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...
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An Obsolete Alliance Turns 75
NATO has undermined the security of its members and created enemies that, in turn, justify further NATO interference in an increasingly unstable “security environment.”
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30 Years Fighting the Culture War—July 2006
PERSPECTIVE Violent Revolution by Thomas Fleming Women in bondage. VIEWS Hollywood Blues by George Garrett A culture of grand illusions. Culture War by Clyde Wilson Fighting on. Dressing for Progress by Andrei Navrozov A culture of lovelessness. An American Dilemma by Tom Landess The Episcopal Church (1976-2006). RUOK? AWHFY? by James O. Tate Communication in the vast wasteland. O Literature, Thou Art Sick by Catharine Savage Brosman The consequences of theory. INTERVIEW Rendering ...
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Downing Street Memo
The Downing Street Memo, a British-government document on Iraq leaked in May to the Sunday Times, may be as close as the American public will get to a “smoking gun” implicating the Bush White House in manipulating this country into war. A July 23, 2002, memo (actually, the minutes of a British cabinet meeting) written...
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Land Without Justice
Every month, some corner of the United States becomes the scene of a brutal and bizarre murder: in Jasper, Texas, where rednecks dragged a man to death behind their truck; in Las Vegas, where a high-school student assaulted and killed a little girl as his friend and fellow student looked on without lifting a finger...
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The “Trumpening” and Conservative Christians
Many conservative Christians have reservations, at least, about supporting Republican front runner Donald Trump, and not without reason. He has had a less than completely convincing conversion to a pro-life position; has said (more than once) that Planned Parenthood has done some good (on screening for cervical and breast cancer, for instance), while declaring that...
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Christmas, Texas
I am fumbling in the console, looking for my Jim Reeves Christmas CD, when I notice the wall of rolling, gray clouds approaching from the east. The sun is sliding slowly beneath the horizon in the west, shooting shards of orange-red hues into the purple-blue sky, presenting a striking contrast to the dark gray wall,...
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Counterrevolution in Toyland
Among the hottest selling items in toy stores across the land is the “G.I. Joe” series of military action figures. Since the “Star Wars” movies, war toys have made a strong comeback from their depressed levels during the “antiwar” 1970’s. Model figures based on “Star Wars” characters proved so successful that others quickly entered the...
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Who Won the Cold War?
In his Foreword to Witness, Whittaker Chambers, writing in the “form of a letter to my children,” tries to explain the appeal of communism: I see in Communism the focus of the concentrated evil of our time. You will ask: Why, then, do men become Communists? How did it happen that you, our gentle and...
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Arms and the Man: Clint Eastwood as Hero and Filmmaker
From the August 1989 issue of Chronicles. 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...
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Shades of White
“Mankind is in crisis . . . a long crisis which began 300, .and in some places, 400 years ago, when people turned away from religion. . . . It is a crisis which led the East to Communism and the West to a pragmatic society. It is the crisis of materialism.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Following...
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We Can’t Vote Ourselves Out of This: Organizing a Middle American Resistance
The American right needs a Middle American resistance united in its focus on internal secession and self-government, one that does not rely on national politics or bet on political saviors.
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New Words for Old—February 2006
PERSPECTIVE Lost in Translation by Thomas FlemingThe art of reality. VIEWS Mind Your Language!by James O. TateA sea of ruined words. Manners, Morals, Languageby Chilton Williamson, Jr.Forsaking the Beau-Ideal. A Trip to Smart-Mouth Collegeby Aaron D. WolfThe loss of sacred words. NEWS Riots in the Suburbsby Claude PolinThe programmed suicide of France. REVIEWS Seasoned Travelsby Catharine...
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Losing the “War on Terror” at the Border
According to a host of news reports, the porous, virtually unprotected southern border of the United States has attracted the attention of Islamic terrorists, as many of us warned it would at the outset of the “War on Terror.” In March, Time, citing U.S. intelligence officials, reported that Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, a ring leader of...
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Tough Tamales
Maybe I should hop a jet to Vegas for a weekend at the dice tables or hang out in Beverly Hills for a while. Maybe I should bang a couple of hookers or sniff some cocaine—you know, something recreational to change my mood. I went in the library again and it didn’t do me any...
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Trump’s was a proponent of “America First” in 1990
Republican front runner Donald Trump has been criticized for not being “conservative” in the manner of the Beltway Right, for changing his positions (especially on abortion), and for his past associations with Democratic politicians. Trump-haters frequently claim that The Donald has no fixed views, is merely opportunistically taking advantage of popular anger with political elites,...
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The Next Sound You Hear
We’ve crammed the Suburban with about as many people as it can carry, driving the fence line on a section of land not far from Meridian, Texas, on a cool Sunday afternoon during deer season. My brother left a message even before we made it home from church, asking us to come with his family...
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Origins and Outcome
To the degree that it is remembered at all, the America First Committee (AFC) has gone down in history as an organization most suspect, at best composed of good people serving a bad cause, at worst riddled with conscious agents of a Nazi transmission belt. During its heyday in the years 1940-1941, some of the...
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Aliens and the Alienated
American leftists today yearn for a more receptive proletariat. They have virtually given up on the white working class, which they feel has been subverted by bourgeois values and the consumer society. Instead they have turned towards people of non-European stock to build a new base. The anti-Western “multiculturalism” that has become so controversial at...
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Reaganism and the External Threat
“There’s a bear in the woods,” warns ad man Hal Riney, as a grizzly appears on screen. “For some people, the bear is easy to see. Others don’t see it at all. Some people say the bear is tame. Others say it is vicious and dangerous. Since no one can really be sure who’s right,...
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Fateful Choices
There are few issues more emotional than abortion. The dogmatism of the respective combatants strikes fear in the hearts of lesser mortals—which means almost every politician. Three decades after Roe v. Wade, the issue of abortion is unlikely ever to be resolved politically. The major parties have largely followed the passions of their most active...
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A Walk on the Dark Side
“Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.” —Thomas Adams Conspiracy theories have found a ready audience in many countries in many different times. When cataclysmic events shock a country to its foundations, when people feel impotent before history’s tidal wave, when war or economic collapse or political disintegration mark the end of a historical era and, having...
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Not Separate and Not Equal
Oh I’m packin’ my grip and I’m leavin’ today, ’cause I’m taking a trip California way I’m gonna settle down and never more roam, and make the San Fernando Valley my home. I’ll forget my sins, I’ll be makin’ new friends, where the West begins and the sunset ends. Cause I’ve decided where yours...
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Farewell to Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy is gone, having secured his place in the literary canon. At his best, McCarthy’s often terrifying, but deeply religious, tales are a moving spiritual and aesthetic experience. May he rest in peace.
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“American” Movies
” . . . the play’s the thing . . . “ —Hamlet, Prince of Denmark In a recent outing on this site I gave as an example of the emptiness of American culture the fact that American movies today are British Commonwealth dominated in directors, writers, and performers. I confess, I love movies, for...
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War Images
Christopher Wilson was arrested in October in Polk County, Florida, on obscenity charges. Mr. Wilson’s pornographic website contains pictures of the wives and girlfriends of his paying customers posing and engaging in sex acts, and he claims that about a third of his reported 160,000 customers are in the U.S. military. When some of those...
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The Way Forward Is With a Broken Head
Symptoms: Health fine until reads Walker latest. Immediate somatic distress of all systems inch pulmonary; digestive crisis, upper, middle, and lower; cardiac irregularity; low and high blood pressure; skin rashes and lesions; emerging hyperallergenic reactions to paper, ink, reading process. Psychosomatic reactions: delusions of persecution, fears of apocalypse, entropic anxieties, all leading to reaction formation...