and working classes and bankrolls ourrncandidates for high office.rnMichael Washburn is the assistant editorrno/” Chronicles.rnThe StraussianrnSidesteprnby Marco RespintirnLeo Strauss e la destra americanarnby Germana ParaboschirnRome: Editori Riuniti;rn162 pp.rnDr. Germana Paraboschi’s LeornStrauss e la destra americana {LeornStrauss and the American Right) is one ofrnthe few serious studies of the Americanrnright to come out of Italy. Dr....
Author: The Archive (The Archive)
Bookman’s Holiday
who ranges comfortably along the thousandsrnof years that make up the historyrnof literacy to spin a narrative that runsrnfrom cave paintings to CD-ROM, fromrnancient Chinese “bone-shell scripts”rncarved on turtle carapaces to technologiesrnnot yet in place. His History of Readingrnspans vast territories of the mind,rndropping names and tantalizing arcana,rnpausing to ponder, in the space of a...
Letter From Boston
CORRESPONDENCErnLetter FromrnBostonrnby Eugene NairettrnThe Return ofrnKatherine Ann PowerrnLast fall, an editor at my suburbanrnBoston daily urged readers to reflect onrn”a personal essay, lyrical but not flowery,”rnby one of our “neighbors” at thernMassachusetts Correctional Instituternin Framingham, the state penitentiaryrnfor women. “The least we can do,” hernwrote, “is put our ears against the tallrnbrick walls” and let...
Letter From Dublin
only bright, but creative. In prison, shernhas joined a “women’s spirituahtyrngroup” and writes poems. “A long onerndescribes her as a warrior,” gushed an interviewer.rnAnd now she pens op-edrncolumns in which she dwells on sorrowsrnlike the fact that she gets only 20 minutesrnto shave her legs, and sometimes,rnthe water is even tepid! A lengthy puffrnpiece in...
Letter From Pittsburgh
the strangely well-preserved corpses ofrnmedieval Dubliners. There are plenty ofrnsigns of Queen Anne and the Georges,rnwhen Dublin was the second city of thernEmpire. Swift was Dean of St. Patrick’srnCathedral, and is buried there nearrnStella. His annotated copy of Clarendon’srnHistory of the Scotch Rebellionrn(“Thoroughly un-Scotifyed” is one of hisrnapproving comments) is still to be seenrnin the...
Letter From Pittsburgh
Reginald Denny being pulled from hisrncab, during the L.A. riots, and beatenrnby black rioters further worried the company.rnLast summer, Charles Morrison,rnHRC Director, stated that Pizza Hut’srnfailure to deliver to the Trusses was probablyrna case of “illegal redlining.” He toldrnthe Pittsburgh Post Gazette that “Wernhad looked at it every which way andrncouldn’t see Pizza Hut’s defense...
Literature: August Derleth and Arkham House
VITAL SIGNSrnLITERATURErnAugust Derleth andrnArkham Housernby Peter RuberrnAugust Derleth was one of the principalrnforees that established sciencernfiction as a legitimate literary genre. Hernwas a product of the “pulp” era, whornfounded a unique publishing companyrnin 1939 called Arkham House. He hadrnno long-range agenda for his progenyrnother than to rescue the writings of hisrnlate friend and mentor H.P....
Crime: The Politics of Hate Crime Statistics
time helper to take the physical work ofrnfulfilling orders off his shoulders. Then,rntoo, when Arkham’s inventory ran out ofrnspace in his basement and attic, he borrowedrnfrom the bank to build a climatecontrolledrnwarehouse.rnIn addition to extracting a physical tollrnon his health, the demands of runningrnArkham House affected Derleth’s writingrncareer during the last 20 years of hisrnlife....
Military: Sex Scandal du Jour
of murder, non-negligent manslaughter;rnforcible rape; aggravated assault, simplernassault, intimidation; arson; and destruction,rndamage, or vandalism of property.”rnAfter the Attorney General delegatedrnthis responsibility to the director of thernFBI, “the task of developing the proceduresrnfor, and managing the implementationrnof, the collection of hate crime data”rnwas assigned to the Uniform CrimernReports Section of the FBI. Because ofrnthe time which...
Military: Sex Scandal du Jour
which the academy’s board of visitors,rnled by Senator Barbara Mikulski (DMaryland)rnand Representative HelenrnBentley (R-Maryland), certified thernacademy’s conversion from callous disregardrnfor feminine sensitivities to ferventrnchampion of the rights of militaryrnwomen.rnAll of this happened before Tailhook,rnand before the humiliating aftermath ofrnTailhook (which forced a Secretary ofrnthe Navy and a Chief of Naval Operationsrnout of office), and before...
Regionalism
REGIONALISMrnThe AmericanrnRedneckrnby Joyce BennettrnThere ain’t no shame in a job wellrndone,rnfrom driving a nail to driving arntruck.rnAs a matter of fact, I’d like to setrnthings straight,rnA few more people should bernpulling their weight.rnIf you want a cram course inrnreality,rnYou get yourself a working man’srnPh.D.rn—^Aaron Tippin,rn”Working Man’s Ph.D.”rnThe hyperactive shopping mall aficionadosrnand franchise restaurantrndiners who populate...
Regionalism
who received the Purple Heart after takingrnshrapnel in the head in France duringrnWorld War II, and my brother Charles,rnan ex-Marine sergeant who saw action inrnVietnam, both came home. Unlike Daddy,rnCharles had to go to war knowingrnthat he was despised by many of thosernfor whom he fought, but his bred-in-thebonernconvictions allowed him no otherrnalternative and gave...
Family: Estogen Poisoning
future, digging up the ruins of our townsrnand cities, may reconstruct a record byrnwhich they beheve these same hadrnnames such as Nixon and Burger King,rnRadio City, Tinseltown, Coca Cola,rnFreeway, and Playboy. And perhaps thernnames will sound as exotic and colorfulrnto them as the Indian names do to us.rnLarry Tritten writes fromrnSan Francisco.rnFAMILYrnEstrogenrnPoisoningrnby Marian Kestet CoombsrnAfirst-grade...
Education: Rose Hill College
sessing or exercising them. The VirginiarnMilitary Institute’s “rat line,” a typicallyrnmale institution for the breaking ofrnyoung colts by stallions, is horrific ifrnmanned by males, but somehow terrificrnif populated by sweating, shorn, andrnswearing females. Men’s-club or lockerroomrncamaraderie is reprehensible, butrnthe same behavior transposed to a femalernkey is right on. Boys and men arernridiculed (and medicated) for...
Law
of us. (Even so prudently administeredrnan institution as Rose Hill operates at arncost of $3,000 per day.)rnThe stated mission of the college is tornprovide an alternative to “the secularrnagendas, government intrusion, andrnmulticultural superficiality [that] arernnow the rule…. Classes are always small,rntaking the form of tutorials and seminarsrnrather than lectures, and . . . emphasis isrnplaced...
Law
repair did not exceed three percent ofrnthe car’s suggested retail price. Whenrnthe plaintiff discovered his car had beenrnrepainted, he sued BMW. The juryrnreturned a verdict finding BMW liablernfor economic (out of pocket) damagesrnof $4,000, Additionally, the jury heldrnBMW liable for four million dollars inrnpunitive damages because it foundrnBMW’s policy of selling a repainted carrnas new...
Government: Secession and the New American Constitituion
cally. By taking issues away from the staternlegislatures—be it abortion, gay rights,rnor, now, tort reform—the Court endangersrnour liberties, and calls into questionrnthe fundamental concept of federalismrnand the very foundation of our governmentrnstructure, representative democracy.rnDavid ]. Owsiany is an attorney inrnColumbus, Ohio, and a member of thernhoard of trustees of the Ohio Alliancernfor Civil Justice. The...
Government: Secession and the New American Constitituion
paragraph of the Treaty, conceded thatrnthe former colonies were now not onlyrnwhat they claimed to be in the Declarationrnof Independence, “Free and IndependentrnStates,” but were now “Free,rnSovereign and Independent States.”rnWhen the war ended, relations betweenrnthe states soon deteriorated. Theyrnexercised their sovereignty as individualrnnations by, for example, raising tariffrnbarriers against each other’s importedrngoods. By 1786 relations...
Government: Secession and the New American Constitituion
one fell swoop we could eliminate thernunlawful and fraudulent 14th and 16thrnamendments and fix the flaw in thernConstitution that gives Supreme CourtrnJustices lifetime appointments.rnSince the Civil War, or more correctly,rnthe War Between the States, the federalrngovernment has become more and morernabusive and tyrannical. All three branchesrnof the federal government increasinglyrnignore the requirements of the Constitution.rnAs...
Government: Secession and the New American Constitituion
INCLUDING ESSAYS BY,..rnPETER BRIMELOWrn{Forbes Magazine)rnALLAN CARLSONrn(The Roekford Institute)rnJEAN BETHKE ELSIITAINrn(University of ChicagornDivinity School)rnRICHARD ESTRADArn(Dallas Morning News)rnTHOMAS FLEMINGrn{Chronicles Magazine)rnSAMUEL FRANCISrn(Nationally SyndicatedrnColumnist)rnPAUL GOTTFRIEDrn(Elizabethtown College)rnGARRETT HARDINrn(Professor Emeritus ofrnHuman Ecology)rnHANS-HERMANN HOPPErn(ITniversity of Nevada,rnLas Vegas)rnDONALD L. HUDDLErn(Rice University)rnE. CHRISTIAN KOPFFrn(University ofrnColorado inrnBoulder)rnIMMIGRATIONrn* ANDTHE *rnAMERICAN IDENTITYrnSELECTIONS FROMrnChronicles: A Magazine of American Culture,rn1985-1995rnAMERICAN IDENTITYrnSBKTKWimwrnChooUtt: A M^raliw 9( 4n«fc(a Cutan,rnIMS-IMSrnRICHARD D . LAMMrn(Former...
Government: Secession and the New American Constitituion
transactionrnNew and Recent Books on Family and PolicyrnTHE SWEDISH EXPERIMENTrnIN FAMILY POLITICSrnTHE MYRDALS AND THE INTERWARrnPOPULATION CRISISrnAllan CarlsonrnThis devastating account of the work ofrnGunnar and Alva Myrdal portrays how twornyoung scholars used the power of ideas tornhelp engineer a new domestic order in Sweden.rnIt offers the general reader remarkablerninsight into the nature of Scandinavian socialrnlife,...
Polemics & Exchanges
EDITORrnThomas FlemingrnMANAGING EDITORrnTheodore PapbasrnSENIOR EDITOR, BOOKSrnChilton Williamson, ]r.rnASSISTANT EDITORrnMichael WashburnrnART DIRECTORrnAnna Mycek-WodeckirnCONTRIBUTING EDITORSrnHarold O./. Brown, Katherine Dalian,rnSamuel Francis, George Garrett,rnPaul Gottfried, Christine Haynes,rnE. Christian Kopff, ].0. Tate,rnClyde WilsonrnCORRESPONDING EDITORSrnBill Kauffman, William Mills,rnJacob Neusner, John Shelton Reed,rnMomcilo SelicrnEDITORIAL SECRETARYrnLeann DobbsrnPUBLISHERrnAllan C. CarlsonrnPUBLICATION DIRECTORrnGuy C. ReffettrnPRODUCTION SECRETARYrnAnita CandyrnCIRCULATION MANAGERrnRochelle FrankrnA publication of The Rockford Institute.rnEditorial and Advertising...
Polemics & Exchanges
On Franklin PiercernMy esteemed friend Chilton Williamson,rnas is his wont, makes the mostrnconcisely brilliant characterization of thernClintons that has been set down on paperrn(“Four More Years,” February 1997).rnHowever, even though I know the referencernwas ironic, I must take issue with hisrnmentioning the honorable PresidentrnFranklin Pierce even in the same articlernwith those people.rnNo, Pierce was not...
Polemics & Exchanges
strictly Orthodox and did not know thernHaskalah. Such Jews as those portrayedrnin Eliza Orzeszkowa’s Meir Ezofovitch orrnMaria Dabrowska’s Nights and Days are,rnI feel, an unwelcome memory for sophisticatedrnAmerican Jews. They are rememberedrnas victims of the holocaustrnbut not as part of the Polish nation,rnAmerican Jews of Eastern Europeanrndescent do not wish to know that theyrnmatured as...
Cultural Revolutions
ing a rallying point that would be genericrnvet visible, the insurgents conceivedrnthe “privileged, white heterosexualrnmale,” and identified him with ” csternrncivilization” and “Judaism and Christianit.”rnSo what if “Europe,” “whites,”rnand “Christianity and Judaism” werernhardly snonymous? As Jenkins pointsrnout, these religions were born in thernMideast and spread through NorthernrnAfrica and Asia (and some 90 percent ofrnAmerican blacks...
Cultural Revolutions
uralization process—was ignored resolutelyrnby the candidates and their spokesmen.rnRumor had it that Jack Kemp acceptedrnthe Number Two spot on thernRepublican ticket after exacting arnpromise from Numero Uno that immigrationrnwould not be made a campaignrnissue by the Republicans—somethingrnthat Numero Uno had absolutely no inclinationrnto do anyway, hi the spirit of bipartisanshiprn(easily confused with therncoming one-party system)...
Cultural Revolutions
EPICYCLES:rn• More Cultural Enrichment: Santeria,rnan Afro-American religion that combinesrnChristian symbolism with paganrnpractices such as animal sacrifice, has becomernincreasingh popular in immigrantrncommunities, especially in Miami, NewrnYork, and Washington, D.C. During thernsummer of 1989, while D.C. police werernfinding the remains of chickens andrngoats in local cemeteries, the Smithsonianrnhistitution sponsored Santeria ritualsrnat its annual Folklife Festival on the...
Hanging With Our Friends
PERSPECTIVErnHanging With Our Friendsrnby Thomas FlemingrnAyear and a half ago, Umberto Bossi delivered a brilliantrnspeech in t:he Italian parliament. Describing Italy’s politicalrns stem as organized corruption, the leader of the Lega Nordrndeclared that left and right showed two faces but were joinedrninto one body. A new Italian regime had to be born, but thisrntvo-headed monster,...
Hanging With Our Friends
termincd opposition to the regime, even from those whornclaimed to be calling a halt to the march of progress.rnI am exaggerating somewhat. Here and there in an economicsrndepartment there were principled defenders of the freernmarket, and there were cen a few poets and j^hilosophers whorntried to patch some corner of the crumbling edifice of Christendom,rnbut...
Hanging With Our Friends
journals and think tanks, but student groups, newspapers, rituals,rnmyths, and martyrs. Unfortunately most eonservatives—rnlike most liberals—are children of the Enlightenment; thev arernuncomfortable with sentiment, with irrational attachment.rnLike the bloodless and charmless robots who obey the orders ofrnforeign gurus, conservatives have failed or rather refused to constructrna counterculture, a countermythology. When GeorgernWallace—a man with many flaws...
Los Perdidos De La Mesa Verde
our national, state, and local laws and punish American workersrnand small businessmen to benefit the global technocrats whornfund the Democratic and Republican parties.rnFinally, if men and women of the right are willing to walkrnsome distance down the road with Gianfranco Fini and PatrnChoate (and his spokesman Ross Perot), with Sir James Goldsmithrnand Pat Buchanan, they...
The GOP Flop
VIEWSrnThe GOP FloprnWhy Dole and Kemp Lostrnby Samuel FrancisrnAs the Republican primaries drew to a finish last spring, thernseveral pundits whom the Grand Old Partv earries in itsrnpockets began to sing the praises of the man who was emergingrnas the winner. Partisans of his rivals—Ste’e Forbes, LamarrnAlexander, Phil Gramm, and others—started lining up to kissrnhands...
The GOP Flop
the same pundits who had applauded at the time of San Diegornwere increasinglv muted by Oetober. More than one Beltwayrnsavant of the right assured me at that time that Dole would certainhrnlose, but it wasn’t important an\a’. What was rcalK’rnimportant was to keep the I louse and Senate, increase the Republicanrnmajority in 1998, and rcalh’...
The GOP Flop
had sought to pull a once solidly Democratic South into thernRepublican column, Kemp explicitly repudiated it. “All toornoften in the past,” he told the Boston Globe in September,rn”we’ve had that Southern strategy that said we want to go afterrnthe white vote, and had better not try to get black votes becausernit might lose white votes....
Krummholz
to Zionism failed to draw Jewish voters to the ticket; Jews votedrnfor Dole-Kemp bv a mere 16 percent, a far cry from the third ofrnthe Jewish vote consistently won bv Nixon, Ford, Reagan, andrnBush through 1988.rnTwo of the most typically Middle American categories arernthose for family income and the size of the place where the...
The Paleoconservative Imagination
The Paleoconservative Imaginationrnby Mark Royden WinchellrnIn January 1996, Norman Podhoretz delivered a self-congratulatoryrneulogy for neoconservatism in a lecture before thernAmerican Enterprise Institute. In addition to giving himselfrnand his cohorts credit for the recent successes of the Americanrnright, Podhoretz boasted that “thanks to the influence of neoconservatismrnon the conservative movement in general, thernphilistine indifference to culture...
The Paleoconservative Imagination
that it will triumph.”rnAlthough he does not discuss the Nashville Agrarians or thernBritish Distributists in The Conservative Mind, these were tworn”lost causes” for which Kirk felt a particular fondness. A yearrnand a half before his death, he delivered a lecture entitled “Menrnof Letters as Renewers of Society” at a symposium honoringrnthese two groups. Despite the...
The Paleoconservative Imagination
but Adams, however much he might re’crc the Virgin ofrnChartres as incarnation of the idea and as smbol of eternalrnbeauty, could not put credence in the idea of Providence.”rnIf Russell Kirk wrote with a Christian Agrarian bias, the samernis even more true of Walter Sullivan. Born in Nashville in 1924,rnSullivan has spent almost his entire...
The Paleoconservative Imagination
nett, who was then director of the National Humanities Centerrnin Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. After a campaignrnthat included egregious misrepresentations of Bradford’s characterrnand views, the Bennett forces emerged victorious, andrntheir candidate went on to become a major figure in Americanrnpolitics. More than any other single confrontation, that battlernhelped to embitter relations between neoeonservatives and...
Conservatives and the Free Market
Conservatives and the Free Marketrnby George WatsonrnWhen everyone “hastens through by-paths to privaternprofit,” Samuel Johnson remarked confidently in 1756,rn”no great change can suddenly be made.” So the market can bernconservative in its effects. The notion is startling, especiallyrnfrom the pen of an 18th-century Tory, and it hardly matters forrnthe moment whether the market Johnson had...
Conservatives and the Free Market
pathetic echo in an age that survived Hitler and Stalin. Tyrannyrnis naturally radical, Locke argues, and popular government isrnnothing to be afraid of. By and large, and in comparison withrnother svstems, it is conservative.rnModern conservatives have usually been uninterested inrnsources such as these. Anyone who asks his conservativernfriends, as I sometimes do, to explain what...
Conservatives and the Free Market
In Britain it trebled the number of private shareholders in arndecade. What is more, it was unsnobbish, rather in the mannerrnof Dickens’ Great Expectations, where the hero has to acceptrnthat the money that made him a gentleman came from arnconvict and not from a genteel old ladv. As the Emperor Vespasianrnput it, money has no...
The Future of the Christian Right
The Future of the Christian Rightrnby Martin MawyerrnLike a cold front, you could feci the defeat coming; and yourndid not need Dan Rather or George Gallup to prepare you.rn^bu kwQw it in vour bones as you listened to the sound bites onrnthe exening news: Clinton saying nothing and saying it well;rnDole sa ing nothing and...
The Future of the Christian Right
publican majority prevailed. To be sure, the pro-family, pro-lifernmargin has been reduced by eight to ten seats. But several ofrnthe newcomers are outspoken pro-family activists, includingrnRobert Aderholt of Alabama (who described himself as “thernprotector of traditional Alabama values”) and athlete Jim Runrn(whom the Washington Post called “arguably one of the mostrnconservative politicians to win a...
The Future of the Christian Right
that they seemed attractive to a majority of Americans. Thatrnwould mean reinventing the rhetoric of the mainstream mediarnwithout budging an inch on the issues. Without the jaybirds ofrnHberal Repubhcanism shrieking around us, we could do it.rnRonald Reagan showed us how.rnThese, then, are formidable objections to a strategy based onrncapturing control of the Republican Party four...
Last Rites
As for capturing the GOP, forget it—unless vou belie e thernllolv Spirit will intervene (which is possible, of course, butrnhighly unlikely). Why would God want to save the RepublicanrnPart}’ from the oblivion it has so eagerly sought and so richK deserves?rnAgain, our best course of action is the establishment of arnthird party, and as c]uicklv...
Martin Luther King, Jr., as Conservative Hero
Martin Luther King, Jr.,rnas Conservative Herornby Paul GottfriedrnIn Campus, a ncwslLlU-i ‘A ihe conservative IntercollegiaternStudies Institute, a letter last spring from a student subscriberrncjucstioned comments about Martin Luther King foundrnin the preceding issue’s feature essay, “A Rage for Merit.” Thisrnarticle portrayed King as a passionate critic of affirmative action,rnand this, according to the student, does...
Martin Luther King, Jr., as Conservative Hero
touched on King’s troubling associations. More damninglv, arnyoung black liberal journalist, Carl Rowan, had published anrnextended diatribe against King in Reader’s Digest in Septemberrn1967, which was widely discussed until King’s assassination inrnthe following year. According to Rowan, King had become anrnembarrassment to the civil rights cause. He was a figure with anrn”exaggerated appraisal” of his...
Martin Luther King, Jr., as Conservative Hero
servative magazines extol as “Mr. Cultural Conservatism,” WilliamrnBennett, is a Great Society Democrat, albeit one who hasrnjoined the Republican Party. Not surprisingly, Bennett commendsrnto his followers the ‘”conserxatism” of Martin LutherrnKing.rnBut there is a hitch in playing too boldly with the facts: someonernmay notice even if forbidden to do so. Historical recordsrnarc there which can...
Clip Clop, Bang Bang
OPINIONSrnClip Clop, Bang Bangrnby J.O. TaternQuantrill’s War: The Life and Timesrnof William Clarke Quantrillrnby Duane SchultzrnNew York: St. Martin’s Press;rn338 pp., $24.95rnThe Devil Knows How to Ride:rnThe True Story of William ClarkernQuantrill and His Confederate Raidersrnby Edward E. LesliernNew York: Random 1 louse:rn534 pp., $30.00rnThe manipulative sensationalism regardingrnany display of the Confederaternbattle flag continues unabated.rnThe...