Hotel Rwanda Produced and distributed by United Artists Directed by Terry George Screenplay by Keir Pearson and Terry George Hotel Rwanda is a must-see for President Bush and his administration. It might make them rethink their oft-repeated assurance that democracy is an unqualified good to be encouraged among all peoples everywhere. From the day Belgium...
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Going Nowhere
Agostino Carrino, a Neapolitan legal theorist now associated with the University of Naples Frederick II, has published a series of tracts (available in Italian, German, and French) aimed at the European Union and its claims to legitimacy. Particularly in his last two works, Democrazia e governo del futuro (2000) and L’Europa e il futuro delle...
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If You Can’t Beat ’Em . . .
While Rockford, as I wrote last month, is becoming increasingly Democratic, Winnebago County, in which Rockford lies, remains fairly strongly Republican. Despite the massive growth of the City of Rockford over the last two-and-a-half decades (it now pushes all the way to the Boone County border on the east and occupies over 60 square miles,...
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Human, Not-Quite Human
The doping scandals that plague professional and “amateur” sports have done little to shake the enthusiasm of fans and sportswriters for their heroes. Fans still flock to the stadiums and spend their weekends watching NBA basketball games, NASCAR races, and even (if ABC is to be believed) AFL football exhibitions. As a child, I once...
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The Villas of New Mexico
“Hey, compadrito—bring the mail along with you when you come inside!” Héctor Villa shouted through the open window to Jesús Juárez, his friend, who was just letting himself into the yard by the front gate where the mailbox, painted red-white-and-blue, stood on a barbershop post. Héctor “Pancho” Villa was having a pleasant Saturday morning in...
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A Glimmer of Hope in the Holy Land
Mahmoud Abbas’s convincing victory in the Palestinian presidential election on January 9 provided a piece of good news in an otherwise somber Middle Eastern landscape. Often described as an old Fatah apparatchik with little charisma and popularity, Abbas managed to win 62 percent of the 775,000 votes cast in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and...
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Fly Boy
The Aviator Produced by Warner Bros. and Miramax Films Directed by Martin Scorsese Screenplay by John Logan Distributed by Warner Bros. From the late 1920’s to the late 1950’s, Howard Hughes seemed to own the world. Backed by the wealth of his father’s patented oil-drill business, he moved from Houston to Los Angeles in 1925...
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A Hero Among Heroes
Ever since the late 1960’s, the cultural Marxists of academe have worked assiduously to destroy American heroes or simply to omit them from textbooks—and they have been largely successful. As we approach the 60th anniversary of VE Day and VJ Day and the youngest of the World War II veterans are entering their 80’s, it...
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Perfect for This Moment
The hero of the hour, if not the messiah of the New Age, is Barack Obama, a gentleman whose name might lead you to suspect him of being an Afghan terrorist or the most recent American puppet candidate for the presidency of Iraq but who, in fact, is merely the freshman senator from the state...
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Three Strikes and You’re Out
April 2005 will mark the third mayoral election since I arrived in Rockford at the end of 1995. In that first election in April 1997, Rockford’s first (and, so far, only) black mayor, Democrat Charles Box, was running for his third term. For eight years, the city had been under a federal court order to...
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Selling Muhammad the Rope
The “War on Terror,” as the years roll by, looks more like a Maginot Line than like a Blitzkrieg. Instead of hunting down terrorists or expelling Islamic cells from the United States, President Bush has chosen to attack the rogue states of Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead of targeting Islam itself as the source of anti-American...
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Night Vision
“I hear thunder,” Ivalene said in a puzzled voice, looking up to the blue sky stretched tight across the great canyon. “How could there be thunder?” Will Ford demanded. “There isn’t a cloud in sight. They must be blasting somewhere close by to here.” “So how could they be blasting, smart-ass?” she retorted. “Blasting isn’t...
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Lebanese Rules
Between 1975 and 1991, Lebanon suffered a bloody civil war that had massive repercussions regionally and globally. Among other things, the hostage crisis in the 1980’s detonated the Iran-Contra crisis that almost destroyed the Reagan presidency. Today, Lebanon is relatively peaceful, though under a repressive Syrian hegemony, and the whole story may seem of little...
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Rumsfeld Stays
Having provided advice to a number of influential Balkan figures in my time, I know the sense of frustration when sound counsel is overruled in favor of proposals based on error or mendacity. I have been proved right, but only when it was too late: Crown Prince Alexander Kara-djordjevic would have been better off had...
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Puritan Pervert
Kinsey Produced by American Zoetrope Written and directed by Bill Condon Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures Pervert. Although the word has been drummed out of polite conversation in recent years, pervert comes inevitably to mind when discussing Alfred C. Kinsey, the sex statistician and subject of Bill Condon’s new film, Kinsey. Pervert perfectly applies to...
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Toward a Hard Right
What is the meaning of the election of 2004 for the American Hard Right? The question, of course, presupposes that there is such a thing as a “Hard Right” distinct from the Mossad’s Station Pentagon, or the “moral values” evangelicals, or the Girly Boys’ Jamboree. By “Hard Right,” in this context, I mean neither what...
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If We Make It Through December
From oracles to astrology to double predestination, men throughout history have sought hope in a glimpse of their future. As the Greeks well understood, however, foreknowledge is usually at the root of tragedy, and even Saint Augustine warned against consulting astrologers not because astrology is mere superstition but because of the possibility that the astrologers’...
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Love the One You’re With
The reelection of George W. Bush has confirmed the leftist takeover of the Republican Party. While conservative Christians turned out in strength to defeat the party of “gay marriage,” Richard Perle & Assoc. remains in charge of foreign policy, and Karl Rove and Arlen Specter will prevent any action on the moral agenda. Most movement...
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European Bushophobia
The announcement of President George W. Bush’s victory last November 3 was immediately followed by an outpouring of vitriol by a legion of European editorialists and op-ed columnists. The Michael Moore wannabes ranted and raved while the “analysts” whined and wailed. The tone of the former was set by a Fleet Street tabloid, the Daily...
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Saint Aborta and the Molesters
Vera Drake Produced by Thin Man Films and Studio Canal Written and directed by Mike Leigh Distributed by New Line Cinema Birth Produced and distributed by Fine Line Features Directed by Jonathan Glazer Screenplay by Jean-Claude Carrière and Milo Addica Mike Leigh, one of Britain’s socialist directors, begins and ends his latest effort, Vera Drake,...
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Establishing the Worst
My young German friend Karl-Peter Schwarz, a political correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, sent me an essay last month that was earmarked for his newspaper, about an Italian Christian Democrat and nominee for the post of E.U. commissioner of justice, Rocco Buttiglione. In early October 2004, the Berlusconi government nominated Buttiglione as part of...
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You Say You Want a Revolution
With a none-too-whopping lunch of 51 percent of the popular vote packed into their bellies, the nation’s “conservatives” quibbled and preached to one another about the true meaning of the 2004 presidential election even before the 51 percent had made it all the way down their political esophagus. “Now comes the revolution,” beamed Richard A....
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Bleeding Red, Feeling Blue
When I started this column back in January 2001 (as a “Letter From Rockford”), the United States had just emerged from a presidential election that made this country look anything but united. Red and Blue, until then simply convenient colors used by the television networks to designate which party’s candidate had captured the electoral votes...
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The Plight of the Homeless
In one of Douglas Adams’ very silly books, Zaphod Beeblebrox, the egocentric two-headed president of the universe, is condemned to undergo the ordeal of the Total Perspective Vortex. It is an excruciating form of torture that exposes the criminal to a sense of the infinite size of the universe and his own small place in...
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Endings and Beginnings
The meadow sweeping from the treeline down to the lake below had turned yellow almost overnight, with purple patches of the frost-seared ground cover showing through. The lake surface was no longer a smooth reflection of the stony peaks, standing against the cold sky and dusted now with new snow, but an infinite series of...
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The Jihadist Fifth Column: The Cure
Contrary to numerous optimistic assurances from high places, three years after September 11, the reach and operational capability of Islamic terror cells remain strong. They are present in areas previously closed to the recruiters of future “martyrs”—notably in Iraq—and in countries where, only a decade ago, they did not have a significant presence (e.g., Indonesia). ...
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Nostalgia’s Rearview Mirror
The Motorcycle Diaries Produced by South Fork Pictures Directed by Walter Salles Screenplay based on The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara and Traveling with Che Guevara by Alberto Granado Distributed by Focus Features Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Produced by Brooklyn Films Written and directed by Kerry Conran Distributed by Paramount Pictures It...
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Red Over Black
For hundreds of years, perhaps thousands, the Indians of North America practiced slavery. Until the 18th century, those enslaved, for the most part, were other Indians. The tribes of the Pacific Northwest, for example, raided constantly, principally to secure slaves. The populations of some villages were one-third slave. There is even an instance of a...
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Becoming Native to This Place
This fall has been especially beautiful here in Rockford. There is some truth, however, in the old adage that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” so I am not certain whether a year’s worth of rain and sun and cold nights with a moderately late first frost have all come together to provide...
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Where’s Joe McCarthy When You Need Him?
Many Americans are so disappointed with the Bush administration that they are tempted to vote for John Kerry. Some Democrats who spent the past 80 years waiting for the Revolution to blow over may think theirs is still the party of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,” as it was dubbed in 1884, but, by the 1960’s,...
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The People’s Militia
The U.S. Capitol may be the most easily parodied symbol of America. It is a gift to cartoonists, who can use the dome to symbolize graft, foolishness, hot air, scandal, self-seeking—everything, in fact, that can go wrong with a democratically elected legislature. In the past few years, though, all that has changed utterly, and not,...
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After Beslan: Change Course on Russia
It is hardly possible to envisage an orgy of terrorist savagery more depraved than that staged by Chechen jihadists and their foreign cohorts, who butchered, tortured, and raped hundreds of Russian children in the town of Beslan last September. The bloodbath at School No. 1 came at the end of a week in which two...
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Dim Young Things
Bright Young Things Produced by Doubting Hall Limited Written and directed by Stephen Fry from Evelyn Waugh’s novel Vile Bodies Distributed by Icon Film Distribution and Think Film, Inc. Stephen Fry’s Bright Young Things is a vibrant, hectic, but finally disappointing adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s second novel, Vile Bodies (1930). Although Fry has assembled an...
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Polka Can’t Die
Rockford’s annual On the Waterfront festival is just the sort of thing I should like—in theory, at least. Held every Labor Day weekend since 1985, On the Waterfront is the largest community event in Rockford and features both local and national musical acts. The entire downtown is closed to all but foot traffic for three...
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The Call of Blood
We Americans pride ourselves on being a nation of rootless individuals, cut off from the history that chained Old Europe to a cycle of wars and revolutions and bound to one another not by ties of blood and soil but only by the bloodless abstraction of self-evident truths. Rooted in no one place, our corporate...
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The Grave Robbers
From the dry wash where they sat in camp chairs beneath an improvised ramada built of box-elder poles with armloads of cut greasewood laid on top, they could just make out, through the brush that obscured the wash, the wide, shallow cave arched thinly across the enigmatic yellow face of the opposing sandstone cliff. Lance...
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Redeployment of U.S. Forces Overseas: Long Overdue, Too Slow
Many Central Europeans who are now in their late middle age or older have fond memories of American soldiers in their midst. In France in 1944, nylon stockings and chocolates were the tools of seduction, resented by men and welcomed by ladies. In Germany in early 1945, the G.I. came to be seen as liberator,...
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What’s the Big Idea?
The Village Produced by Touchstone and Blinding Edge Pictures Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan Distributed by Buena Vista Pictures The Manchurian Candidate Produced and distributed byParamount Pictures Directed by Jonathan Demme Screenplay by Daniel Pyne from the novel by Richard Condon George Axelrod (1962 screenplay) María, Full of Grace (María, llena eres de...
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Where Have All the Nazis Gone?
Back in the 1960’s, as a graduate student at Yale, I kept hearing that the Germans had still not confronted their past. They would do so only when they understood that Hitler, as explained by German leftist historian Fritz Fischer, was not a Betriebsunfall (operational accident) but emerged from Germany’s history, which went in a...
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Rolling Home to Rockford
According to the official website of the Lake Michigan Circle Tour, if we had stuck to the prescribed route, our excursion would have taken us approximately 1,160 miles. Here on our 12th day out, however, we have just logged our 2,200th mile, and we are still 30 miles east of Rockford. My obsession with lighthouses...
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Fighting Among the Hedgerows
As a young college student, I accepted implicitly all the goals of the Civil Rights revolution. I believed firmly that schools should be integrated, even though the nearest thing to integration I had ever experienced was going to school with a part-Ojibwe in Superior, Wisconsin, a lily-white town in which black people were not allowed...
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Montage Mirage
Fahrenheit 9/11 Produced by Miramax Films and Dog Eat Dog Films Written and directed by Michael Moore Distributed by Lions Gate Films, Inc. Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 is shallow, manipulative, and malicious. It is also the slickest piece of cinematic propaganda since Sergei Eisenstein made Battleship Potemkin in 1925. Like Eisenstein’s film, Fahrenheit 9/11’s political...
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Remember the Texas Revolution
“Chicano Studies” departments at American universities portray the Battle of the Alamo as the triumph of the lawful rulers of Texas over a rowdy, drunken band of illegal aliens. Such a portrayal has a delicious irony to it, though it is mostly false. Almost always omitted from the Chicano version of events are several unsettling...
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One Moment in Time
“You mean,” said Marina, “you mean that we’re sitting here over Hell?” “Over a hell, conceivably. There are many hells, and the same place may be Hell or Purgatory, depending upon the situation. Most of them are private.” Those words echo in my thoughts as we approach the building. Turner School, built in 1898, is...
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The Machine in the Desert
How many years has it been since I became acquainted with Moab, Utah? More than I had realized, apparently. When I first saw the place, a room at the Canyonlands Motel cost $19.95 per night, I recall, and you could get breakfast at the motel’s cafeteria, pleasantly located in the shade of a hoary cottonwood...
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Military Unintelligence
Nothing is riskier in life—at any rate, for those interested in discovering that elusive thing, the “truth”—than to assume that what one has personally experienced years ago can be a useful guide in judging present problems. It is particularly true when the time gap between the two exceeds 50 years. This said, I feel almost...
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Whose Museum? What Nation?
Nations define themselves by what they choose to remember. The growing complexity of the United States is suggested by the ever-expanding volume of her historical memories, the range of groups and events that are commemorated, often in the name of multiculturalism. Just look at the changing landscape of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., with...
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Consequences of E.U. Enlargement
The European Union underwent a major transformation last May. It was enlarged to 25 states when eight former communist countries—Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, and three Baltic republics—were formally admitted, as well as Malta and Cyprus. The union is now a political and economic giant of 450 million people, the largest single market...
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And Agamemnon Dead
Troy Produced by Warner Brothers and Plan B Films Directed by Wolfgang Petersen Screenplay by David Benioff Distributed by Warner Bros Control Room Produced by Andrew Rossi, Hani Salama, and Rosadel Varela Directed by Jehane Noujaim Distributed by Magnolia Pictures “Inspired by the Iliad.” These helpful words appear on-screen just before the final credits roll...
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The End of the Innocence
This town ain’t big This town ain’t small. It’s a little of both they say. And our ball club may be minor league But at least it’s Triple A. . . . We don’t worry ’bout the pennant much We just like to see the boys hit it deep There’s nothing like the view From...