The varied and complex relations between religion and power can be understood only by means of extensive comparisons, between nations and across time. Who better to demonstrate this than Prof. David Martin, the doyen of the comparative sociology of religion? Martin’s first achievement is to refute “the general theory of secularisation,” which has enjoyed so...
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It’s Time to Focus on the Enemy Within, Not Without
The reincarnation of Hitler in some national leader and the heroism of Churchill, both stand-by props of neoconservatives, rear their head again in a recent commentary by Daniel Gelernter. Expecting neocons to abandon their continual reference of these props would be comparable to asking the Democratic Party to stop talking about “systemic racism” or Mike Pompeo to...
Books in Brief: April 2024
Short reviews of The Myth of Left and Right by Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis, and Myth America by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer.
Chronicles’ Politics by the Numbers Dept. ™
I’m starting something new here: Chronicles’ by the Numbers Dept. ™ 1. Branches of government An Annenberg Public Policy Center survey found only 36 percent of Americans correctly can identify the “three branches of government” in the United States. And 35 percent could not name a single branch. But I’m sure Chronicles readers know the...
Exceptional America
Tocqueville was the first author to apply the adjective exceptional to America, but the compliment—if he meant it as a compliment—was a backhanded one, referring narrowly to circumstances that “concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical pursuits.” Certainly, he had nothing in mind comparable to the notion of “American exceptionalism” that...
Is Trump’s Agenda Being Eclipsed?
“I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire,” said Winston Churchill to cheers at the Lord Mayor’s luncheon in London in November 1942. True to his word, the great man did not begin the liquidation. When his countrymen threw him out in July 1945,...
Liberals’ Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
American internationalism was shaped by the national origins of Americans themselves, so it’s not surprising it shifts with shifts in those origins.
Geostrategic Challenges in 2020
As we approach the last year of this century’s second decade, the United States is still the most powerful state in the world, safe from direct threats by foreign state actors. Two oceans separate America from actual or potential hot spots on other continents, while its neighbors to the north and south are harmless and...
The Empire: Not So Great in ’08
Iraq will continue to top the list of American foreign-policy concerns in 2008. While tactical successes in Baghdad and the Anbar Province were achieved in 2007 through the U.S. forces’ marriage of convenience with various Sunni Arab tribal leaders and former Saddam loyalists who detest Al Qaeda even more than they dislike the Americans, translating...
Notes From the Front, Part I
In the twilight, the machine gunner holds aloft the dissembled barrel of his weapon, his hands oily and stained, and grins at me. White-toothed, red-haired, he wears his beret like a bonnet. Cocky, not too large, he laughs, then swears a heavy, loaded Serbian curse, unsparing of the Croats. The machine gunner is a Kraina...
China’s Challenge (II)
“Hasn’t US belligerence toward Russia – particularly on the Ukrainian situation – given rise to closer Sino-Russian cooperation to counter the US?,” Harry Colin asked in response to my latest article. My answer is a heavily qualified “yes.” Russia and China have upgraded their strategic partnership over the past year and a half, but they...
NATO’s Dark Age
You have seen them on the evening news, the long weary lines of Christian refugees: Serbs streaming from the Krajina, Bosnia, Kosovo; Russians from Chechnya, Dagestan, and Kazakhstan. These are not the victims of some short and bitter war that strews exiles across the map of Europe for several years until they can make their...
Destroy the Mexican Drug Cartels
It is past time to focus in earnest on extirpating America's massive problem south of the border.
Happiness in Chernobyl
The lives of the babushkas in Chernobyl are evidence that God exists everywhere, and that while destruction can often reign supreme, creation, however small, affirms our propensity for the good.
Can the GOP’s Shotgun Marriage Be Saved?
Wednesday morning, Nov. 9, 2016, Republicans awoke to learn they had won the lottery. Donald Trump had won the presidency by carrying Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. All three states had gone Democratic in the last six presidential elections. The GOP had won both houses of Congress. Party control of governorships and state legislatures rivaled the...
Will ISIS Rise Again? Trump’s Winning Strategy?
In his weekly roundup of world events for Serbia’s Happy TV network, Dr. Trifkovic discusses the future of the Islamic State. He also looks at a viable strategy for President Donald Trump to emerge victorious from the impeachment battle. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ2EPtvxQ_c&app=desktop (Translated from Serbian, slightly abbreviated.) Q: What has changed with the killing of al-Baghdadi?...
The Price of Hillary
No secretary of state will come to that office with stronger pro-Israel credentials or closer ties to the Jewish community than Sen. Hillary Clinton, Douglas Bloomfield assures his readers in The Jerusalem Post. Good for them, and for Bosnia’s Muslims and Kosovo’s Albanians; but for the rest of us Mrs. Clinton’s appointment as the third...
Smokers in the Arsenal
Several years after he was forced into retirement, Otto von Bismarck was asked what could start the next major war. “Europe today is a powder keg,” he replied, “and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal . . . I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you...
The Abominable ‘America Last’ Porkulus
This country is not governed by a “Republican Party” and a “Democratic Party.” It is governed by an establishment “uniparty” that betrays our citizens at every turn. Exhibit A: The joint annual ritual of fiscal vulgarity known as the omnibus spending bill. While Americans are distracted with the holidays, Beltway crapweasels stuff their legislative...
Are Trump and Putin Right?
Monday, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” hosted a spirited discussion with Donald Trump on whether he was right in asserting that Muslims in New Jersey celebrated as the towers came down on 9/11. About Muslim celebrations in Berlin, however, there appears to be no doubt. In my chapter “Eurabia,” in “State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion...
Diplomacy Good and Bad
These two volumes shed considerable light on the fateful events of 1945-46, events determinative of much that followed in American foreign relations. The first argues that, had Franklin Roosevelt lived, even if for only another year, postwar history would have been altogether different. The second, by an experienced “realist” foreign-service officer, views the postwar developments...
In Praise of the Clan
A new Dark Age is already upon us, and perhaps we might learn a few lessons from the last one. It was a time when the arts of civilization were dimly recalled in fairy tales, when Krum the Bulgar khan gilded a Roman emperor’s skull and used it as a drinking goblet, when the careful...
Revisiting the Red Century
Bringing history to the big screen is a contentious matter. To reflect the dominant historical narrative of our time—the “march of progress”—filmmakers must ensure that their script and their casting choices reflect current-year values. Where, then, can viewers turn to find historical cinema that promotes traditional values, not the libertine cosmopolitanism of Hollywood? The closest...
Overlooking Mass Killers—If They’re on the Totalitarian Left
Imgard Furchner, a 96-year-old resident of a special care facility in Germany, is being investigated as a war criminal. She will appear in court in a wheelchair, which is now her customary way of moving about, the Swiss magazine DieWeltwoche reports. She did try to escape from her accusers in a taxi but was apprehended...
Vice President J.D. Vance
If Trump really wants to hit a home run, and if he wants to pick the man most in touch with this American moment, then it has to be J.D. Vance.
Return of the ’70s
“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” — Ecclesiastes 1:9 This is true even in politics. Maybe especially in politics, where the recycling of bad and good decisions reflects the recycling,...
Gaetz’s Rebellion Against McCarthy Is a Rational Response to the Fiscal Emergency
The historic rebellion of Congressman Matt Gaetz and other Republican fiscal hawks against their own House leadership was a necessary move in the face of a financial crisis in the making.
The Crunchy-Con Menace
[Rescuing America from the idiocy of rural life.] I hardly agree with agrarian poet & essayist Wendell Berry on every question. For example, he espouses pacifism—a creed I regard as indirectly contributing to America’s irresponsible imperialism rather than as a potential solution. A somewhat idiosyncratic Protestant, Mr. Berry seems dubious at times of what he...
Caucasian Trap
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s order to attack South Ossetia’s capital, Tskhinvali, was a breathtakingly audacious challenge to Russia, to which she was bound to respond forcefully. That response was promptly exploited by the American mainstream media machine and the foreign-policy community in Washington to paint Russia as a rogue power that is not only dangerous...
The Revenge of History
History has a way of taking its revenge on those who would violate it. It does not forget. Mikhail Heller and Aleksandr Nekrich are some of the few Soviet-born intellectuals who have studied how much current Soviet policies and propaganda abuse Russian history. Their book is an eloquent effort to set straight the historical record...
French Presidential Election Déjà Vu
The first round of France’s presidential election on April 10 ended with President Emmanuel Macron coming in first, with just under 28 percent of the vote. As in 2017, his opponent in the second round on April 24 will be Marine Le Pen (“MLP”), the Rassemblement National (“National Rally”) candidate, who won 23.1 percent of...
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,...
Bumpy BRICS Road
Until a year ago it had seemed that BRICS, the association of five emerging economies—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—was morphing from a loose economic alliance into a geopolitical force willing and able to challenge the global order. Its members’ potential to do so appeared impressive: They account for three billion people (two fifths...
Forty-Niners: Marx, Engels, and Harrod’s
The other day, in London, I had a vision on a moving staircase in Harrod’s. Harrod’s is a department store in the British capital much loved by local duchesses and well-heeled visiting Americans—a sort of consumer-heaven with chic, from its delicatessen to its china and its sumptuous furnishings. It is less noted for its mystical...
On Seeing America’s Wars Whole
Six Questions for A.G. Sulzberger March 20, 2018 Dear Mr. Sulzberger: Congratulations on assuming the reins of this nation’s—and arguably, the world’s—most influential publication. It’s the family business, of course, so your appointment to succeed your father doesn’t exactly qualify as a surprise. Even so, the responsibility for guiding the fortunes of a great institution...
The Decline and Fall of the American Economy
The United States has three large economic problems. The overarching one is that the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency is wearing out from continuous and large trade deficits and from government budget deficits that have to be financed by foreigners because the U.S. savings rate is approximately zero. Judging by the dollar’s loss...
The Yellow Brick Road to Jobs and Stability
“Let the Yankees Freeze in the Dark” read the bumper stickers in Texas in February 1982, the month I flew back from West Germany, mustered out of the U.S. Army at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and returned to my hometown of Wayne, Michigan. Oil had soared from $3.60 per barrel in 1972 to $37.42 in...
Time to Share the Foreign Policy Vision (If Any)
The way to have the foreign policy you want is first to figure out what kind of foreign policy you want. It is a task at which American leaders grow less and less adept, possibly on account of Americans’ general inability to figure out what they want: involvement, isolation or variations of the two? What,...
Books in Brief: October 2023
Short reviews of The Constitution of Non-State Government, by T. L. Hulsey, and The Past Is a Future Country, by J.O.A. Rayner-Hilles.
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...
A Formidable Challenge
The Soviet Empire these days offers a formidable challenge even for the most experienced Kremlin watchers. While economic collapse, the communications revolution, the threat of another nuclear disaster like Chernobyl, the decline in life expectancy, and the environmental crisis are all tinder for fires of change, the power of nationalism still remains central. Shortly after...
‘Greece-EU clash over anti-Russia statement: others may follow Athens’ suit’
Srdja Trifkovic on RT published January 28, 2015. A strongly worded anti-Russian statement, which was issued on January 27 by European Union heads of governments, did not have the consent of Greece’s new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, according to Greek officials. They insist that the European Council, the body which issued the statement, did not follow...
Buchenwald’s Second Life
Even in an age of glasnost, hardly anyone troubles to recall that when the Soviet Union occupied East Germany in 1945 it kept two Nazi concentration camps in full use for nearly five years, till February 1950, and at their old task of death. Soviet Buchenwald comes as a surprise, and that surprise is perhaps...
Letter From a Hot Town
Cimabue the painter, passing on the road to Bologna, saw, as he walked through the village of Vespignano, a boy called Giotto drawing a sheep on a flat piece of rock. This was the moment with which, more than a century later, Lorenzo Ghiberti, the sculptor and the first art historian of the Renaissance, began...
The Suicide of the West
The issue of Kosovo, which has been simmering since the United States waged a war of unprovoked and unjustifiable aggression against the former Yugoslavia, is boiling over. While Serbian “public opinion” is said to be more interested in economic questions, the resentment against the international community is real. As one senior advisor to Prime Minister...
The Path to Victory for Trump
Trump’s best chance in 2024 is to ignore the noise and prove, contrary to the smear campaigns, that he is the superior candidate in terms of competence, stability, and sanity.
Republic of War
For a pacific, commercial republic protected by two giant oceans and two peaceful neighbors with small militaries, America sure has fought a lot of wars. Michael Beschloss’s Presidents of War details eight American leaders beginning in 1807 who took us to war and just one, Jefferson, who didn’t. The text wraps up after the Vietnam...
What the Editors Are Reading
Not a find, but an old friend, is Malcolm Muggeridge. I am reading a collection of his essays called Time and Eternity, and his golden spiritual autobiography, Confessions of a Twentieth-Century Pilgrim, written after he and his wife, past their four-score years, had been received into the Catholic Church. I cannot read the latter without...
All Talk, No Action
By Monday, interestingly enough, the Russian invasion of Syria was receding as a topic of public concern. Apparently there no longer seemed anything explosive in the tidings of Vladimir Putin’s slam-bang entry into that remote theater of conflict. This was notwithstanding those Russian airstrikes against the anti-Assad rebels whom the United States, supposedly, has been...
Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
Trump wasn't on stage in Milwaukee, but Trumpism was, thanks to Vivek Ramaswamy. Will Ramaswamy take votes from establishment candidates, or from Trump himself?