It is a beautiful April evening in Hico, Texas. My wife and I are having dinner with my in-laws, and I am eyeballing a statue of Billy the Kid across the street from Lilly’s Restaurant. Hico, you see, was the home of “Brushy Bill” Roberts, widely believed around these parts to have been the notorious...
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Why Wendy Can’t Win
“(Wendy) Davis is running (for governor) against Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is heavily favored to win in a state that remains strongly Republican.” Katie Glueck, in “Wendy Davis and the ever-longer odds,” Politico, Oct. 19. Yes, yes, lady, fine; you got it. But this is barely to scratch the surface of the thing....
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Unnatural Causes
“For me,” wrote P.D. James in her “fragment of autobiography,” Time To Be in Earnest, “one of the fascinations of detective fiction is the exploration of character under the revealing trauma of murder inquiry.” Murder “is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.” As a writer...
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Edward Abbey: R.I.P.
“By retaining one’s love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable.” —George Orwell With the death of Edward Abbey, aged 62, in March of last year, the Western portion of what once was really the United States lost her greatest defender of...
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The Coming Middle-American Resistance
President Trump has taken significant criticism for his recent comments on low-income government housing from a speech in Texas late last month: You know the suburbs, people fight all of their lives to get into the suburbs and have a beautiful home… There will be no more low-income housing forced into the suburbs.… It’s been going...
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A Rumor of War
George W. Bush’s man at the CIA, Porter Goss, is now purging the agency, an act prompted by the persistence of certain parties in the CIA in presenting the White House with “reality-based analysis.” Since such analysis presented a road block to war plans, Goss was ordered to rid the agency of “disloyal” employees, meaning...
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The American “Collective” (Day)Dream
“Some races increase, others are reduced, and in a short while the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners relay the torch of life.” —Lucretius Reading student applications for scholarships, as I have done on and off now for a dozen years on the undergraduate scholarships committee of the University of California, Davis,...
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Poets and the Art of Interior Design
“I too dislike it” —Marianne Moore The sculptress Malvina Hoffman found the poetry of her friend Marianne Moore hard to understand and would sometimes ask her to read a poem aloud. “Then I would say, ‘I really don’t know what that’s all about, because of my own ignorance, I’m sure, but just possibly you might...
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“Gunfire erupted”: Merry Christmas from the Religion of Peace
As in a number of cases involving minority criminals, mass media initially appeared reluctant to identify the perpetrators in the San Bernadino shootings that left fourteen people dead, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik. The Los Angeles Times seemed to play down the agency of the shooters, with a by-now familiar description of gunfire...
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Fists of Furry
A group of parents and kids have been hounding school officials about the bizarre presence of "furries" in Colorado since February 2022. This is not a joke. It's real, it's disruptive, and it's sick.
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The Season of Rain and Death
A blood-red sun is setting on the horizon, distant but familiar, dull but glowing, like the bloodshot eye of a wounded Titan. Layers of pasty-blue, thin, translucent clouds drape the blood-eye image, as if they themselves were the misty, cloudlike shimmerings of heat rising from the sunbaked pavement, cooled by a late-summer rain. I stand...
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Obama Goes to Moscow
President Obama’s July trip to Moscow was intended to “reset” U.S.-Russian relations but also suggested that there is a continuing tug-of-war in the administration between realists and “democracy builders” regarding Russia policy. The struggle was publicly kicked off by the March report of a commission headed by former Sen. Gary Hart and Sen. Chuck Hagel...
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Unfortunate Majorities
Twenty-two years ago Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. In an effort to dramatize his thesis, he included a number of scenarios about the future. These tended to obscure the thrust of his work, for many viewed them as predictions. When they failed to come to pass, it was easy—especially for conservatives—to conclude that Ehrlich’s...
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Antiquities of the Republic
“The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a republican form of government.” —Constitution of the United States, Article IV Until the triumph of the civil-rights movement at the end of the 1960’s, probably the most disruptive and recurrent conflict in American politics came from the struggle between...
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The Twilight of the USA and the Way Forward
It’s mid-September, and the sun already seems to be setting lower in a sky of lengthening shadows. The temperatures have noticeably dropped off. Autumn, such as it is in this part of the country, appears to already have begun settling in, like an early and unexpected guest. I was walking along a sidewalk in my...
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The Disappearing Border—November 2006
PERSPECTIVE El Gringo y El Mexicanoby Thomas FlemingAn amalgamation. VIEWS The Economic Realities of U.S. Immigrationby David A. HartmanCounting the cost. Pure Personalityby Chilton Williamson, Jr.The meaning of Francisco “Pancho” Villa. Immigration, the Border, and the Fate of the Landby Gregory McNameeNotes on a crisis. How Santa Ana Became SanTanaby Steven GreenhutAn irrelevant border. Islam,...
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Becoming Extinct
Iraq’s Christians may be on their way to extinction, thanks to the Bush administration’s decision to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime. Today, Iraq’s mostly Catholic and Orthodox Christians are fleeing the country, with their destination of choice being, ironically, Syria, another target for “regime change” on the neoconservative hit list. More than two years ago, Chronicles...
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Selling the Farm: Country Music in the 80’s
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. For 30 years country music has alternately ignored and embraced that small truth, always bouncing between the apparent threat of extinction and last-minute rescue. And now, after a decade of “evolution” and “transition,” the country music industry again is surprised that the real thing was good enough all...
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Singing Our Song
In the summer of 2014, a “surge” was on at the southern border, particularly in my home state of Texas, stimulated by the Obama administration’s signals that it was planning a mass amnesty and had no intention of enforcing immigration laws. It became painfully obvious that the border crisis—the near total collapse of any controls...
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Chief Target
Hispanic voters remain the chief target of GOP strategists, at least in Texas. In the wake of Republican Orlando Sanchez’s December 1 runoff loss to Houston’s incumbent black mayor, Lee Brown—Sanchez garnered 48 percent of the vote to Brown’s 52 percent—news media and Republican apparatchiki were busy gushing about the growing electoral weight of “Hispanic”...
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Imagining the West
“The curious have observed that the progress of humane literature (like the sun) is from the East to the West. . .” —Nathaniel Ames As both a reality and an interpretive problem, the American West has retained its long-established hold on the attention of our scholars. And the same is true of Western American literature:...
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The Left’s True Target
Arguments, as Malcolm Muggeridge astutely observed, are never about what they’re about. As when “You’re never on time anymore” turns out really to mean, “When are you going to quit sitting around and get a real job?” And so on. The national argument over Confederate symbols and monuments—assuming you want to call it an argument...
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Is Putin Returning?
By the end of 2009, the word on the Moscow grapevine was being picked up by pundits and journalists: Putin’s “return” is in the works, and the premier’s reoccupation of the Kremlin may take place sooner rather than later. The tandem of Vladimir Putin and his handpicked successor, Dmitri Medvedev, is said to be coming...
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Classic Colonialism
Almost alone among the peoples of the world, the United States has largely been spared—at least until recently—the bitter conflicts that plague countries whose citizens do not share a common language. Since the early 17th century, immigrants from diverse backgrounds have settled here. In the past, it was understood that in exchange for enjoying opportunities...
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Immigration Reform’s New “Palatable Face”
Almost immediately after the attacks of September 11, the open-borders lobby knew it was in trouble. The immediate, obvious, and logical implication of 19 aliens legally entering the country and proceeding to carry out the biggest single act of mass murder in human history is that the United States needs to close its borders, at...
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The Tiger, the Lion, and the Old Man
A day like today reminds you of how you got here, of the struggle, of the good in your life—and of a tiger, a lion, and an old man. The sun shines stark white, shimmering in a way that reminds you that it is a star, technically a yellow dwarf, but it seems not so...
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Saving American Manufacturing—October 2006
PERSPECTIVE The Root of All Evilby Thomas FlemingPolicy, purpose, and pleonexia. VIEWS It’s Hard Times, Cotton Mill Girlsby Tom LandessManufacturing, gone with the wind. How Neutral Is the Fed?by Greg Kaza A measure of humility. Giving America Priority in Trade Policyby William R. HawkinsFreeing American trade. The Price of Globalismby David A. HartmanAssessing the fallout....
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Why Russia Does Not Fear an Iranian Bomb
When President George W. Bush met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Bratislava, Slovakia, this past February, the first item on the White House’s laundry list of discussion points for the summit was nuclear programs, including Russian aid to Iran’s nuclear-power effort. After the meeting, Putin told reporters that the issue of nuclear proliferation was...
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Left Behind
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? —Psalm 137:4 But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel. —1 Timothy 5:8 The county that became...
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Clipping the Angel’s Wings
” . . . Words strain, Crack and sometimes break. . . . “ —T.S. Eliot The ancients, wiser than modem theorists, recognized language as a gift and (at Babel) a curse from the heavens. Even pagans recognized a Word behind words and a Muse beyond music. The Creator of the world was everywhere acknowledged...
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Mighty Seer, in Days of Old
It’s near the end of October, and the air is crisp and cool. The wind blows hard here on the prairie, the thermometer failing to reflect the chill you feel on your skin and in your bones. A smattering of pinks, reds, and oranges coat the white-cored, cottony fingers floating against the pale-blue morning sky. ...
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Imagining the West
“The curious have observed that the progress of humane literature (like the sun) is from the East to the West. . .” —Nathaniel Ames As both a reality and an interpretive problem, the American West has retained its long-established hold on the attention of our scholars. And the same is true of Western American literature:...
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You Get What You Need
So what do I know anyway? I didn’t want him to begin with. I didn’t want him until it became painfully, obviously clear that he alone stood between us and the cultural and economic pillage contemplated by Hillary Clinton. And so, with never a backward look, my wife and I colored in the straight-Republican oval...
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Anatomy of a Murder
The November murder of a missionary Orthodox priest in Moscow highlighted the threats to Russia’s stability from extremist groups, including Muslim terrorists and the far right. The priest, Daniil Sysoyev, and his aide, Vladimir Strelbitsky, were shot down in a church in Moscow’s Southern Administrative Okrug on November 19. The gunman, whom some sources described...
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Arms and the Man: Clint Eastwood as Hero and Filmmaker
A nation lives by its myths and heroes. Many societies have survived defeat and invasion, even political and economic collapse. None has survived the corruption of the picture it has of itself. High art and popular art are not in competition here. Both may and do help citizens decide what they are and admire. In...
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Crossroads America
“Dangers by being despised grow great.” —Edmund Burke Although preelection polls indicated that likely voters would favor candidates who supported immigration control, Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Ross Perot did not consider the issue worth mentioning during the recent presidential contest. But if our leaders wish the “i” word would go away, in the future...
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Return of the War Nerds
As the MAGA political realignment consolidates its power within the GOP, the neocons view the Democratic Party as the best vehicle for their policies.
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We Are All Socialists Now—August 2006
PERSPECTIVE Socialism Is Theft by Thomas FlemingThe thievery we know and love. VIEWS The Natural History of the Night Watchman Stateby Donald W. LivingstonA culture of autonomy. Thoughts on Socialismby John LukacsThe failure of Economic Man. The Idea of Socialismby Claude PolinA heresy and its legacy. Marx’s and Engels’ Illegitimate Offspringby David A. HartmanA nation...
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A Place to Stand
The names are legendary; the tales of heroism, a part of our heritage as Texans and Americans. Houston, Crockett, Bowie, Travis: All, save William Barret Travis, were nationally known figures before they came to Texas, which was then considered Mexican territory. Sam Houston had been governor of Tennessee, a protégé of Andrew Jackson, a war...
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Walt Disney Rolls Over in His Grave
Fun for the whole family, the ad for the movie said. (I was relieved to know that it wasn’t zany or lafF-packed, although later I would have settled for that.) Our kids, then eight and 13, deserved a celebration for lasting through the final day of school before Christmas vacation, so, loaded with grotesque candy...
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The Evil of Banality
“The banality of evil” is one of those vapid and misleading phrases that can churn up a tidal wave in a mud puddle. In a trivial sense, Nazi bureaucrats were banal enough, but there was a heroic dimension to the evil of Hitler and Goering, a delirious striving toward the superhuman that commands our attention,...
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What is “Conservatism”?
Donald Trump isn’t a “conservative” as defined by the Beltway Right. Thank Heaven for that. So what are the defining elements of right-liberal “conservatism” these days? It appears that lining the oligarchs’ pockets (“free enterprise”), unrestrained financial speculation (“limited government”), amnesty/unlimited immigration (so “hardworking” people can “come out of the shadows”), and perpetual war (“protecting...
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American Hardware
Just lay your hardware on the table, cowboy, and keep them hands up high. Last Sunday, I bumped into Ron at the hardware store. In the central Midwest, where I live, it’s not unusual to meet an old friend pushing his cart full of home repairs, especially on a Sunday. True Value and Ace are...
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The Trees of Autumn
It is a warm night for November, even in Texas. Thanksgiving is a few days away, and the warm weather, interrupted by a cool snap, has returned, reimposing itself like an unwelcome guest on an autumn background of falling leaves and brown, seemingly endless prairie stretching north to distant Canada. Southeast from Waco, along Highway...
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Life in the Borderland
Returning from a Slavic land on a Slavic airline after serving a mission aiding the Catholic Church in Slavic Eastern Europe, I craved a little freedom from Slavdom. So I eschewed the late Slavic pope’s tradition and refrained from kissing the earth after touching down at O’Hare. Instead, I enjoyed a quiet cigarette outside arrivals,...
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Crisis and Denial
At CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference), U.S. Rep. Allen West (R-FL) cited the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act as the cause of the financial crisis. He has a point: As long as Glass-Steagall was in place, we had no systemic collapse. Banks that were busy underwriting crazy subprime securities—synthetic CDOs, synthetic CDOs squared,...
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Child Abuse, the State, and the Russian Family
It was another episode in a series of shocking crimes against children. Little Sasha, just three years old, was pulled from the frigid waters of the Pekhorka River in January 2009. He was bound to a car battery with adhesive tape, his body battered and bearing the marks of cigarette burns. It was the second...
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Real Men’s Studies
The negative critique of American education has grown from a mere trickle back when Albert Jay Nock delivered his lectures on Theory of Education in the United States at the University of Virginia in 1931 into a roaring flash flood. When the sound and fury of the various Jeremiahs of American education have ceased echoing...
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U.S.A.: The Global Commons
Roper’s February polling of Americans reveals a clear consensus against high levels of immigration. Eighty-three percent favor a lower level of immigration than the current average of over a million a year, and some 70 percent support a level of immigration below 300.000 per year. This view is held by 52 percent of Hispanics, 73...
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The Ethics of English
“When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.” —William Hazlitt The treason of the teacher of English: that is the principal subject of Professor Booth’s discourses over two turbulent decades in the academy. Dr. Booth, a temperate rhetorician, does not call this dereliction of duty...