Since September 11, I have spent a great deal of time in interviews with all sorts of media people, who range from the well informed to the abysmally ignorant. One question that occurs with deadly predictability concerns the mindset of the terrorists: Just what kind of warped alien creature could possibly crash a plane into...

Since September 11, I’ve heard it more than once and will likely hear it again. The argument goes like this: Yes, all this banal talk about Islam being a “religion of peace” is, of course, a lot of nonsense. But the problem is not their religion but all religion. “Religious” people, you see, are all...

Amnesty for illegal immigrants is an idea whose time not only has ]3assed but, like Elizabethan collars and virginity, can hardly be imagined—unless what Peter Brimelow calls “immigration enthusiasts” are more fanatical still than the Muslim terrorists who struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11. Then before the strike, a major...

Terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., have focused the attention of many on the dangers of militant Islam. But as usual, our vacuous talking heads and elites are overlooking the two most important aspects of the attack: the revival of the centuries-old violent conflict between Islam and Christianity, and the growing capacity...

The World Trade Center attack may prove to be one of the grimmest moments in modern American history. Understandably, most Americans are enraged and demand revenge, while despair and fear are evident even in people who, only a very short time ago, managed to maintain a fairly detached view of the political scene. In this...

Sen. Jesse Helms’ announcement in August of his retirement at the end of his current term was an opportunity for vituperation on the part of the left-wing media that has so detested the North Carolina conservative throughout his entire 30-year political career. “It is alway’s tempting,” moaned the New York Times lead editorial the day...

Vicente Fox, Mexico’s president, began his state visit to Washington in September by issuing a public challenge to President George W. Bush to grant amnesty to millions of illegal Mexican aliens in the United States by year’s end. He said he wanted a “bilateral migration agreement” that would ensure that “all Mexicans entering the United...

George H. Ryan, Illinois’ Republican governor and bona fide “compassionate conservative,” has borrowed one from the Clinton playbook: He seems to think that a vast right-wing conspiracy has been out to get him since he took office, forcing him to decline to run for a second term. The real reason, of course, is that—due to...

National Identity Cards? You may think that as an American citizen, you do not own such a thing, and under no circumstances would you contemplate accepting one. That’s just something for Europeans, Latin Americans, people from countries with a Roman Law tradition, and other such lesser breeds without the law. Any American legislator would think...

National missile defense proponents and supporters of American abrogation of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty claim that Moscow is now grudgingly reconciled to both. When Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov irritably countered such suggestions, the Bush administration sent Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on a one-day trip to Moscow on August...

Amnesty for undocumented (as we nowadays politely say) workers from Mexico? It’s just another trial balloon, and the nice thing about trial balloons is that you can shoot them down. Ready, aim, fire. I do think this one, suitably ventilated, will flutter down to earth. I fancy the Bush administration, however kindly disposed toward Vicente...

The Bush-Putin mini-summit was considered by most Moscow pundits to be a success, with the two more or less agreeing to disagree about ABM, nuclear- missile defense (NMD), and NATO expansion—for now, anyway. President Bush did not pressure Vladimir Putin about Chechnya, but one point that he ever-so-gently raised did irk the Little Colonel, according...

Slobodan Milosevic’s delivery to a NATO airbase in Tuzla marks the end of an era—but which one? It appears to conclude the period in which the Serbian people tried to find leaders who would not accept that their national interests should be defined either by a socialist Yugoslavia or by the great powers. Their willingness...

As a man and scholar, Amos Perlmutter (1931-2001) stood out for his intellectual honesty, although rectitude in this case was wedded to a jovial personality and an unfailing wit. Having emigrated as a child alongside his parents and sister from Europe to Israel, Amos served his adopted country as a military officer. By all accounts,...

President Bush, many of us believed, was preparing to appoint a set of jurists committed to the rule of law to the federal bench, but this has been thrown into doubt by Senator Jeffords leaving the Republican party. One of the immediate results of that move, which threw committee control of the Senate to the...

The Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church (LCMS) is at a crossroads, and not for the reasons most might think. Conservatives and liberals within the 2.6-million-member synod have bickered and postured over their presidential election, held during the 61st synodical convention in July. But another issue of equal significance was not even scheduled for discussion—one...

The future of Christendom, according to the Population Reference Bureau’s 2001 annual report, is likely to be pretty bleak. The report’s chief conclusion is that population growth in the West has ground to a halt, while the Third World is reproducing like gangbusters. Tire numbers: “Of the 83 million people added to the global population...

Aleksandr Zhukov’s April 7 arrest in Sardinia was played up by the Italian DIA (an anti-Mafia investigative unit) as having eliminated an important arms-trafficking channel to the war-torn Balkans. The most intriguing aspect of the story, however, involves NATO, the struggle between Russia and the West for influence in the former Soviet republics, and the...

Bosnia is the United Nations’ first major experiment in nation-building, and the experiences of this multiethnic/multicultural state provide discouraging evidence that the “international community” is no more virtuous or high-minded than the old rogues who governed nation- states. Take the case of Thomas Miller, the United States ambassador in Sarajevo, who is rumored to have...

Vladimir Putin’s one-year anniversary as president of Russia was marked by a Soviet-style celebration. “We are back to pretending again,” my Russian friend commented as we watched the stage-managed antics of several thousand young people, all of them wearing T-shirts bearing the likeness of Vladimir Putin, converging on Vasilevsky Spusk (adjacent to the Kremlin) on...

Belgrade, Yugoslavia, was my destination on April 12. I was accompanied by two other members of Congress—one Republican, one Democrat, both good friends. Both had voted for the 1999 bombing, although my Republican colleague had voted for it only because he felt he had to “support our troops.” I had not only voted against it,...

“Borking” is back. The eponymous activity first perpetrated on Judge Robert Bork when he was nominated for a seat on the United States Supreme Court is the practice of painting a proposed judicial appointee as consciously demonic, in order to excite particular interest groups to oppose his appointment. Some might oppose Borkees because of honest...

The Italian election has dealt the international left a severe setback. Although the gap between the vote percentages of the center-right coalition (Casa della Liberia) and the center-left (Ulivo) was fairly small—especially if the hard-core communists (the Rifondazione Communista, who campaigned as the “left wing of the center-left”) are factored in—because of proportional representation, Silvio...

E.U. Membership was rejected by 77 percent of the Swiss on March 4. Inevitably, parallels are being drawn with what happened in Denmark last September, when the Danes rejected further E.U. integration by saying “no” to the euro. The Swiss, however, did not even want to begin investigating incorporation into the European Union. As in...

Igor Ivanov, Russia’s foreign minister, is usually calm, cool, and collected, but he looked nervous during his March 22 press conference. Ivanov, known among Kremlin siloviky (members of the defense/security apparatus) as something of a wimp, adopted an uncustomary frown and set about lambasting Washington’s recent “unfriendly acts,” especially the March 21 expulsion of six...

Human beings cannot be absolutely evil, according to Christian theology, because they are made in the image of God; though fallen, they always retain an awareness of good and evil. Recent reports in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo (February 26) reveal that some of the high priests of French existentialism and postmodernity are making the...

Jesse Dirkhishing was a 13-year-old boy living in Rogers, Arkansas, who in 1999 hooked up with two homosexual men named Davis Carpenter and Joshua Brown. Maybe, possibly, he agreed to engage in sex games with them, but matters soon went far out of control. First, Jesse was wholly immobilized: He was drugged, and tied up...

Ned Flanders—the gregarious, effeminate, Bible-thumping next-door-neighbor of Homer J. Simpson—has been canonized by Christianity Today, the leading voice of American evangelicalism. On the February 2001 cover, “Saint Flanders” is depicted in a Byzantine icon, holding a jewel-covered book in his left hand and making the sign of the Holy Trinity with his right. Marge and...

The Moldovan Communists won 71 of 101 seats in the February 25 parliamentary elections, to the chagrin of expansionist-minded NATOcrats. With an absolute majority in the parliament—which elects the country’s president—pro-Russian elements in Moldova are likely to have one of their own as the country’s chief executive. Moldovan Communist leader Vladimir Voronin announced that he...

The United States always seem to need someone to demonize in order to have a functioning foreign policy. Now that Hitler, Stalin, and the “Evil Empire” are dead and gone, we have to make do with such lesser devils as Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin-Laden. The French have no such problem. They do not base...

God is back! And He has His own amusement park right here in Florida—you know, home of Disneyland, Universal Studios, and Seaworld. Welcome to Holyland! Complete with a replica of Jesus’s tomb, a bookstore and gift shop appropriately called “The Old Scroll,” a legion of actors in biblical-era costume (including armored Roman soldiers) detailing the...

The Bush administration finishes its first four months in office, the big legal news is that there is no big news. There have been some hopeful signs: the appointment of John Ashcroft as attorney general; the appointment of Theodore Olson as solicitor general. Both are distinguished conservatives, the former associated with the Burkean wing of...

Carla del Ponte’s talks in Belgrade with President Vojislav Kostunica of Yugoslavia ended abruptly and acrimoniously on January 23. After an hour with Kostunica, an angry-looking Miss Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of The Hague war-crimes tribunal, rushed past assembled journalists and refused to give a scheduled statement. Her “list of demands”—topped by the extradition...

The Presidential Pardon of Marc Rich, the Belgian-born, naturalized American billionaire financier and fugitive who has renounced his U.S. citizenship and fled to Switzerland to avoid multi-million-dollar tax liability, evoked incredulous responses from many. Said New York’s Mayor Rudy Guiliani, “When I first heard about it, my— my reaction was, quite honestly, no. No. It’s...

Teddy Kennedy, the famed moral exemplar, read his former senatorial colleague John Ashcroft the riot act during confirmation hearings. Ashcroft was extreme; his constitutional understanding of gun control was “radical.” The senatorial face grew flush—presumably with anger, since it was a bit early in the day for more potent stuff. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware...

The Church of England’s conspiracy against traditional morality reached new depths during December, when their magazine Celebrate announced their official poster child for teenage chastity: Louisiana pop-tart Britney Spears. For those who do not own a television or subscribe to People, Rolling Stone, or Christianity Today, Miss Spears sells more records than any other female...

George W. Bush is already under pressure not to “forget our global responsibilities.” The usual suspects have taken their cue from a January 3 Washington Times article by the paper’s military correspondent. Bill Gertz, who is notorious for obtaining and publishing classified information. Gertz, citing a Defense Intelligence Agency report from last summer, claimed that...

The death in January of the British journalist (and Chronicles contributor) occasioned a startling outpouring of grief. The Daily Telegraph of London weighed in with five pages, and that was just on the next day. Every one of Waugh’s many admirers was permitted a remembrance—even in newspapers he had ridiculed, such as the Observer and...

“Dr. King was a strong and clear voice for freedom,” declared President George W. Bush during a Martin Luther King, Jr., Day commemoration. His nominee for attorney general, John Ashcroft, proudly proclaimed during Senate testimony that, “By executive order, I made Missouri one of the first states to recognize Martin Luther King Day.” These are...

Matthew Shepard, a young homosexual man murdered in Laramie, Wyoming, in October 1998, is the new “messiah” figure of one of the most evocative contemporary mythologies created by our ostensibly anti-religious rulers. As far as we can tell, Shepard seems to have been a quiet person who had the ill fortune to encounter a pair...

The NAACP vows to campaign against every senator who voted to confirm John Ashcroft as attorney general. Oh, how we ought to hope so! Get out there, guys! Show us what dopes you’re capable of being when you try hard! Ideologues—e.g., the folk who run the NAACP these days—don’t normally receive the attention they deserve....

Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day, I asserted a few months ago in Chronicles (“Taking Stock,” Views, November 2000), would “seek to persuade Middle Canadian voters that the [governing] Liberals are their enemies, not their friends.” I also argued that he didn’t “play by his enemies’ rules,” and that his party was “a viable alternative to...

How did Al Gore blow it? He had everything going for him. He was the heir to one of the most successful administrations in American history. The length and extent of our prosperity were unprecedented. Our position in the world had never been higher. All agreed, with polls to back them up, that if the...

The U.S. Supreme Court has put an end to five weeks of uncertainty. In the early days of December, in the twilight between the certification of George W. Bush as the winner of Florida’s electoral votes and the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that the Florida Supreme Court was wrong to intervene, only one...

Al Gore’s exit to political oblivion has no doubt delighted many conservatives. But there is nothing for conservatives to cheer about in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore, the instrument of Gore’s demise. The unsigned majority opinion concluded that Florida’s recount procedures violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, because...

George W. Bush, as President of die United States, can be counted on in the first six months to . . . well, I should be honest here (with hand on heart). I don’t think any of us can say with much precision what my governor will accomplish in the new office whose door he...

Left Behind: the movie is coming soon to a theater near you—maybe. Supporters of the multi-million dollar evangelical end-times film are attempting to sponsor it in theaters across the nation. Released first on video in order to drum up support, the film stars Kirk Cameron, former teen heartthrob and star of ABC’s Growing Pains. Just...

The presidential election of 2000 is one of the great non-events of modern history. Paradoxically, it may have a powerful effect in waking people up to the reality of what we laughingly call our “democratic institutions.” So far from this election calling into question the “wisdom of the Founding Fathers,” it proves they were right...

States’ rights suffered another blow last October, when President Clinton signed into law a $58-billion transportation bill. Tucked away amidst the election-year pork-barrel spending was a provision which, in effect, sets a nationwide drunk-driving standard. Under section 351 of the new law, state receipt of federal highway funds is made contingent upon adoption of a...

The Onion caused quite a stir a couple of weeks ago when it was read by an unsuspecting Christian. Through the power of the internet and e-mail, a satirical story entitled “Harry Potter Books Spark Rise in Satanism Among Children” was forwarded from one concerned Christian to another. Chilling (and entirely fictional) examples of blatant...