Our “Letters From Prison“ (Correspondence, May 1992) elicited a number of requests for an update. The letter ended with “Frank,” a 26-year-old black man imprisoned in Illinois, in solitary confinement at a medium-security prison. He had been placed in isolation for his own protection, because the gang he had once belonged to, the Black Gangster...
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Reining in the Rogue Royal of Arabia
If the crown prince of Saudi Arabia has in mind a war with Iran, President Trump should disabuse his royal highness of any notion that America would be doing his fighting for him. Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, the 32-year-old son of the aging and ailing King Salman, is making too many enemies for his...
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On the Other War
While Ted Galen Carpenter makes some valid points about the situation today in Afghanistan (“America’s Other War,” News, August), his attempt to blame everything on an alleged shift of focus from Afghanistan to Iraq is nonsense. This is an old, tired charge made mainly by antiwar Democrats in the last election but abandoned when it...
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HOW THE WEST WAS LOST—February 2008
HARD RIGHT The Suicide of the West by Thomas Fleming VIEWS The Everlasting Frontier by Chilton Williamson, Jr. Wilderness democracy. The Curious Career of Billy the Kid by Gregory McNamee The man behind the myth. Westerns by Roger D. McGrath America’s Homeric era on the silver screen. The Death of the Western by Clay Reynolds Back-trailing for affirmation. REVIEWS He ...
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Taking Leave of Our Census
Illegal aliens will be counted in the 1990 census—that’s right, illegal aliens. As a result, one or more states with a disproportionately large number of illegal residents will gain seats in the House of Representatives at the expense of states with few illegal immigrants. According to calculations by the Congressional Research Service, the inclusion of...
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Social Security’s Coming Crash
The welfare state was born in Otto von Bismarck’s Germany, a ploy of the famed Iron Chancellor designed to counter the electoral appeal of the rival Social Democrats. Thus, social security was created in 1889 and eventually spread, under several guises, to many nations. Here, the Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program (Social Security)...
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Are the Good Times Over for Biden?
Are the Democrats headed for their Little Bighorn, with President Joe Biden as Col. Custer? The wish, you suggest, is father to the thought. Yet, consider. On taking office, Biden held a winning hand. Three vaccines, with excellent efficacy rates, had been created and were being administered at a rate of a million shots a...
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Free Greeks, Servile Americans
Conservatives are fond of saying that the United States is a republic, not a democracy, and in their appeals to the national conscience, they invoke the sacred language of republican tradition, citing scriptures from Aristotle and Cicero, from Edmund Burke and George Washington: the ride of law, a virtuous citizenry, and ordered liberty. Like most...
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Trump is Right About Ukraine
Western ideologues are animated by a fantasy about Ukraine’s prospects in the war. Trump is dealing in reality.
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Market-Driven Solutions to Public Education
“If we elect new school board members or run for the board A ourselves, we can expect improved schools.” This is our national misunderstanding. Nothing in the traditional public school system inherently promotes excellence. Even the free election of school board members—a token nod to democracy—fails to overcome this system’s fatal flaws. As a good...
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On Saving Ireland
In his “Letter From Cork” (“The Polonization of Ireland,” Correspondence, March), Christie Davies hopefully predicts that recent Polish immigrants will reevangelize postmodern Ireland. From his lips to God’s ears, although I doubt that the Almighty will be listening. I, in turn, predict (but do not hope) that what is now a sizable Polish community will...
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Global Implications of U.S. Failure in Ukraine
After Ukraine, Beltway grandees will have to choose between accepting that America is but one great power among other great powers in a multipolar world, or continuing to pursue their insane obsession with America being the world’s “benevolent global hegemon.”
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They’re Coming, They’re Coming
Thinking about unidentified flying objects can be a useful exercise, whatever we believe about extraterrestrial life and its presence among us. If nothing else, it forces us to deal seriously with those perennial questions that are as useful to scientists and philosophers as they are to lawyers and politicians on congressional investigating committees: What do...
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A Republic of Speculators
The long-suffering and largely ignored paleoconservatives might be forgiven for taking some satisfaction in the recent bursting of so many bubbles of avarice and pride, the sudden exposure of so many highly leveraged speculations in stupidity. Let us recount some of the failed millennial assertions by the ruling party: that history has come to an...
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The Trojan Chicken
Albany, Kentucky, has a stay of execution for at least a little longer. But more than a few townspeople are preparing to mourn her passing—and leave before the funeral. Albany is a town of 2,000 in the rolling limestone hills of southern Kentucky, just north of the Tennessee line. Founded in the early 1820’s, it...
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Polish-German Reconciliation in an Historic Town
On August 29, 2004, just before my departure from Poland, I attended an important ceremony at the small, historic town of Nieszawa, which lies near the Vistula River, about 200 kilometers northwest of Warsaw, in the Kujawy-Pomorze (Kuyavia-Pomerania) region or Voivodeship (Wojewodztwo). It was a sunny and rather hot day. The town, which currently has...
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Burning Bright in the Darkness
I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. To discover, at his memorial service, that Dr. John Addison Howard’s favorite verse of Scripture was Philippians 4:11 came as no surprise to anyone who knew him well. Those who had simply met him once or twice, or never...
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Someone Else’s Backyard
Wars, according to the one-dimensional view of world history favored by Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright, are caused by bad or mad men. Once we, the almighty, self-appointed arbiters of worldwide justice, determine who the bad guys are, we can go in, blow them away, and make the world safe for democracy. This approach is...
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Rice Paddies and Tea Houses
The schedule is rather monotonous for a lecturer invited to the big cities where universities are usually located. First comes the airport, then the car with the polite, smiling young man as a guide, then hotel room and restaurant, podium, introduction, photo graphs, the lecture itself-then the whole thing in reverse order the next day....
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‘Hood Justice’ in Ohio
Three black men involved in the brutal death of a white teen in Ohio walked away with slaps on the wrist, calling into question whether equal justice under the law still exists for whites in America.
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An Unruly Character
In his own time “Rare Ben Jonson”—sometime bricklayer, soldier, actor, dramatist, poet, critic, self-publicist, and personality—became a celebrity. When, at the age of 46, and weighing about 280 pounds, he set off to walk from London to Edinburgh, the houses of the wealthy and fashionable were opened to him, and—as this biography tells us—even ordinary...
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Trespass Against Us
Larry Woiwode, the North Dakota novelist (I do not mean that in a diminishing way), has described his fiction as “a continuing spiritual exercise that any reader may join in on.” His fifth novel, Indian Affairs, is a fitfully satisfying workout. Indian Affairs reintroduces us to Chris Van Eananam, a graduate student, and his wife Ellen;...
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Sacrificing Northam Will Not Be Enough
“Once that picture with the blackface and the Klansman came out, there is no way you can continue to be the governor of the commonwealth of Virginia.” So decreed Terry McAuliffe, insisting on the death penalty with no reprieve for his friend and successor Gov. Ralph Northam. Et tu, Brute? Yet Northam had all but...
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The Great Portcullis
In the third week of August someone pushes the button and brings summer to an end in the Mountain West, though beautiful weather and Indian summer lie ahead. Typically the change comes with the discharge of a powerful thunder cell, seemingly no different from any other electrical storm but collapsing into a gray leaden overcast...
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The Necessity for Ancestor-Worship
“It is a noble faculty of our nature which enables us to connect our thoughts, sympathies and happiness with what is distant in place and time; and looking before and after, to hold communion at once with our ancestors and our posterity. There is a moral and philosophical respect for our ancestors, which elevates the...
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Aaron Wolf, Memory Eternal
Remembering the significant contributions of former Chronicles executive editor Aaron Wolf on the fifth anniversary of his passing.
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False Redeemers
The Last Castle Produced and distributed by DreamWorks Directed by Rod Lurie Screenplay by David Scarpa Training Day Produced by Outlaw Productions Directed by Antoine Fuqua Screenplay by David Ayer Released by Warner Bros. American film would be poorer without Robert Redford. As an actor and as a director, he has given us some vastly...
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Changing of the Guard
The birth of modern Croatia was closely tied to the paternalistic image of one man: Franjo Tudjman. A self-described nationalist and anticommunist, Tudjman ruled over Croatia for ten years until his death in December 1999. In January 2000, presidential and parliamentary elections brought to power a motley crew of reformed communists, liberals, and globalists. The...
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Publicly Funded Art
Publicly Funded Art is causing a stir now in Los Angeles, where a mural citing (in part) the Pledge of Allegiance has drawn fire from a neighborhood group. The Little Tokyo Community Development Advisory Committee complained that placing a mural featuring the pledge above LA’s Little Tokyo was, at the very least, insensitive to the...
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Honor to Whom Honor
“Render to all what is due them,” writes Saint Paul, “Tax to whom tax is due, custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor” (Romans 13:7, NASB). When a zealous Christian offered to help Mark Twain understand the difficult things in the Bible, Twain said something like this: “It is not...
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Ritual, Tragedy, and Restoration
The Deer Hunter received the Academy Award for best picture at the Oscars ceremony in 1979. The film was much criticized by some for its Russian roulette sequences, especially the alleged “racism” on display in the film’s depiction of the Viet Cong. But The Deer Hunter is truly a mythic, poetic work of art. The...
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What Should We Fight For?
“We will never accept Russia’s occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea,” declaimed Rex Tillerson last week in Vienna. “Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns full control of the peninsula to Ukraine.” Tillerson’s principled rejection of the seizure of land by military force—”never accept”—came just one day after President Trump recognized Jerusalem as...
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Parenting and the State
In my day, and my day was not so very long ago, boys respected and even feared the fathers of the girls whom they dated. Growing up, I went out with a lot of Italian girls. I knew that their fathers ruled their households, their daughters, and me when I was with their daughters. If...
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Donald Trump Is Reagan’s Heir
The future of all Reagan secured for the country now hinges on what happens in this election.
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The Publishing Industry
Publishers Weekly (Publishers Weakly in my book), though it is one of the most depressing magazines in America, obviously considers itself a sprightly, thoughtful, and somewhat “irreverent” publication, gifted with the insight to see that the emperor has no clothes on and blessed with the courage to stand forward and say so. In the bold...
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The Unsinkable Bibi Netanyahu
The recent Israeli Knesset elections surprised the world by returning Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party to power. The resounding win put Netanyahu on the path to becoming the longest serving PM in Israeli history and caused some consternation and disappointment both in the White House and Brussels. There are two main reasons for Bibi’s...
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Mormons and Modernism
“So pale grows Reason at Religion’s sight, So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.” —John Dryden Leonard Arrington: Brigham Young: American Moses; Alfred A. Knopf; New York. Richard L. Bushman: Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism; University of Illinois Press; Urbana, IL. Jan Shipps: Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition; University of Illinois Press; Urbana, IL. Ernest...
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Memo to Trump: ‘Action This Day!’
“In victory, magnanimity!” said Winston Churchill. Donald Trump should be magnanimous and gracious toward those whom he defeated this week, but his first duty is to keep faith with those who put their faith in him. The protests, riots and violence that have attended his triumph in city after city should only serve to steel...
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Come and Gone
Ross Perot had come and gone before a monthly magazine had time to take him seriously-another victory for long deadlines and broad views. Many of our friends and colleagues nearly sprained their ankles hopping onto the Perot bandwagon, but I could never work up any enthusiasm for someone whose stock answer to the big questions...
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A Clearing in the Wilderness
“After all, money, as they say, is miraculous.” —Thomas Carlyle The economics profession, like many other branches of the social sciences, long ago had to decide whether to adopt positivist methods, as if its objects of study were organisms of constant and predictable motion, or to account for the infinite variety in human affairs by...
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Debate-o-mania
The wild rhetoric of Harris and Trump in their epic debate-o-mania should be compared with a general ledger of political actions. Election '24 needs an accountant!
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The Postmodern Sneer
Funny Games Produced by Celluloid Dreams Directed and written by Michael Haneke Distributed by Warner Independent Pictures After seeing Austrian director Michael Haneke’s film Funny Games, I experienced an unaccustomed urge. I wanted to buy a .45. I’m sure this was not the reaction Haneke was hoping for, but he can hardly complain. After all,...
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Downsizing Detroit Motown’s Lament
Detroiters have a deeply ironic way of looking at their beloved city. The irony is evident in a once-popular T-shirt that showed a muscular tough gripping a ferocious dog around the neck while holding a loaded gun to the animal’s head. “Say Nice Things About Detroit,” the T-shirt read. The T-shirt is a commentary on...
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August Derleth and Arkham House
August Derleth was one of the principal forces that established science fiction as a legitimate literary genre. He was a product of the “pulp” era, who founded a unique publishing company in 1939 called Arkham House. He had no long-range agenda for his progeny other than to rescue the writings of his late friend and...
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Is the American Century Over For Good?
“Politics stops at the water’s edge” was a tradition that, not so long ago, was observed by both parties, particularly when a president was abroad, speaking for the nation. The tradition was enunciated by Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan in 1947, as many of the Republicans in the 80th Congress moved to back Truman’s leadership...
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The Myth of Equality
In 21st century America, institutional racism and sexism remain great twin evils to be eradicated on our long journey to the wonderful world where, at last, all are equal. What are we to make, then, of a profession that rewards workers with fame and fortune, yet discriminates ruthlessly against women; an institution where Hispanics and...
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Here Comes the Parade
This past summer, a headline appeared in the Louisville Courier-Journal: “Kentucky terrorist arrests shouldn’t jeopardize refugee program, advocates say.” The first paragraph ran: “As U.S. authorities recheck intelligence gathered on refugees, resettlement agencies say the arrest of two suspected Iraqi terrorists in Kentucky should not jeopardize programs that have helped tens of thousands of persecuted...
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No More Girls in Bikinis
Just after the Berlin wall came down, I flew to Berlin with my German-Austrian wife and traveled around the city and its eastern parts. On visiting the Olympic stadium I told the taxi driver that my ...
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Approval and Gay Marriage
There’s no doubt the President’s endorsement of gay “marriage” was stage-managed: The timing was the key. He did it hours after the news that North Carolinians had voted to put a ban on the practice in their state constitution. Pressure from his supporters—and some of his biggest donors, I have no doubt—contributed to the decision. ...
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What We Are Reading: June-July 2023
Short reviews of Noble Savages, by Napoleon Chagnon, and The Natural Family Where It Belongs, by Allan C. Carlson.