Hate crimes—what are they? In Newport, Rhode Island, a mixed-race couple complained that threats from their white neighbors had driven them from their home. Generous contributions from strangers helped the family to find a new place and to pay the rent. Local police, however, were suspicious from the first and eventually charged Tisha Anderson with...
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Blood Will Tell
In Tom Wolfe’s America the Northern WASP elite is shallow and cowardly, the most sacrosanct minority groups seethe with ingratitude toward the majority and snarl at one another, culture is dominated by the conspicuous vulgarity of new and ill-gotten wealth, and manners and morals are in a catastrophic nosedive in which the relation of man...
J. Edgar Who?
J. Edgar Produced by Imagine Entertainment and Malpaso Productions Directed by Clint Eastwood Written by Dustin Lance Black Distributed by Warner Bros. Entertainment Director Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar opens with the June 2, 1919, bomb attack on the Washington, D.C., home of Atty. Gen. Alexander Mitchell Palmer. As Palmer and his wife come dazedly...
Success and Failure in Higher Education
Nelson County, Marion County, and Washington County are collectively referred to by their inhabitants as the Kentucky Holy Land, and I don’t think the expression is meant to be entirely whimsical. Settled in the late 18th century by English Catholics from Maryland, the rolling green country is to this day marked by cattle farms, distilleries,...
Five Really Good Reasons
Atheism is once again the rage. These religious fads come and go like skirt lengths or medical trends. When I was a child, everyone I knew had had his tonsils out. My mother was more conservative: The tonsils were there for a reason, she said, so why remove them without a good reason? A later...
A Storm in a Korean Teacup
On April 4 the Pentagon announced that it was sending a mobile missile defense system to Guam as a “precautionary move” to protect the island from the potential threat from North Korea. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) comprises ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California, as well as naval vessels capable of shooting down...
We CAN Have a Blacker Math
Since woke academics insist on imposing equality on math history, there is one thing left to do: declare the ancient Greek mathematicians to be black men.
Limited Hangout
Donald Rumsfeld has produced, four years after his departure from government, a memoir of no stylistic distinction. It contains few if any interesting revelations, save, perhaps, those relating to President Nixon’s choice of vice presidents. For what it does contain, it is at least twice as long as it should be. There is a great...
On Catron County
The first half of Chilton Williamson’s September essay, “Circuit Rider,” is a joy to read. The second half is also well written, but has no reality to it. The idea that Catron County, New Mexico, is fighting for some grounded life against federal interference founders if the facts are known. The facts are that Catron...
Is a New Era Upon Us?
Whoever wins the nominations, the most successful campaigns of 2016 provide us with a clear picture of where the center of gravity is today in both parties and, hence, where America is going. Bernie Sanders, with his mammoth crowds and mass support among the young, represents, as did George McGovern in 1972, despite his defeat,...
Of Communists and Marxists
Maurice Isserman is one of the more resilient members of the radical generation that came of age during the 1960’s. Although his apocalyptic ambitions were frustrated, he refused to succumb to gloom, setting out instead in search of a “tradition that could serve as both a source of political reference and an inspiration in what...
A Gentleman and a Scholar
The call came just before dinner on a Wednesday in April—a bright, windy day when spring was just taking hold and seemed so full of possibilities. Coach had died the previous Friday in his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio. I hoped that he had not been alone. I’m told that a close friend, a man who...
Violence in Cape Town
The parents of Amy Biehl, the 26-year-old Fulbright Scholar who was hacked to death by black militants in South Africa in 1993, are perfect examples of liberals as defined by Thomas Fleming: people who would refuse to take their own side in an argument. Ms. Biehl, a Stanford graduate researching women’s rights and helping to...
That Infamous Diary
“Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.” —William Hazlitt Rarely does a published diary, even of a celebrated writer, become anything more than fodder for the specialist. Yet H.L. Mencken’s diary has been turned into a cause célèbre by its editor, Charles A....
Can a Pope Change Moral Truth?
That joking retort we heard as children, “Is the pope Catholic?” is starting to look like a serious question. Asked five years ago about a “gay lobby” in the Vatican, Pope Francis responded, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” As judgment was thought to...
The Road to Cascadia
They call it Cascadia—a land of plunging waterfalls and snowcapped mountains, a mythical kingdom of towering trees and raging rivers. Here in Seattle, capital of this Arcadia, the sleekly modernistic Space Needle rises up against the backdrop of Mount Rainier, which dominates the horizon—a distinctly Cascadian juxtaposition of mountain and cityscape, forest and skyscraper, greenery...
Define “Imperialism”
Lewis Namier liked to tell the story of an English schoolboy who was asked to define “imperialism” on an examination paper. “Imperialism,” the budding proconsul wrote, “is learning how to get along with one’s social inferiors.” In the Edwardian twilight of the British Empire, that answer might have sufficed to win a scholarship to Balliol,...
Beware the Limelight
“Who can keep up with anything these days?” —Denis Donoghue, The New Republic, 3/10/86 “If a National Theater is to be in only one city, it should, of course, be in New York, the center of the country’s cultural life and the fount of its theatrical traditions. That’s where the acting and directing talent would...
Conservative Commons
This article first appeared in the December 1987 issue of Chronicles. American conservatism in the late 18th century was unlike the European species, where popular “peasant” and articulate “aristocratic” conservatism were able to develop together and to maintain a common front against the ascendant bourgeoisie. With the exile of loyalists and the waning of the...
Hitler’s Legacy
Stratfor’s George Friedman published an interesting article on September 1, “Pondering Hitler’s Legacy,” to mark the 76th anniversary of the beginning of World War II. The first outcome of Hitler’s war, he says, was that it destroyed Europe’s hegemony over much of the world and its influence over the rest: Within 15 years of the...
Turkey Purge
Democracy isn’t freedom—and in today’s Turkey some people realize that, as amazing as that may seem. Not ordinary folks, but the mid-level officers of the Turkish army, who have been watching with a jaundiced eye the steady Islamization of their country by an elected leader. The recent history of the Turks is rife with intrigues,...
Caring About the Glock
To realize, even delusively, that knowing a little implies knowing a lot because the one is related to the other is to me a great comfort. If, for example, we know one subject well, an understanding of other parallel subjects is implied. Knowing the history of a city says much about the development and decay...
Truth Is on Trial With Kavanaugh
While we await the FBI’s seventh investigation into Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s background, some considerations: All four of Christine Blasey Ford’s witnesses to a party where he allegedly attacked her deny the party ever happened. The first narrative having run its course, the Democratic War Room spun out another dubious claim of sexual assault. The second...
Infinite War
The Gravy Train Rolls On “The United States of Amnesia.” That’s what Gore Vidal once called us. We remember what we find it convenient to remember and forget everything else. That forgetfulness especially applies to the history of others. How could their past, way back when, have any meaning for us today? Well, it just...
Geoffrey Blainey and the Multicultural Nirvana
One’s kindest possible response to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s typical attempt at a sitcom is Mark Twain’s quip about The Vicar of Wakefield: “Nothing could be funnier than its pathos, and nothing could be sadder than its humour.” Hence the astonished pleasure inspired by the Corporation’s dazzling new comedy Frontline. A merciless skewering of current-affairs...
Man, Man, and Again Man
“Qualis aitifex pereo” -Nero I cannot remember a time when I was not what would be called an environmentalist. I spent much of my childhood on an earth unconstricted by concrete streets and unburdened by the weight of buildings. I was never happier than when I was out fishing with my father or picking berries...
War on Louisville—or War on Kentucky?
In one corner, there is Kentucky’s upbeat governor, whose attractive wife, five biological children, and four adopted children compose a family too large to fit into the traditional governor’s mansion. New England-bred Matthew Bevin speaks out for religious freedom, promotes infrastructure on behalf of orphans in Africa and India, and has tried every trick in...
Gimme That Ol’Time Education
” . . . Form and Limit belong to the Good.” —C.S. Lewis Liberals in the United States have lately gathered around the standard of pluralism in the hope of stalling the movement toward private Christian education. Yet Americans, historically indifferent to such objections, have been the last to censure a church—especially a reformed or...
Where the Buck Really Stops
“The question is,” Humpty Dumpty tells Alice in Through the Looking Glass, “which is to be master—that’s all.” As overused as the quotation may be, it nevertheless communicates a perennial truth that most people forget when it comes to understanding not only the answer but also the question itself, a truth that explains much of...
On Scots Nationalism
Michael Hill, in “Scots Nationalism, Yesterday and Today” (November 1995), says that few men of the caliber of our forefathers are alive today and that “we lack the spirit of resistance that moved our forebears to defend their ancient liberties.” If the “we” referred to consists of academics, corporate executives, and conservatives, then I heartily...
Pace, Pace Mio Dio
The outpouring of emotion caused by the recent death of Frank Sinatra may remind us of the power of music, and the particular power of the voice, to get under our skin. Sinatra hypnotized three generations with his smoothness, his rhythm, and his matchless enunciation—a notable achievement in English. But though the bobbysoxers called him...
I.D. Cards for Men
“I don’t want to have to carry a handbag all the time” was the way an aggressive British opponent of the compulsory carrying of identity cards (as proposed by several members of the British government) yelled it to me recently. In fairness I should add that this defender of supposed civil liberties was svelte and...
Did You Hear the One About Syria?
From the top of the mountain that overlooks my Swiss chalet I can almost see Lake Geneva on a clear day, but thankfully, what I cannot see are the armies of so-called diplomats, flunkies, arms dealers, professional wallet lifters, con men, thieves, and men who have obviously been conceived by apes with a dose of...
A Highly Personal History
We’re about 50 miles east of Toledo, cruising along the Ohio Turnpike on our way to Cleveland for the wedding of longtime Chronicles contributor Tom Piatak. Satisfied from a lunch of cabbage rolls, paprikas dumplings, and Hungarian sausage at the original Tony Packo’s, I have Amy’s MacBook open on my lap and Bruce Springsteen’s Born...
Writing Poetry & Striking Poses
”When he wriggles,” Ambrose Bierce once wrote of the politician, “he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.” Bierce might well have said the same about modem writers who cannot distinguish between propaganda and art or between political sermons and poetry. Within the last year college bulletin boards and newspapers...
A Melancholy Centennial
After four years and three months of unprecedented carnage, the Great War—the most catastrophic event in all of history—ended one hundred years ago, on November 11, 1918. That war destroyed an effervescent civilization, unmatched in its fruits and vigor. A decent and on the whole well-ordered world was wrecked for ever, thrown into the abyss...
Nick at Nite, TV, and You
Every night, in prime time, a changeling can enter your living room, an inhuman creature secretly usurping a human’s place. It’s an unnatural presence, an electronic phantom with vast and secret motivations; but its presence is so enjoyable and comforting, as well as so familiar (it hastens to assure you), that you really don’t mind...
Crash Course
Crash Produced by Bull’s Eye Entertainment Directed by Paul Haggis Screenplay by Paul Haggis and Robert Moresco Distributed by Lions Gate Films Last month, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held its 78th annual awards ceremony. Dreamt up by Louis B. Mayer in 1927, the Academy’s advertised mission was to confer legitimacy on...
General Mladic: The Facts
The circumstances surrounding the arrest of the wartime commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, General Ratko Mladic, seem puzzling. On May 26 he was captured in the house of a close relative with the same surname in a village north of Belgrade. Prima facie this means either that Mladic was entirely left to his own devices...
Genius: A Clear and Present Danger
I hold in my hand the names of 205 credit-card-carrying members of the human race who’ve been described by a word that’s fast becoming as irritating as superstar, glitz, or life-style. The word is genius, and it’s time we recognized, with all Churchillian gravity, that from Stettin in the Baltic to the psychobabble retreats in...
The Avenging Deity as a Rational Projection of the Wounded Ego
“So spake the Fiend, and with necessity, The tyrant’s plea, excus’d his devilish deeds.” —Milton, Paradise Lost The locus classicus of all informed discussion on the subject of the political essence of totalitarianism is the following passage from Plato’s Republic: If you are caught committing any of these crimes on a...
Sounding the Trump
In important ways, a revolutionary process has begun. So argues Ilana Mercer in the best extended analysis yet published of the Trump phenomenon: “Trump is getting an atrophied political system to oscillate” in “an oddly marvelous uprising.” For us revolutionaries there is still a long way to go, but we are entitled to a “modest...
Dropping the Masks
The 1997 movie Wilde opens with a shot of Oscar Wilde (played by Stephen Fry) being lowered by bucket into a Colorado silver mine, where he recites his poetry and chats with shirtless, sweaty miners, who are obviously thrilled at a visit from such a renowned visitor. I thought it was at least half Hollywood...
Umpires
Mike Carey was the first “African-American” to head a crew that refereed a Super Bowl—the one in which the sainted Tom Brady got his butt kicked by the lowly Giants. The term African-American offends me, and should offend all patriots, and probably offends Mike Carey, who is an accomplished entrepreneur and inventor, the CEO of...
Stratford 1990 Tom-Toms Along the Avon
What Joseph’s coat of many colors is to a London Fog raincoat Ontario’s Stratford Shakespearean Festival is to all other summer drama festivals. It was founded in 1953 by Tom Patterson, a Stratford journalist. Patterson’s motives were varied but one is obvious. If God had not intended a Canadian Shakespeare festival, why had He named...
Europe’s Ongoing Demise
“The Third Muslim Invasion of Europe is entering its mature stage by sea,” I observed in these pages in June, as thousands of Middle Eastern and African illegal immigrants sailed from Libya to Italy day after day. In the intervening four months, in a dramatic development, a new southeastern land route was stormed by a...
On Jefferson’s Honor
As a long-time reader and supporter of Chronicles, I am a little puzzled by your persistent efforts to debunk the “myth” that Thomas Jefferson took his quadroon chambermaid Sally Hemings as a concubine. While I agree with Samuel Francis, Egon Tausch, and now Matthew Rarey (Cultural Revolutions, September) that the legacy of Thomas Jefferson is...
Parliament’s Election Angst
“O’ the twelfth day of December” sang Sir Toby Belch. Boris Johnson, who much resembles the knight, completes the line: “Let’s have a general election.” He had his way on Tuesday, October 28, when Jeremy Corbyn announced Labour support for a general election on December 12, 2019. That opened the door for a simple majority,...
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...
Bianca and the Commissar
I was reading at the Periodicals Room of Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library the other day. The magazine I happened to pick up was called Soviet Literature, subtitled “A Monthly Journal of the Writers’ Union of the U.S.S.R. published in English, French, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Polish, Czech, and Slovak.” The issue, for March 1985, “marked the...