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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On the Council of Conservative
Citizens Clyde Wilson is simply wrong when he writes that “the Council of Conservative Citizens was not responsible for saving our flag” and that the Council’s “efforts, including rallies by tattooed motorcycle thugs and David Duke followers, have been resoundingly counterproductive—just what the media wanted” (“Letter From South Carolina,” Correspondence, January). In the first place,...
Diversity—or Meritocracy?
A voracious and eclectic reader, President Nixon instructed me to send him every few weeks 10 articles he would not normally see that were on interesting or important issues. In 1971, I sent him an essay from The Atlantic, with reviews by Time and Newsweek, by Dr. Richard Herrnstein. My summary read: “Basically, (Herrnstein) demonstrates...
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 ...
At Home in the Cosmos
Nelson Head, a boy in a story by Flannery O’Connor, is reared in the rural South, with little sign of education and in obvious isolation. Yet the boy is arrogant to the point of impudence, because he was born in the city. To cure him of this, his grandfather takes him into the city, only...
“Bless the Lord, All You Works of the Lord”
In one of the first episodes of the latest Star Trek series, Enterprise, the crew, a few weeks out from Earth on the ship’s maiden voyage, has become homesick. Suddenly, an inhabitable planet appears off of the port side. There are no signs of humanoid life, but the captain sends a small team down to...
Patriotic Gore
This volume is particularly notable for readers of this journal for two reasons: First, some of it has appeared in these pages, and, secondly and more importantly, the truths it conveys have been a part of the core vision of Chronicles as, literally, a magazine of American culture. But I think too that there are...
Preparing for a Turbulent Four Years
During the campaign for the presidency, the major media were relentless in their attacks on Donald Trump. Reading the Washington Post daily I couldn’t believe the news coverage. It was one anti-Trump story after another. The reporters didn’t even bother to disguise what clearly were opinion pieces, passing them off as news. “Racist,” “sexist,” “anti-Semite”—these...
Michelle Obama Isn’t Running for President
Dropping Michelle Obama into the presidential race as the ultimate Hail Mary pass may be a fun gossip item, but the important thing to remember is that there’s nothing in it for her.
The Tribe Above Madrid
The sun was low as the luxurious chartered bus labored up the steep dirt track to the wedding reception in the hills above Madrid. We walked up the last of the slope from the buses to the lawn in front of the hunting lodge, where we looked down on the distant city. Middle-aged men and...
Is the GOP Risking a New Cold War?
Before Republican senators vote down the strategic arms reduction treaty negotiated by the Obama administration, they should think long and hard about the consequences. In substance, New START has none of the historic significance of Richard Nixon’s SALT I or ABM treaty, or Jimmy Carter’s SALT II, or Ronald Reagan’s INF treaty removing all...
Germany’s Quest for a European Wokedom
The European version of wokedom is unfolding under the watchful eye of Germany’s new foreign minister Annalena Baerbock. As discussed in a previous article, Baerbock looks like she will be the most interventionist-minded, Russophobic, and Euro-federalist German foreign minister ever, one who promotes a nebulous concept of European strategic sovereignty. Europe’s leftists are positively elated...
Not a Smashing Success
It’s the little things—not the front-page disclosures—that suggest to us that we’ve been had. Take, for instance, a 1987-88 study by the Oregon Department of Transportation. ODOT studied 551 students between 16 and 19 years of age who had completed driver education programs, 581 students who said they would have taken the course had it...
Russia’s Strawman Svengali Feels the West’s Wrath
The assassination of Aleksandr Dugin's daughter, Darya, is a tragic consequence of the Western-media myth that he is Putin's political mastermind. In reality, the eccentric philosopher wields no influence in Russia.
Will Georgia Halt the Radicals’ Revolution?
“In victory, magnanimity… in defeat, defiance.” That counsel about human conflict comes from Winston Churchill. And President Donald Trump, given all he has endured for five years from those piously pleading now for a “time of healing,” cannot be faulted for his defiant resolve to unearth any and all high crimes or misdemeanors committed in the...
America’s Dwight Schrute
In an hilarious episode of NBC’s The Office, Dunder-Mifflin übertwerp Dwight Schrute unwittingly adapts the words of several speeches by Benito Mussolini and Karl Marx in order to appear impressive at a conference for salesmen. “Blood alone moves the wheels of history!” he cries, and by the time he gets to Il Duce’s “It is...
The New Yorker Under the Glass
The first issue of The New Yorker (February 21, 1925) showed on its cover a dandy in top hat, high collar, and morning suit gazing through his monocle at a butterfly. The drawing is reproduced yearly, and butterflies became a cover motif. Whatever tastes, affectations, or snobbery the artist, Rea Irvin, wanted to suggest, it...
The Wind Listeth
Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. Speaking from experience, rather than poetic frenzy, I say both. The spring winds blowing white at home in Wyoming blow red down here in New Mexico, a howling gale that seems to be returning to the Dustbowl the errant Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas...
Reading Poe
While he is to be complimented on an absorbing essay, Egon Richard Tausch (“The Writer and the Lawyers,” Vital Signs, May) goes too far in claiming that Poe “despised” the New England poets and “proved without [sic] a doubt” that Longfellow, in particular, was “a pathological plagiarist, poem by poem.” More than once in his...
The Air Force’s Strange Love for the New B-21 Bomber
The Military-Industrial Complex Strikes (Out) Again Did you know the U.S. Air Force is working on a new stealth bomber? Don’t blame yourself if you didn’t, since the project is so secret that most members of Congress aren’t privy to the details. (Talk about stealthy!) Known as the B-21 Raider, after General Doolittle’s Raiders of...
Has Trump Found the Formula?
Stripped of its excesses, Donald Trump’s Wednesday speech contains all the ingredients of a campaign that can defeat Hillary Clinton this fall. Indeed, after the speech ended Clinton was suddenly defending the Clinton Foundation against the charge that it is a front for a racket for her family’s enrichment. The specific charges in Trump’s indictment...
Some Dare Call It Fact
My two score years in the West have led me to conclude that, of all the factors impeding the political thinking of its elites, few are more pernicious than the set of prejudices amalgamated with the notion of “conspiracy theory.” Last week in this space the estimable Tom Piatak wrote that, in American politics, “being...
A Paleo Moment
While it looks like the much-touted Libertarian Moment has passed—if it was ever here to begin with—we can say with some degree of certainty that the Paleoconservative Moment has arrived. And we can pinpoint the date of its arrival with impressive specificity: The day of the South Carolina Republican presidential debate, when Donald Trump dropped...
When the Cure Is the Poison
John Agresto is full of ideas about what needs to be done to fix the broken liberal arts tradition. Unfortunately, his proposed plan won’t work—they're too liberal.
Vol. 1 No. 6 June 1999
America went to war against the Serbs in March, ostensibly because of their refusal to sign the so-called peace agreement put forward by the United States and its allies at Rambouillet, France. Many other reasons were subsequently advanced, but this was the original one. President Clinton told us that the Albanians “chose peace” by signing,...
Lost in Space
The world is so messy, and the schedule so cluttered, what with the diverse man who shot all the pitiable unarmed military servicepersons, not to mention the Winter Holiday panty-fizzle-bomber, and there was an inappropriate, unauthorized earthquake in Haiti, and yet even more entropically, there was a problem about Americans watching television, or should I...
The Moral Economy
The decline of the household economy is one of the most significant economic changes in post-World War II America. Unfortunately, it has received relatively little attention. Professional economists find it trivial compared to the workings of large-scale institutions and global economies, while the average American sees only a positive development that has meant greater mobility,...
Space Invaders: Part II
Last spring, my friend Dick, a history professor here, was riding in a Long Island airport limousine when it stopped to pick up another passenger, an elderly lady burdened with luggage and confronted by a garden gate that wouldn’t open. After watching her struggle for a while, Dick’ got out and gave her a hand....
A Literary Lion
Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982) may well be the greatest unread writer America has ever produced, and certainly among the most influential. Much postwar nonacademic poetry owes its origins, its way of perceiving the world as an object of lyrical meditation, and its fluid idiom to standards Rexroth set in such major works as “The Homestead Called...
American Idol
“Eldorado banal de tous les vieux gargons.” —Charles Baudelaire The last sentence in Russell Banks’s magnificent novel is surprising in its inevitability: “Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is.” Here is a sentence to conclude a politically radical novel, a story of socially revolutionary purpose. But there is no hint in...
An Easter Reflection: The Mystery of Goodness
The sun broke through the thin, whispery clouds, and its reflection in a pool of water collected from the previous night’s rain caught my eye. Suddenly the day was bright and the morning as clear and joyful as hope itself. Resurrection Day. It was Easter morning in a year that will surely be marked down...
Iranian Crisis Escalates
Speaking to reporters during a visit to Turkey on January 19, Iran’s foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi warned his country’s Arab neighbors against aligning themselves too closely with the United States in the ongoing crisis over Tehran’s nuclear program. Saudi Arabia was particularly vocal in its condemnation of Iran’s warning last month that it might close...
Secularism and the Mosque Flap
Let's say the mosque (you know what mosque) gets built, as it certainly might, public opinion notwithstanding. What's the next theological concession America's Christian churches get to make in the name of brotherhood, sisterhood, pluralism, world peace and amity, the reconstruction of America's image, etc., etc.? First it's one thing, ...
Bad Whitey 101
In this space in the June issue, readers learned about a flock of students from the American Studies program at Randolph College who flapped off to the Chicken Ranch Brothel in Nevada to study the profundities of ...
Remembering John C. Calhoun
Though John C. Calhoun was a distinguished American statesman and thinker, he is little appreciated in his own country. Calhoun rose to prominence on the eve of the War of 1812 as a “war hawk” in the House of Representatives and was the Hercules who labored untiringly in the war effort. While still a congressman,...
Refuting the Planners
Richard McKenzie, a member of the economics department of Clemson University, here assesses the probable impact of new government regulation of the economy under what politicians like to call “National Industrial Policy” (NIP). He sets forth the major legislative policy proposals promoted under this rubric, and he examines their probable effect upon international trade, capital...
Brazen
“In Europe and America There’s a growing feeling of hysteria.” —Sting, “Russians” (1985) Are the Russians guilty of trying to undermine American democracy? The answer may surprise you. But first the “news.” As I write, Business Insider is neatly summarizing the current state of mainstream reportage and opinion: “Evidence is mounting that Russia took 4...
French Boors and Chinese Whores
Here we go again, sports fans! During a recent tennis match between two professionals in Indian Wells, California, a racial slur uttered by one of the players has the usual suspects up in arms. The first off the bat was, of course, the newspaper that prints only what fits p.c., the dreadful Big Bagel Times. ...
Israel and America
In the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush promised a more humble U.S. foreign policy. Five years later, that pledge has turned out to be nothing but disingenuous rhetoric used to contrast his campaign with the activist foreign policy of the Clinton-Gore administration. Of course, the Bush administration would claim that September 11 changed everything. ...
Iraq as “Intelligence Failure”: We Told You So
“W,” a.k.a. “our Commander in Chief,” is apparently even more blindly stubborn and willfully ignorant than I had thought. As of this writing (December 2006), he is still distancing himself from the Iraq Study Group’s efforts to provide him cover for a withdrawal from the Middle East morass he has drawn us into. Bush Senior,...
Defining Anti-Semitism
There was much discussion last autumn of the charge of “anti-Semitism” made against syndicated columnist and conservative spokesman Patrick Buchanan by New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal. What sparked the attack was a statement made by Buchanan on the television program The McLaughlin Group, in which he said, “There are only two groups that are...
Alex Dragnich, R.I.P.
The death at age 97 of Prof. Alex N. Dragnich, a leading American expert on Serbian and Yugoslav history, marks the departure of one of the last witnesses to an era in which this country’s involvement in Southeastern Europe was neither contrary to her traditional values nor overtly harmful to the region’s inhabitants. His dozen...
Cupidity
The Informant! Produced and distributed by Warner Brothers Directed by Steven Soderbergh Screenplay by Scott Z. Burns based on Kurt Eichenwald’s book “Radix omnium malorum est cupiditas,” Chaucer’s pardoner warned his guilt-ridden audiences: The root of all evil is greed. Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! serves as a latter-day illustration of this admonition. In The...
On Tolitical Correctness’
While I recognize that Paul Gottfried and I clearly have philosophical differences on the nature and goals of education, I feel compelled to address one point in his review of my book in your May issue. Professor Gottfried correctly notes that I hold up the figure of Mark Van Doren of Columbia University as a...
The Princesses and the Pea
The sun is no longer the hot buttered pancake worshipped by the ancient Slavs: It has been reformed into an altogether more Christian, Lenten, and distant figure. The sea is still beautiful, though it too no longer moves with the same pagan frankness, its orgiastic, by turns manic and depressive, barometrically motivated summer feasts and...
What Makes a Nation?
When Fernand Braudel died in 1985, The Times of London called him “the greatest of Europe’s historians.” In spite of Braudel’s great merits, many would question this accolade. Indeed, he may be assigned a place among those contemporary historians who justify, by their oeuvre, the sociological school, and who therefore have “betrayed” the historian’s true...
Beijing Sends Biden a Warning
Because of Donald Trump, Vice President Joe Biden thundered during the campaign, the U.S. “is more isolated in the world than we’ve ever been … America First has made America alone.” Biden promised to repair relations with America’s allies. And he appears to have gone some distance to do so in the congratulatory phone call...
Breast Implants and Barbarians
When Miss California’s assets were revealed to be fakies, I immediately thought of a line from Roland Bainton’s excellent and concise history The Medieval Church: “The real point,” he wrote, “was . . . ” Well, first, the story. Way back on April 19, during the Miss USA pageant, California’s Carrie Prejean was flying high. ...
Memories of Mr. Lytle
Almost nobody thinks that Yankees can possibly understand agrarians. But one of the great pleasures in my life is that I was, at least at one time or another, Mel Bradford’s favorite Yankee. And because Mel introduced me with great good manners to Mr. Andrew Nelson Lytle, I became one of his favorite Yankees, too....
The New Intolerance
“This was a recognition of American terrorists.” That is CNN’s Roland Martin’s summary judgment of the 258,000 men and boys who fell fighting for the Confederacy in a war that cost as many American lives as World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq combined. Martin reflects the hysteria that seized Obamaville on hearing...