established itself as a major player at the cutting edge of American theater. Angels’ Hair for Rent in Calcutta, OH, written and directed by Jonathan Raspberry, LU Professor of English and Musicology, opened July 24 at the Galaxy Theater and Opera House in Bismarck, North Dakota. This was its first performance...
The Meaning of Donald Trump
Nearly half a year into the new administration in Washington, it remains too early to tell how many of President Trump’s unquestioned pratfalls and errors in judgment, most of them resulting from emotional indiscipline, stubbornness, and political inexperience as well as the necessary thicker skin experience would have given him, are attributable to the President...
The United States, In Congress Assembled
“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States . . . ” Thus run the first words of Article I, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution, clearly laying out the Framers’ understanding of the nature and the role of Congress. Everything else enumerated in Article I—the various powers...
Arguing With Jesus
Professor Neusner, one of the world’s most accomplished scholars in the field of religious studies, begins by proclaiming that as a practicing and believing Jew he says a polite “No” to another practicing and believing Jew—but one who made extraordinary claims for himself —Jesus of Nazareth. Both the “No” and the politeness come out clearly...
Adventure Fiction: The Machinery of the Dark
Adventure fiction is vigorously alive. Although virtually ignored by critics outside specialist newsletters, the genre has long been a dominant force both in bookstores and in Hollywood. Such adventure films as Die Hard, Jaws, and the Indiana Jones epics draw millions of viewers. Tom Clancy’s technological thrillers and Robert Ludlum’s volumes of struggle and terror...
The Tides of Chaos
The near assassination of President Trump failed to unite Americans. Rather, America is more divided and chaotic than ever.
On the Study of History
American society is in trouble, and not only because our traditional values and institutions are under siege. The nuclear family is crumbling as a result of government policies that are ruthless when they are not mindless. Our once great cities have reverted to a state of nature, in which the innocent are terrorized by hordes...
London’s Postmodern Riots
As a former resident of Winchmore Hill I am well familiar the surrounding areas of north London—Wood Green, Ponders End, Enfield…—affected by three successive nights of rioting and looting which has now spread to other parts of the capital. Burglaries, car thefts and vandalism started being a problem in our N21 neighborhood two decades ago, but the Hobbesian mayhem of...
The Myth of Learning Disability
In advertising, it’s called weasel type, those tiny bits of typography which explain the nut of the matter (Offer expires on May 31, 1997. Employees of XYZ Corp. are ineligible). So, here goes the weasel type of this discourse. I am not a teacher. Nor am I a mother. Not even a research scientist, a...
Novel Ideas
“Nigger” is the word upon which Bill Kauffman balances and dances his first novel, Every Man a King. It is, to say the very least, a difficult word. It is a word denied to white lips in polite society, and is now heard only coming with any frequency from trash-mouthed blacks. The saying of the...
A Yanqui Doodle Dandy
Henry Adams published his eponymous autobiography in the early years of the last century. Now, just about a hundred years after The Education of Henry Adams, we have The Education of Héctor Villa. America is center stage in both, but they are two very different Americas. The one Adams portrayed was on the rise and...
A Matter of Trust
“I trust the science,” is a venerable Democratic Party slogan that has been repeated for many years by smug, virtue-signaling liberal sophisticates. “Trusting the science” is shorthand for holding an uncritical belief in all the stances of the left that carry a veneer of expert approval, including catastrophic climate change, insidious white privilege, and materialistic...
Parietals Then and Now
As a Columbia University undergraduate in 1956, I resided in Hartley Hall, a stately building on the Morningside campus. During my orientation week I was introduced to my floor counselor who said in an unambiguous way that hijinks would not be permitted on his watch. He highlighted one rule which could never be disobeyed: women...
Walk in Beauty, Walk in Fear
“Step into the shoes of him who lures the enemy to death.” —from the Navajo Enemy Way On a windswept bluff high above the reddish-brown San Juan River, four states—Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado—converge. Visitors to the area come to play a game of twister at the Four Comers Monument, contorting themselves so that...