Christopher Sandford of this parish is not only an adorner of these pages but has also garnered considerable status as a cultural historian. His inquiring eyes range widely, playing over everything from cricket to Kurt Cobain, the Great War to The Great Escape, Conan Doyle to Eric Clapton, and countless other late-19th- and 20th-century Anglospheric...
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The Case for Ben Carson and the Return of American Goodness
As the vice-presidential nominee, Dr. Ben Carson would benefit Donald Trump enormously—both personally and politically.
A Mortal Blivet
The Edge of Darkness Produced by GK Films, Icon Productions, and BBC Films Directed by Martin Campbell Screenplay by William Monahan and Andrew Bovell from the original television script by Troy Kennedy Martin Distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures In The Edge of Darkness, director Martin Campbell has tried to compress the six hour-long episodes...
Gibson and His Enemies
For years, conservatives have wondered if there was any movie Hollywood would balk at showing. Blasphemy, incessant profanity, graphic sex, obscene violence—none of these has proved an obstacle to Hollywood, and numerous films containing some or all of these elements have enjoyed widespread critical acclaim. We have finally found out what sort of movie will...
The Age of Reason and the Age of Fear
There are uncanny similarities between the 18th and the 21st centuries. The whole concept of liberty, equality and fraternity in the last two decades of the 18th century was as much based on a lie as it is in the first two decades of the 21st.
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...
Anti-Catholicism and the Times
“Anti-Catholicism,” said writer Peter Viereck, “is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual.” It is “the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people,” said Arthur Schlesinger Sr. If there was any doubt that hatred of and hostility toward the Catholic Church persists, it was removed by the mob that has arisen howling “Resign!” at Pope...
Still Sorry After All These Years
With all the mud spattered on the Confederate Battle Flag of late, you knew it wouldn’t be long before Ol’ Virginny scrubbed up for Jamestown’s 400th anniversary with a grandiloquent apology for slavery. And Georgia, New York, and other former colonies of the original 13 will soon join the state in the confessional tub and...
Arabia First
At this point, it’s no great surprise when Donald Trump walks away from past statements in service to some impulse of the moment. Nowhere, however, has such a shift been more extreme or its potential consequences more dangerous than in his sudden love affair with the Saudi royal family. It could in the end destabilize...
In Memoriam: Mary Kohler
Chairman Ray Welder remembers fellow board member and longtime Chronicles supporter Mary Kohler.
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...
In Memoriam: Gen. Alexander Lebed, 1950-2002
When I first met General Alexander Lebed, shortly after he was forced to retire from his military career in 1995, he was a crusty soldier with great political ambitions, itching for action but visibly uncomfortable in mufti. His tie knot was too wide and his parade-ground bass sounded coarse and unmodulated. His face, with more...
Underground Man
Was it fair of Solzhenitsyn to call Peter the Great “a mediocre man, if not a barbarian”? I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that history didn’t begin with the Cold War, and that long before Solzhenitsyn, renowned novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky expressed reservations of his own about the historical impact of Russia’s most...
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...
A Little List, 1
As Some day it may happen that a victim must be found I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list Of society offenders who might well be under ground And never would be missed, who never would be missed. A recent comment of Robert Peters (a pleasure, as always,...
Shall We Dance?
La La Land Produced by Summit Entertainment Written and directed by Damien Chazelle Distributed by Liongate The Founder Produced and distributed by The Weinstein Company Directed by John Lee Hancock Screenplay by Robert D. Siegel In last month’s issue, no less a cinematic authority than Taki pronounced La La Land delightful (“Beyond the Idiot Box,”...
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...
Why Garry Wills?
Garry Wills identifies himself as a Christian. He says he accepts the creeds, along with prayer, divine providence, the Gospels, the Eucharist, and the Mystical Body of Christ as the body of all believers. He thinks it a bad thing that “article by article, parts of the Creed are fading from some churches.” He also...
A Vanishing Nation
Uit die blou van onse hemel uit die diepte van ons see, Oor ons ewige gebergtes, waar die kranse antwoord gee. When in 1918 Cornelis Jacobus Langenhoven wrote “Die Stem” (“The Voice”), the poem that became South Africa’s pre-1995 national anthem, by “our everlasting mountains” he meant the Drakensberg range that separates Transvaal from Natal. ...
Hoover Watch
I haven’t seen J. Edgar, the Hollywood movie about J. Edgar Hoover, and I don’t plan to, even though I have loved all of Clint Eastwood’s films, especially those he’s directed. Yet J. Edgar does not do it for me, as they say. It’s based on a lie, and a monstrous one at that: Hoover...
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 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...
The Attraction Offshore
With the government seizing at least half our incomes each year and the “multi-diversity” crowd sowing seeds of anger and disunity that could well lead to civil war down the road, I hear more and more people talking of places to relocate themselves and their capital: New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, and Costa Rica. And Chile....
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...
Star Trek or Star Wars?
When I was growing up, the nuclear-war nightmare and other end-of-the-world scenarios weighed heavily on filmmakers’ minds. From radioactive giant lizards trashing Tokyo to the ironic Planet of the Apes, from On the Beach to Dr. Strangelove, the movies made it clear that our social order was on the edge of extinction. The Terminator series...
Winning Is Everything, Isn’t It?
Vincere Written and directed by Marco Bellocchio Produced by Offside and Celluloid Dreams Distributed in America by IFC Films Feminists began proclaiming that the personal is the political during those dreamy 70’s of the last century. This, as I’ve noted elsewhere, is a proposition that every sane person must resist. Those who accept it...
Where the Buck Really Stops
From the October 1995 issue of Chronicles. “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...
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...
Return to Short Creek
Recently, the state of Texas undertook a police action that amply demonstrates the radical transformation of public attitudes to family, children, and the role of the state over the past half-century. In April 2008, Texas authorities staged mass raids on a polygamist compound near San Angelo, in which they took custody of several hundred children. ...
Ten Most Wanted List
The FBI’s most recent Ten Most Wanted List was published on May 6. In this, the fifth year of our Global War on Terror, it may come as a surprise to some that the latest addition to the list isn’t a terrorist or even a murderer, but Warren Jeffs, the leader of a bizarre sect,...
Collitchgirl
Working for the United Press in the 40’s To enter the job market in the middle of World War II was a heady experience. In the year or two following Pearl Harbor nearly ten million young men had donned uniforms, and employers were crying for help. The only large reservoir left to be tapped was...
Dress Rehearsal for Impeachment
Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court was approved on an 11-10 party-line vote Friday in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yet his confirmation is not assured. Sen. Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, has demanded and gotten as the price of his vote on the floor, a weeklong delay. And the GOP Senate has agreed...
Dial M for Murdoch
Publishers and writers are inveterate enemies. It is a combat decreed by nature, like the eternal war between dogs and cats, oil and vinegar, teenage girls and their mothers. Any real writer, no matter how mercenary or corrupt, cares something for the craft that publishers regard as at best a pretext for marketing (much as...
Avoiding the Iranian Debacle
It takes neither unique intellectual brilliance nor supernaturally honed intuitive skills to predict the consequences of hazardous foreign-policy moves. On numerous occasions over the past decade and a half, I have advised against U.S. military interventions not because of my visceral isolationist zeal, but because I deemed the consequences of those actions to be contrary...
A Flounder and the Shark
Vladimir Bukovsky remarked that without a guide through the “labyrinths of the Soviet soul,” studies of socialism “are simply useless—or worse, they make the subject even more obscure. “ Were it not for the fact that Adam Ulam has been interpreting the Soviet Union since long before Bukovsky made his comment, one could suspect that...
Darwin for Sissies, or What Ever Happened to Survival of the Fittest?
Evolutionists used to be hard-boiled theorists who maintained that nature, including man, was based only on the impersonal plus time plus chance. They coolly asserted that the fittest survive, that some species die off and others thrive because of natural selection. All enduring creatures, great and small, have mutated and adapted to their environments. The...
Becoming Like Little Children
C.S. Lewis’s classic children’s story The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is one of the ten bestselling books of all time, standing shoulder to shoulder with The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in the elite list of world bestsellers. What is it about the genre of fantasy fiction that makes it so...
Bush’s Middle East Policy: Mendacity, Folly, or Both?
On June 24, President George W. Bush delivered his long-awaited speech on the Middle East. Most of his 15-minute statement was devoted to harsh criticism of the Palestinians, including the assertion that “peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership . . . not compromised by terrorism.” In addition to ditching Yasser Arafat and ending...
Our Immigration Debate Needs to Get With the Times
The debate over illegal immigration has become more about entertaining people than solving problems, as both the right and the left tee up tired, old arguments that miss the point.
On Environmentalism
We who look to Chronicles for some cogent commentary on our environmental dilemmas aren’t getting enough from Chilton Williamson, Jr. Not that those campfire meditations, gut-wrenching elk hunts, and encounters with the West’s fast-vanishing anarchists aren’t worthy stuff; sometimes we can hear an echo of Ed Abbey. But we need some Real Truth about resources...
From America With Love
U.S. Commandos Are a “Persistent Presence” on Russia’s Doorstep “They are very concerned about their adversary next door,” said General Raymond Thomas, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), at a national security conference in Aspen, Colorado, in July. “They make no bones about it.” The “they” in question were various Eastern European and...
California’s September Surprise
Politiqueros Pelosi and Newsom ramp up bribes for America’s imported electorate.
The Clintons Are Back
Hillary Clinton’s appointment as the third woman U.S. secretary of state is likely to deepen the crisis of the once-venerable institution at Washington’s Foggy Bottom, to which her two female predecessors have contributed in different ways. Madeleine Albright will be remembered for her hubris, coupled with studied callousness. (“If we have to use force, it...
Prodigal Son
“Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.” —Oscar Wilde Louis Simpson stands as an easy example of the poet divided, whose best talents and strongest predilections are at odds with one another. He takes Walt Whitman as spiritual father and his relationship with...
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 ...
Star Turns
Bugsy Produced by Mark Johnson Written by James Toback Directed by Barry Levinson Released by Tri-Star Pictures Meeting Venus Produced by David Puttnam Written by István Szabó and Michael Hirst Directed by István Szabó Released by Warner Brothers Gangster movies show us an are, the parabolic rise and fall of a career where ambition comes...
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...
Thirty Years Ago . . .
“History is philosophy from examples.” —Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ars Rhetorica The “disruptive decade” referred to in the title of this collection of essays is the 1960’s, when Eugene Davidson served as editor of Modern Age. Although the 60’s ended only 30 years ago, Mr. Davidson’s writing (the prefatory editorials to each...
In Praise of Geopolitics
The noun geopolitics and the adjective geopolitical are increasingly present in media discourse on world affairs. In principle, this is a good thing. Relating political power to the immutable imperatives of space and resources is essential to an analysis of world affairs that is free from the ideological baggage of American exceptionalism, whether Wilsonian or...
Goodbye, Mr. Bond
Casino Royale Produced by Barbara Broccoli, Andrew Noakes, and Anthony Waye Directed by Martin Campbell Screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis Based on the novel by Ian Fleming Released by Columbia Pictures It is with great trepidation and some sadness that I must announce that James Bond is dead. Granted, there is...