No sooner did Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell issue his proclamation declaring April Confederate History Month than the ideological canister fire began. The proclamation is “incendiary,” huffed the Washington Post.  “Obnoxious,” sniffed historian James Mc­Pher­son.  “Mind-boggling,” griped former governor Douglas Wilder, the grandson of slaves and the first black governor in America.  And it was all...

Ann Coulter did not enjoy her stay in the land of Dudley Do-Right.  “Since arriving in Canada,” she wrote on her website on March 24, “I’ve been accused of thought crimes, threatened with criminal prosecution for speeches I hadn’t yet given, and denounced on the floor of the Parliament (which was nice because that one...

If the definition of a liberal is a person who won’t take his own side in a fight, Adam Ebbin and Kaye Kory, Democrats who represent Virginia’s 49th and 38th districts in the commonwealth’s House of Delegates, should have their pictures next to the word in Webster’s. Ebbin, a homosexual Jew, invited Johari Abdul-Malik, a...

The dispute over settlements has “transformed the American-Israeli connection and forced Israel to face new international realities.”  Israel and the United States are facing “the worst split” in decades, a former Israeli foreign minister asserted, and the tremors may turn very soon into an earthshaking shift, “unless the Israeli government moderates its position on settlements.” ...

You must have noticed that the National Education Association, the New York Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, left-wing bloggers, and even the Dallas Morning News went ape in March over the outcome of textbook deliberations in Texas.  It seems that the state board of education, dominated by political and social conservatives, prescribed changes in model curricula...

First, you realized that “Holden Caulfield” wasn’t innocent anymore; then, that he was old; then, that he is dead.  J.D. Salinger was 91 when he passed away recently in Cornish, New Hampshire, and that means not only that he had been disappeared and aged for a long time, but that he never was young even...

When a manufacturing company is confronted with the reality of a huge drop in product sales, the initial reaction on the part of the managers is to blame the marketing department and to demand that it come up with a new and more effective advertising campaign.  After all, the notion that their air-conditioning units are...

Secretary of Transportation (and former GOP congressman) Ray LaHood unleashed a storm of controversy when he told a House committee looking into sudden-acceleration accidents involving Toyotas that “if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it, take it to a Toyota dealer . . . ”  The reaction of the neocon establishment was predictable:...

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...

In good journalistic fashion, a Chicago Tribune article on Haitian adoptions (“Haitian adoptions left in limbo by earthquake,” January 17) consists of heart-rending descriptions of the plight of an American woman facing the sudden problems created by the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti on January 12.  The woman is worried about “her 4-year-old adoptive daughter,...

On January 10 Jovan Trboyevic, a good friend and longtime supporter of The Rockford Institute, died at his home in Chicago at the age of 89.  He will be remembered in his adopted city as a restaurateur extraordinaire who set uncompromising standards for fine dining and customer behavior.  As the Chicago Tribune obituarist recalled, “The...

By the end of 2009, the word on the Moscow grapevine was being picked up by pundits and journalists: Putin’s “return” is in the works, and the premier’s reoccupation of the Kremlin may take place sooner rather than later.  The tandem of Vladimir Putin and his handpicked successor, Dmitri Medvedev, is said to be coming...

The scene opens with children at a playground, laughing and yelling as they swing and jump rope.  The camera zooms in on a dark-haired little girl, seven or eight years old, running her finger through a dirty puddle.  Suddenly, thunder tears through the sky, and a downpour sends the children screaming home.  Later that night,...

The economic crisis is on the minds of everyone in Greece, and James Carville’s “It’s the economy, stupid” is on the lips of many Greek politicians.  The Hellenic economy is collapsing, and the huge and counterproductive public sector has failed to generate growth, produce wealth, and diffuse it to the people. The major European papers...

Swiss voters approved a constitutional amendment banning the construction of new minarets last November, to the howls of bien-pensant rage at home and abroad.  The proposal was supported by 57.5 percent of the participating voters and 22 of the 26 Swiss cantons.  It was originally drafted in May 2007 by a group of conservative politicians,...

Readers will notice a few changes in the format of the February number.  This is the first major overhaul since I became editor in 1985, and even a reader as visually impaired as the editor will note the larger and clearer type, the more balanced layout, and—if I may rhapsodize—the sense of spaciousness.  None of...

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review McDonald v. City of Chicago, a case that presents the watershed issue of whether the individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, established in 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller, applies to states.  Most Court observers agree that it appears very likely that the...

When Alan Blinder first proposed the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), commonly referred to as the Cash for Clunkers program, in a July 2008 New York Times op-ed, he foresaw benefits to the economy and the environment, and a “more equal income distribution.”  The program has fallen rather short of its intended mark. Most of...

President Obama’s nationally televised speech announcing an increase in troop levels in Afghanistan was everything we have come to expect from one of his speeches: vapid, dishonest, puerile, and–most of all–confused.  Speaking grandly of an exit strategy he never defined, he did not once address the more serious question of an entrance strategy.  What possible...

Yes, the Irish caved in and reversed their vote against the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty.  Gutless?  Of course.  But I’ve spent too many years in Dublin and Cork to be surprised.  The Irish did the same thing when they voted no to an earlier treaty in June 2001.  The next year they gave in to...

The recent decision by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) to ordain active homosexuals and adopt a more permissive attitude toward fornication has put many parish churches in the difficult position of choosing whether to remain in the ELCA.  One such church is Prince of Peace Lutheran in Rockton, Illinois, a village of some...

Security has always been a key issue for conservatives and nationalists worldwide.  But that’s not the case in Greece.  So voters in the homeland of democracy, displeased by riots and anarchy, the inability of the government to put down the protests, and the effects of the financial crisis, have reacted angrily against the “conservatives” on...

The one-year anniversary of the 2008 global financial-market implosion passed with little fanfare.  With the U.S. stock market soaring throughout the spring and summer, the Pollyannas of the American media preferred to focus their attention on the return of good times while ignoring all that ancient ugliness of last year.  In September 2008, at the...

It’s hard to know whether the dirty bomb the Washington Post detonated two months before the Virginia gubernatorial election will affect the outcome of the race.  The Post dropped it August 30, instead of October 10 or 15, when it would have done maximum damage to its target, Republican Bob McDonnell.  Other issues, such as...

The death at age 97 of Prof. Alex N. Dragnich, a leading American expert on Serbian and Yugoslav history, marks the departure of one of the last witnesses to an era in which this country’s involvement in Southeastern Europe was neither contrary to her traditional values nor overtly harmful to the region’s inhabitants.  His dozen...

Eunice Kennedy Shriver died less than two weeks before her brother Edward, beginning a month of tributes to the Catholic left’s first family that reached a crescendo when Senator Kennedy was laid to rest.  But there was a difference between the two Kennedy siblings that was seldom mentioned in the encomiums: Mrs. Shriver’s Catholic liberalism...

The insight at the core of the conservative disposition—that the future is invariably worse than the past—enjoys daily confirmation as the economic crisis deepens.  It seems that in many respects we have entered a new world, which, given the circumstances of its birth, is sure to be rather grim. We got a good glimpse at...

Nearing the third anniversary of their crime, the remaining members of the Jena Six at long last admitted what anyone with any sense knew: They are guilty as charged. The leader of the pack, Mychal Bell, had already confessed to second-degree battery on December 4, 2007, one year to the day after the attack, and...

President Obama’s July trip to Moscow was intended to “reset” U.S.-Russian relations but also suggested that there is a continuing tug-of-war in the administration between realists and “democracy builders” regarding Russia policy. The struggle was publicly kicked off by the March report of a commission headed by former Sen. Gary Hart and Sen. Chuck Hagel...

With the election of Barack Obama, opponents of U.S. intervention abroad were supposed to throw their hats in the air and cheer: The millennium had arrived!  The war in Iraq would end rather shortly, and the Bad Old Days of the Bush-Cheney-neocon Axis of Evil were coming to an end. So why are we embarking...

In the aftermath of the ousting of Saddam Hussein and the “liberation” of Iraq by U.S. forces, Bush-administration officials who had earlier compared Saddam to Hitler extended that analogy and suggested that postwar Iraq was like post-World War II Germany and Japan and Italy, where the U.S. military occupation helped replace totalitarian regimes with thriving...

When the 18-year-old Stanley Jaki entered the archabbey of Pannonhalma in western Hungary to become a monk, he would have seen over the great entrance to the conventual complex an image that still may be seen there today, a summary of the “enlightened” Viennese policy for regular clergy: On one side, King St. Stephen of...

Since I’ve just finished reading a two-page spread in the Wall Street Journal on sexual assault among staff at the United Nations, I hesitate to refer to a U.N. report in support of what I am about to say on sexual incontinence and AIDS.  Still, here it is, as quoted by Edward C. Green, a...

Michael Steele appears to be a pleasant enough fellow.  But he is off to a rocky start as chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). Within weeks of his election, Steele gave an interview to GQ in which he was quoted as saying that abortion is an “individual choice,” the refrain generally used by “abortion-rights”...

The bigger the infestation, an exterminator will tell you, the harder the pest is to eliminate.  Thus it is with illegal aliens, and one recent event illustrates that the infestation is so pervasive, it may be well-nigh impossible to stop. That event was a speech at the University of North Carolina in early April by...

It’s 9 a.m.  Do you know where your government is? An April 7 report issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security caused a stir among veterans and pro-life activists.  It was published to alert state and local law-enforcement and counterterrorism officials that the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis Assessment has suggested that right-wing...

Gov. Rick Perry was a star at the Texas “tea parties,” denouncing Washington and mentioning the s-word—secession—in front of enthusiastic crowds.  Perry had already made headlines by calling for Texas to reject Washington’s “stimulus” funds and by backing a resolution in the Texas House of Representatives affirming the state’s sovereignty, before he fired up the...

In recent years America has seemed to lack the sort of bold churchman who is willing to put his penny-loafered foot down and say enough is enough.  But according to recent press reports, the shoe has dropped.  Even in these degraded times, there is a limit—a line you just can’t cross. What is that line?...

The most obscene political speech I ever heard was delivered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2007 for the Orange County Republican Party’s annual Flag Day dinner.  He began with his stock boy-immigrant-from-Austria spiel, a version of which you might have heard him give at the 2004 GOP National Convention.  Then he brought up the red-white-and-blue...

After years of complaining about liability lawsuits against doctors and businessmen that award millions to plaintiffs and enrich unscrupulous lawyers, conservatives may finally have a few lawsuits they can support.  Across the country, victims of illegal-alien crime are filing suit against businessmen who hire them and cities that protect them.  In other words, leftists who...

Conventional wisdom has it that the recent parliamentary election in Israel has swayed Israeli politics further to the political right.  After all, the balance of power in the 120-member Knesset has shifted quite dramatically.  The political bloc that included the centrist Kadima Party and Labor, which dominated the outgoing government in Jerusalem, was reduced from...

Reading the newspapers, I wonder which straw will break the camel’s back when it comes to illegal immigration.  What will finally cause Americans to rise up and take back their country?  The tenth family killed by an illegal-alien drunk driver?  The 100th housewife butchered by an illegal-alien murderer?  Or the next lawsuit that awards damages...

The faltering economy is the major concern of most Americans.  According to a recent AP poll, 47 percent of us are at least somewhat worried about losing our jobs, up from 28 percent one year ago.  And 71 percent know a friend or relative who has lost his job within the past six months.  Thus...

In his Inaugural Address, President Obama declared: “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”  The President was paraphrasing Fred Astaire from the 1936 movie Swingtime.  Fred and Ginger sang Jerome Kern’s song “Pick Yourself Up,” which begins, “Nothing’s impossible I have found, / For...

In an hilarious episode of NBC’s The Office, Dunder-Mifflin übertwerp Dwight Schrute unwittingly adapts the words of several speeches by Benito Mussolini and Karl Marx in order to appear impressive at a conference for salesmen.  “Blood alone moves the wheels of history!” he cries, and by the time he gets to Il Duce’s “It is...

The National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed the suspicions of many Americans by declaring on December 1 of last year that the U.S. economy entered a recession in December 2007.  The recession’s duration has already exceeded the postwar average (10 months), and it could surpass the two longest (both 16 months) since World War II. ...

Upon being congratulated for defeating the Romans at Asculum in 279 b.c. during the Pyrrhic War, King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who had lost half of his army during the battle, said something to the effect of “Another victory like this, and we’re done for.”  Hence the phrase “Pyrrhic victory,” which could probably be applied to...

Did John McCain throw the election? Is it just me, or was there a certain elegaic tone to the Republican presidential campaign, a McCain’s Last Hurrah narrative that precluded victory around the time the stock market took a dive?  It was then that McCain signed a joint statement with his Democratic rival, urging lawmakers “to...

Aleksy II, Patriarch of Moscow and head of the Russian Orthodox Church, died of heart failure on December 5, 2008, at the age of 79. Born in Estonia in 1929 into a pious family of Russian émigrés of German extraction, Aleksei Mikhailovich Ridiger was ordained a priest in 1950, completed his theological studies in St....

Chronicles, as the premier journal of real American culture, takes notice, though belatedly, of the loss of two great scholars of American literature.  They were both admirers and faithful readers of this magazine, to which I had the pleasure of introducing them.  I knew and learned from both and like to think that I was...