Sunday, on the eve of All Saints’ Day, Nov. 1, 2010, the faithful gathered at the Assyrian Catholic Church of Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad. As Father Wassim Sabih finished the mass, eight al-Qaida stormed in, began shooting and forced him to the floor. As the priest pleaded that his parishioners be spared, they...
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Our Terror Sanctuary
The “Fort Dix Six” may not be the smartest group of would-be jihadists we have seen, but their story should tell us something about how lax immigration and border-security policies put this country at risk. The six Muslims were arrested in New Jersey in May, for plotting to attack Fort Dix, which is known as...
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High Stakes in the Immigration Battle
The presidency of Donald Trump has made some things many of us suspected for a long time perfectly clear, as a former president used to say. Our enemies no longer hide what their agenda is, and job #1 on that agenda is replacing what Archie Bunker used to call “regular Americans” with foreigners. Thus, the...
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The Wolf Week in Review: Race to the 90’s
Another week has come and gone, and here are some highlights and cultural trends. Republicans Want to Draft Your Daughter Whether your daughter ought to be compelled to sign up for spilling her guts in a regime-change adventure that will ultimately bring to power another Islamic regime is a question that has gone mainstream. And...
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Hardened Line
Vladimir Putin, prodded by a reporter’s question regarding the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, remarked that Russia, for “economic and political” reasons, “has no interest in the defeat of the United States.” Putin’s comments were seen by Russian media observers as a sign that the Kremlin had come full circle on the Iraq question. ...
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CPAC moves to Rockford?
Here’s how you’ll know the conservative movement means something again: When the Conservative Political Action Conference, which just held its annual meeting, moves from Washington, D.C. to Rockford. Or Dubuque. Or Peoria. Or Helena. Or San Antonio. Or Bakersfield. Anywhere but the District of Corruption. I attended a couple CPACs back in the mid-1980s, at...
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Jazz Standards
The new millennium brings with it the formal end of jazz’s 20th century, although serious historians recognize that some elements of the music trace back to roughly two-thirds of the way through the 19th. Yet even with the undeniable brilliance of much that was produced during the Dixieland, swing, bebop, and subsequent eras, as the...
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Welcoming Terrorists, Locking Down Citizens
Terrorist bombings that killed 3 and wounded and maimed over 260 at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15 prompted the militarized “lockdown” of an American city for days, as police in full combat gear took part in a massive manhunt that may have given us a glimpse of our future. As...
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The Ghosts of Christmas Past
“Now in history,” wrote Chesterton, “there is no Revolution that is not a Restoration.” A collective memory, a vague but compelling collection of shadows that bind us to the past, seems to whisper a perennial, bittersweet hymn to the numbed ear of man, particularly modern man. Every nation, tribe, or clan has passed on tales...
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Well Into Spring, Even With Snow
Old now is earth, and none may count her days. Earth may be fair, and all men glad and wise. Age after age, their tragic empires rise, Built while they dream, and in that dreaming weep . . . —Old Hundred Twenty-Fourth A white-haired pastor, a white church, a white field. The snow is falling,...
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Rethinking ‘National Security’ in Light of War in Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a military “special operation” in Ukraine, which, through the fog of war, looks like an attempt to overthrow the current authorities there and “demilitarize” that country, has prompted the usual globalist/neo-con talking heads to throw around irresponsible comparisons of the Kremlin boss to Hitler. The truth is that...
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Religion and Critical Theory
In his 1935 essay “Religion and Literature,” T.S. Eliot argued that modern literature had become progressively secularized. In response he proposed that “literary criticism should be complemented by criticism from a definite ethical and theological standpoint.” Eliot introduced his arguments with the famous statement, “The ‘greatness’ of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards;...
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The Angry Summer
Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight . . . —Psalm 144:1 According to the Washington Post, McAllen, Texas is an “all-American city,” albeit one “that speaks Spanish.” So it’s small wonder that “immigration isn’t a problem for this Texas town—it’s a way of life.” ...
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K Is for Vendetta
And it came to pass that fear did grip all of the Swamp, from Foggy Bottom to DuPont Circle; and it did spread unto all of the region beyond the Potomac. For behold, Steve Bannon had come. Or, if we prefer not to use the familiar “Steve,” Stephen K. Bannon. The K must not be...
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Murder in Politics
Sergey Yushenkov’s murder on April 17 may have been the result of machinations aimed at destroying Russian President Vladimir Putin politically and personally, as well as undermining U.S.-Russia relations, seemingly on track again after the rift over Iraq. Gunned down outside his Moscow apartment, Yushenkov, the leader of the Liberal Russia political party, joins a...
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CPAC Moves to Rockford?
Here’s how you’ll know the conservative movement means something again: when the Conservative Political Action Conference moves its annual meeting from Washington, D.C., to Rockford. Or Dubuque. Or Peoria. Or Helena. Or San Antonio. Or Bakersfield. Or Murfreesboro. Anywhere but the District of Corruption. Conservatives flock from around the country to CPAC, expecting to advance...
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The Diner’s Refrain
With former president Bill Clinton settled into his new headquarters on New York’s 125th Street, in central Harlem, the danger for the culinary crowd is that he may now take to hanging out at Sylvia’s, the famous soul-food restaurant barely three blocks away on Lenox Avenue near 126th. For almost 40 years, the family-owned restaurant...
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The Brothers Tsarnaev: Assimilating Terrorists
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s widow is no longer calling herself “Karima Tsarnaeva.” She is Katherine Russell again. Karima/Katherine is reportedly drifting away from the way of life she accepted when she converted to Islam and married the Boston Bomber, the terrorist killed by police last April following the bombings that left three dead and wounded as many...
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Errol Flynn
Errol Leslie Flynn was an unlikely icon—thin lipped, beady eyed, and blessed with a mild case of rhinophyma (big-nose syndrome), much exacerbated by booze and age, not to mention an (at one time) impenetrably thick Australian accent. On meeting the young Flynn, other children would take one look at him and burst into tears. Despite...
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Shifting Sands
The grand theme of P.D. James’s work is man and his overwhelming sense of rootlessness, anxiety, and guilt in the knowledge of a crime unknown and a punishment outwardly denied in the post-Christian era, though inwardly anticipated. Especially in the last decade or so, James has moved far beyond Dame Agatha Christie, delving deeply into...
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Trump Versus the Feminizers
With Donald Trump soon to be inaugurated President of the United States, I can put forward what I see as the central factor in his victory. It is masculinity. Trump is a condottiere, a soldier of fortune like Bartolomeo Colleoni whose statue by Verrocchio still stands in the Venetian square bearing his name. It is...
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Children of a Lesser God?
The plight of Iraq’s Christian community—as followers of the Prince of Peace flee from the country they have lived in since ancient times, their homes and churches burned, their children kidnapped and raped, their priests murdered—has elicited barely any reaction from either the White House or the Muslim government it supports. The destruction of the...
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Come Home, America
The proxy war in Ukraine is a globalist creation that has little to do with American interests. Americans should not emotionally invest in a fight that is not their own, but focus on more important matters at their own borders.
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Light Literature
One of the casualties of the current culture wars is the Western. No other genre, it seems, is so politically incorrect. The Western is accused of racism, sexism, and imperialism—three strikes and you’re out. These charges receive sophisticated expression in Jane Tompkins’ West of Everything, published under the prestigious imprint of Oxford University Press. According...
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Six Midterm Reflections
As the Midterm Election returns came in, one thing became clear: There would be no “blue wave.” The Democrats secured the House of Representatives, though not by a wide margin, and the Republicans held the Senate, gaining a few seats. The House Democrats and their GOP “NeverTrump” allies still skulking about the Beltway bubble will...
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Athens and Jerusalem—April 1996
Vol. 20, No. 4—April 1996 PERSPECTIVE Athens and Jerusalem by Thomas Fleming Where neopagans go wrong. VIEWS With the Nietzscheans of Naumburg by Curtis Cate Mediocrity and the West. Ancient Greek Religion by Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones How it differed from Christianity. Monotheism vs. Polytheism by Alain de Benoist The neopagan critique. The Twilight of the Sacred by Thomas Molnar The Christian difference. OPINIONS Scholarship and ...
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Palestinianization and the Iraq War
As American troops seized the center of Baghdad on April 9, looting, guerrilla warfare, and chaos continued across Iraq. In 21 days, U.S. forces had driven to the capital of Saddam’s Iraq, though arguably Washington had been making war on this long-suffering country for over a decade—a war of economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, propaganda, occupation...
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Schadefreude over Michael Moore’s divorce?
Despite my disagreements with him, I’m saddened at documentarian Michael Moore’s civil divorce. Raised a Catholic, his marriage likely is sacramental, which means he still would be married whatever decision is made by the courts of the civil government he loves so much and seeks to expand ad infinitum. Yet I also have some schadefreude...
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No Apologies for Jazz
When the 30-year-old blind British jazz pianist George Shearing came to America for good early in 1949, he ran into fellow transplanted Brit Leonard Feather, a prominent critic, producer, promoter, and songwriter, who suggested that the pianist enlarge his trio to quintet size by adding vibes and drums. Feather’s idea was that piano-bass-drums trios were...
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The Con Man
“The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.” —John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Fifty years ago, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold completed the most successful transformation of David Cornwell’s shape-shifting life. The son of a war profiteer and con man became John le...
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To Hell and Back
“Will no one tell me what she sings? Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow / For old, unhappy far-off things. And Battles long ago.” Wordsworth, perhaps, was prompted by recollections of an age before warfare meant the mechanized destruction of all in its path. Yet war, to paraphrase an American precursor of Zhukov and Guderian, has...
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The Tory Contest Is Bad TV
“Excruciating” was the verdict on the TV debate of the five remaining candidates for the Tory leadership. They were perched on stools, like five barflies in search of a bar. I regretted the absence of a woman, though not for the standard reason. It would have been diverting to see a candidate clad in a...
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The Day of Conception
In Russia’s Ulyanovsk region, the birthplace of Lenin, the regional government has declared September 12 the “Day of Conception,” throwing in a promise of time off work for couples striving to make that day a success. Such programs have been instituted more frequently since Russian President Vladimir Putin made boosting the country’s birthrate part of...
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Bowling Alone in Columbine
Politics are over in America. Political maneuvering will go on, of course, but the old civics class view of American political life was based on a set of assumptions that are no longer operative. First, America was far more homogenous before the 1965 Immigration Act and the “New Left” political and social revolution of...
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A Crisis of the Heart and Soul: Trump’s Border Wall Address
Last night, President Donald Trump hopefully set the stage for taking measures to protect America’s borders that are long overdue. Though his brief address sometimes lapsed into the sentimental bromides realistic patriots have long grown weary of, Trump, in the end, told us what this struggle is all about. After correctly diagnosing the border crisis...
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Divided Loyalties—April 2003
PERSPECTIVE Remember From When Thou Art Fallen by Thomas Fleming Lessons from Old Europe. VIEWS
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The Real War
In a small café in Belgrade nearly 20 years ago, I had a drink with a young man named Michael. He was an architect and, like many people I met there, was no friend of the Soviet regime, which was the subject of our conversation. I had just visited the Soviet Union, passing through Belgrade...
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The Neoconservative Delusion
The Neoconservative dream of spreading “democracy” in the Middle East, a delusion wholeheartedly embraced by President George W. Bush, is rapidly becoming a nightmare. Pursuit of this utopian vision has already strengthened the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, propelled Hezbollah into the Lebanese government, and brought Hamas to power in the Palestinian Authority. In Iraq, it...
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Silver or Lead: The Reverse Assimilation of the Southwest
Texas attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbot committed what is commonly called a political gaffe earlier this year when he said what every thinking person this side of the Rio Grande already knew: Mass immigration from Mexico means the importation of Mexican corruption and the steady erosion of law and social trust that too...
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American Artisan
Whenever Robert Valade embarked on a commissioned piece, or simply took his hammer and chisel to cut an exquisitely fashioned design into a gift for a friend, he first bowed his large head and prayed to God to help him finish the job right. It was a simple ritual Robert performed some 14,000 times during...
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The “Russian” Mafia in America
In October 1996, during testimony before a congressional committee, FBI Director Louis Freeh spent a good part of his time discussing international organized crime. Freeh, pointing to the FBI’s arrest of one Vyacheslav Ivankov—the reputed “godfather” of the Russian mafia who is now serving a ten-year sentence in a federal pen in New York—emphasized the...
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What Victims?
Natural Born Killers Produced by Jane Hamsher, Don Murphy, and Clayton Townsend Directed by Oliver Stone Story by Quentin Tarantino Screenplay by David Veloz, Richard Rutowski, and Oliver Stone Released by Warner Brothers The release of Oliver Stone’s new film Natural Born Killers was heralded by the sort of publicity barrage that arouses the skepticism...
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Importing Multiculturalism—June 2010
perspective Cursing the Darknessby Thomas Fleming views Immigration: A History Lessonby John Willson Cannibal Statisticsby Chilton Williamson, Jr. news Double Down: Illegal Aliens and Crimeby Roger D. McGrath reviews Great Cooptationsby W. James Antle III [Edward M. Kennedy, True Compass: A Memoir andSarah Palin, Going Rogue: An American Life] Past, Present, and Futureby Darío Fernández-Morera...
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A Crackdown On Christians
Nursultan Nazarbayev’s regime in Kazakhstan, a recipient of U.S. foreign-aid funds, is cracking down on religious groups it disapproves of, as the congregations associated with Grace Presbyterian Church discovered firsthand this past August, when the KNB (the Kazakh successor to the Soviet-era KGB) raided churches in Karaganda and Oskemen. Since then, raids, detentions of church...
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What Might Have Been
The America First Committee was part of democracy in action during one of the most terrifying times in human history. It was the leading pressure group appealing for mass support in opposition to involvement in World War II before Pearl Harbor. When America First saw the light of day in September 1940, Poland, Denmark, Norway,...
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The End of Politics
Politics are over in America. Political maneuvering will go on, of course, but the old civics-class view of American political life was based on a set of assumptions that are no longer operative. America was once far more homogenous than she is today. But the passing of the 1965 Immigration Act and the political and...
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Target: Iraq—February 2003
Perspective Imperialism From the Cradle to the Grave by Thomas Fleming Mesopotamia, the graveyard of empire. Views Our Yesterday and Your Today by Michael Stenton A tale of two empires. The Justification for War by Srdja Trifkovic It’s the oil (and the ...
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Johnny Cash, R.I.P.
John R. Cash went to his reward on September 12. His beloved wife, June, preceded the “Man in Black” in death on May 15. His friends report that Johnny Cash was at peace and ready to meet his Maker. Cash himself had calmly stated, “I don’t have long to live, now,” during his last TV...
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A Christmas Miscellany
Peter Brimelow has written a discussion of the War on Christmas for VDARE.com that is well worth reading. In it, Peter puts me in the unusual role of optimist. There are still many people in this country who want to suppress the public celebration of Christmas, and the situation in the schools, where culture is formed...
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Obama’s Manufactured Border Crisis
This summer’s border crisis—the near total collapse of any controls or security at our southern border, especially in South Texas—was manufactured by the Obama administration as a means of forcing through a mass amnesty, either via Congress or by executive fiat. Legalizing millions of illegal aliens now resident in these United States is the immediate...