Chelsea, otherwise known as Bradley Manning, has petitioned the US Army to give him transgender procedures that will enable him to spend his 35 years pretending to be a woman in a woman’s prison. Apart from the surgeries and hormone therapy involved, it sounds like a great idea. I mean, imagine the film version starring...

In Duncan Oklahoma, two black “teens,” driven by a white teen driver, murdered a complete stranger–an Australian student and baseball player. The only motive given so far is that they were bored. Since the victim was white and at least one of the three a devotee of the racist thug doggerel known as rap, there...

  At The Nation someone named Ari Berman is foaming at the mouth over North Carolina’s sensible decision to require official identification documents to register voters and permit them to vote.  This “voter suppression law,” he positively shrieks, is “the worst in the nation.” Nearly everyone who is not a leftwing faddist is aware, first, that North...

  The Obama administration, citing an ominous increase in online chatter in the terrorist community, has closed down 19 diplomatic posts in Muslim countries, and this morning (5 August) the State Department revealed that they will stay closed because of the continuing threat.   It is perfectly possible that there the CIA has detected a...

  I have filled enough pages on same-sex marriage to make a book, at least by the low standards of neoconservative publishing, and only one important question remains to be settled: What is to be done?  It is an important question, not only because marriage is a vital part of ordinary life, but also because...

  Hardly a day goes by that someone does not email or telephone me with the news that some allegedly conservative writer has finally endorsed “Gay Marriage.”  I’d rather not name names, but the most amusing so far has been an online screed declaring Andrew Sullivan the “most important political writer of his generation.”  All...

  The little piece on Egypt I scribbled out and I posted the other day could have been put up any time since the beginning of the Cairo protests, planned, supported, and subsidized by the US Department of State.  If I can find a moment, I’ll revise and expand, but for now, I am just...

  It is almost as if Mohammed Morsi has been reading Chronicles–or at least studying Egyptian history.  (And if he fails–as I hope he does–to take decisive action, he will soon be an unimportant piece of that history.)  Nightmares like Egypt can be ruled in only one of two ways:  either by a fanatical religious tyranny...

  Yesterday’s congressional performances by the head of the National Security Administration and the deputy director of the FBI deserve an award, but it is the KIDS awards handed out for best children’s TV programs.  Even an American adolescent should be able to spot the lies and contradictions.   First, we were informed that surveillance...

  Living in America these days is something like being a character in a Philip K. Dick novel:  Instead of learning from our mistakes and moving on, our leaders continue to hit the replay button, over and over and over.   Syria is using chemical weapons against the rebels, so we are told, and  leading...

  French police have arrested a suspect in the knife attack on a French soldier.  The suspect is 22 year old male “fairly recently converted to Islam.”  The attack in a Paris suburb recalls the recent beheading of an English soldier in the London suburb of Woolwich, where the attacker, again, appears to have been...

  Only in America. Only in America could religious conservatives get worked up over the Boy Scouts’ decision to admit openly homosexual boys to their ranks.   We all knew this decision was inevitable, if not this week then next year.  What possible difference can it make?  The mere fact that there was a debate...

  If we lived in a real (not to say free) country, then we would be reading something like the following exchanges:   Congressman Issa:  So, Ms Lerner, how and when exactly did you learn that your department was illegally targeting conservative and pro-life groups. Lerner:  Congressman Issa, on the advice of my attorney, I...

  Obama administration officials have convenient ways of evading responsibility.  Hilary made her getaway before some of the truth about Benghazi began to ooze out from the cracks, and Holder not only has recused himself from the investigation of the AP story but he blames subordinates for all his woes.  Best of all, perhaps, is...

  Let me second Tom Piatak.  I think the best way to start appreciating Ella is by getting (off iTunes, for example) the various songbooks she recorded–Cole Porter, Gershwin, Rogers and Hart.  In these she sings mainly straight without a lot of jazzing around.  My wife generally dislikes most jazz (except George Shearing and a...

  Last night’s shoot-out in Boston must have brought as much joy to the Kremlin as it has dampened the spirits of  the White House.  Thrilled with the announcement that the primary suspects in the Boston Marathon Massacre were white, anti-American leftists were hoping for the big score, another Tim McVeigh to prove that Tea...

  A great deal of ink is being spilled on the two Supreme Court cases taking up same-sex marriage, but the effect is rather like the ink released by a cuttlefish to cloud the vision of its enemies.  To anticipate my conclusion, let me go on record as saying that family-values conservatives have done vastly...

  Arrayed against the Earps in Tombstone was a loose and constantly shifting set of alliances known as “The Cowboys.”  Eastern journalists, looking for sensational material, followed the Cowboys’ enemies and rivals in describing them as an organized gang, but no one could quite figure out who the gang’s leader was—Ike Clanton, Bill Brocius, or...

On Saturday night, my wife and I were guests of our friends Jim and Betsy  Easton, at a performance of Handel’s Messiah.  The concert was a joint production of the Rockford Symphony Orchestra and the Mendelssohn Club chorus.  The four professional soloists from out of town sang beautifully, but it was the orchestra and chorus that made  greatest...

  Just when I was beginning to think the neoconservatives had reached the nadir of ignorance with people like Jonah Goldberg and David Frum, along comes Harvard grad Bill Kristol to flaunt his ignorance.  Bill was so thrilled that someone had put up these mock lyrics to a Harvard Fight song:  Illegitimum non carborundum that...

  Here is poor David Frum pretending to have second thoughts about the Iraq War for which he shilled.  Obviously, the only people who are capable of having  second thoughts had to have first thoughts, and there is no sign that Frum has ever done anything but pound a keyboard and recycle other people’s lies....

  Wyatt Earp, saloonkeeper, professional gambler, profligate, and alleged procurer of women, was for all his faults a great American hero. Earp was born in Monmouth, Illinois, home of Monmouth College, the  alma mater of our friend and colleague, the late James Stockdale.  Living in Iowa he was repeatedly in trouble, principally for keeping a...

  I said at the beginning that man is a mammalian species.  From this one simple fact flow many important consequences for the human race.  As the word “mammal” indicates, our females nurse their young, which requires diversification of the roles played by males and females, but even those words males and females tell us...

  Does the Left-Wing Christian really exist?  I think not, if we mean someone who equates leftism with Christianity.  People like Garry Wills are not now and probably have never been Christian in any meaningful sense of the term. They simply put a veneer of Christian imagery on the banalities they have picked up from...

  I have been arguing for decades that any conservative point of view, to be usable or even defensible, has to be grounded in an understanding of human nature derived from observation of man’s nature and history.  In an age where a Church may dictate morality, this understanding may be less necessary, though it must...

  What is the alternative to respect for responsible authority?  If we assume that all foods, recreations, forms of music, and manners of life are equal, then Liberals are right to demand social, political, and tax neutrality on traditional sauerkraut and on every other issue that might involve government control, including same-sex marriage, abortion, and...

  I endorse enthusiastically my friend and colleague Tom Piatak’s defense of Christmas.  As a curmudgeon, however, I am inclined, this time of year, to gloomy reflections. Perhaps they go back Herbert W. Armstrong’s annual diatribe against Christmas, which I never missed in my teens.  Armstrong, the founder of The Worldwide Church of God (and...

  Let us develop this point a bit.  Classical liberals like to complain about federal subsidies to agriculture.  They are quite right to denounce programs whose effect is to reward agribusiness while harming smaller farming operations, as if it were the government’s business to pick the winners in advance.  But they are equally opposed to...

I do hope someone will remember that I suggested that the threatened nomination of Susan Rice might have been a trick to lure gullible Republicans  (a redundant expression) into breathing a sigh of relief when she withdrew.  They are now leaping on the John Kerry bandwagon.  For the honor of the country which some of...

  Property is the broadest term and the one most likely to be misused.  In English, we can use property to refer to everything we possess, including our personal characteristics, or more narrowly as the things we own, such s real estate, or to the more abstract notion promoted by Locke, that as human beings we...

  Even before Barack Obama’s second inauguration, the impending retirement of Hilary Clinton is providing Republicans with their first opportunity to challenge the President. It appears to be no secret that the shortlist of candidates the President is considering for his next Secretary of State includes John Kerry and Susan Rice.   Can the President...

  It is conventional to refer to the great tycoons of our own and earlier times as capitalists.  The term has a complicated history, heavily influenced by Marxist diatribes against the accumulation of wealth and the influence of those who possess it.  Today, though capitalism is defended stridently by neoconservatives, the first generation of neocons...

  The Price of Free Markets One point on which Old Right and traditional conservatives could generally agree with Libertarians is the high value they put upon economic freedom and a deep distrust of government regulation. In our free-wheeling discussions, Rothbard and I struck a bargain. Since we agreed on eliminating about 90% of the...

  The Pernicious Myth of the Individual Part and parcel of the counter-factual theory of natural liberty is the myth of the individual.  If man were in fact naturally free, it would be because he is his own person, because, as some libertarians say, he owns himself.  Pure and utter hogwash that only a self-blinded...

  Classical Liberalism and its stepchildren—socialism and libertarianism—are founded on error, and no error of the liberals is more manifest than their credulous faith in individual liberty.  It is summed up in Rousseau’s famous declaration (which begins The Social Contract) that “man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Any normal person who has...

  Defenders of Bill Bennett and George W. Bush had only one real counter-argument:  Big government and deficit spending may be bad, but sometimes they can be put to good uses, so long as good people, i.e., “one of our guys” is making the decisions.  Though conservatives of this type are fond of pretending that...

  The American Tradition As Americans we owe much of what we are to the ancient, Medieval, and post-Renaissance Europeans who proceeded us.  Nonetheless, we are not simply generic Europeans.  We have our own peculiar traditions, some of which go back to Britain or even to the Anglo-Saxons, while others are more uniquely American.  ...

  This added section, which goes between the discussion of Machiavelli and the discussion of reason and tradition, is intended to sketch out a few operating rules for how conservatives should approach a question. 2B  Coherence and Casuistry Most conservative movements and initiatives fail and fail badly…   Failure is often the result of betrayal,...

  Horace Odes II.10 translated by Maria Frances Cecilia Cowper Horace. Book II. Ode 10 Sail not too rashly out to sea, My friend, nor, fearful of the roar Of winds and waters, hug too close The rocky shore. Who loves the golden middle way, Escapes the poor man’s wants and cares, Escapes the envious...

  There is nothing irrational about accepting the moral, political, and cultural traditions that have been handed down to us as part of the conditions of life in the European-American world.  Many of these traditions—washing before eating, respecting parents, working for a living—have been tried and tested for thousands of years, while the opposite—bad hygiene,...