Category: Imported

Letter FromnFinlandnby Arnold BeichmannNo Miracles This TimenLast year, when I was in Helsinki, Inmade a great discovery:, probably thenbest informed people on Soviet affairsnare the Finns, whose Russian-watchingngoes back almost two centuries, longnbefore the Bolshevik coup of 1917.nI was in Finland talking with veterannanalysts, official and unofficial, aboutnthe overpowering Soviet military presencenthat has Norway, Denmark,...

abstention vote was on the use ofnchemical and bacteriological weapons.nEven worse, in November 1983nFinland voted to condemn the USnrescue operation in Grenada, evennthough the operation had the supportnof the Caribbean states. On El Salvador,nFinland voted against the US and.nfor a Soviet-backed resolution condemningnhuman rights violations innthat country. (Here I should point outnthat this anti-US resolution...

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the book Is Elvis Alive?, points out thatnthe proliferation of Elvis imitatorsnmakes it easier for Elvis to hide out.nMany people who think they’re lookingnat an imitator may actually benseeing the real thing. Think about that.nAnd stranger things have happened.nConsider the final words of Ms.nBrewer-Giorgio’s book:nAround the 10th anniversary ofnthe death of Elvis Presley, annAtlanta attorney...

silt-rich bottom of huge prehistoric LakenAgassiz. It took only a hundred years ornso for man to nearly deplete it.nAnd now John Gardner, a NorthnDakota agronomist, is telling GreatnPlains farmers from Saskatchewan tonTexas how to rescue their most valuablenresource. What he says is basic andnsensible enough to make farmers blush.nBut will they listen?nGardner, superintendent of NorthnDakota...

PHILOSOPHYnDefining Lifenby Steven GoldbergnThe morality of abortion is entirelyna matter of definition: is the fetus anperson or not? The definition —nwhether derived from millennia of religiousntradition or from individual analysisnand subjective choice—both generatesnand justifies the intense emotionsnthat are given free rein when fact isnirrelevant.nThere is no logical or empirical waynto demonstrate the superiority of eitherndefinition,...

er, even these are incapable of overcomingnthe problem of definition; tonone who defines the fetus as a person,npragmatic considerations no more justifynabortion than they justify infanticide.nTo one who defines the fetus asnnonhuman, no moral justification isnneeded. Incidentally, it is not true thatnlegalization of abortion would be lessncomplicated if only those intimatelyninvolved — i.e., women —...

of the death sentence, even though atnthe time Missouri had not put a personnto death in nearly a quarter of a century.nSignificantly, the latter had professednhis innocence until the death-qualifiednjury was actually in place. Deals maynalso include agreements by the criminalsnto testify against comrades. Obviously,nthe death statutes have clout evennwhen they are not used for...

Merlin scholar Nikolai Tolstoy willnsoon go to trial to defend charges henhas made that the Macmillan governmentnparticipated in atrocities innAustria in 1945.nalthough they became increasingly dissatisfying.n”So then I began to readnhistory. And I went to the othernextreme — the more footnotes pernpage, the happier I was. But when Inwas reading these works and doing thisnscholarship,...

rather than surrender to the Nazis — asnhis chauffeur packed his paintings andndrove him to the safety of Tashkent.nThe rest of the Tolstoys had longnsince been killed, imprisoned, or exiled.nNikolai’s father had escaped as anboy, after having been chased by thenCheka from Kazan to Moscow, wherenhis English nurse, with the help of annEnglish Anglican priest,...

millan and incriminate Lord Aldington.nTolstoy has been informed by anfriend in British intelligence that thisnwas not an “independent” commissionnat all, but one arranged by Sir RobertnArmstrong, recently retired cabinetnsecretary. Tolstoy suspects that thengovernment wishes to preserve the formernConservative prime minister’s reputation,nand says the materials havenbeen mishandled by the commissionn(even though they strengthen the casenagainst Aldington)...

black pajamas, burned American flags,nand wanted the North Vietnamese tonwin; but to concentrate one’s attentionnon such people misses the attitude ofnthe vast majority of demonstrators andnmarchers.nMisses, that is, the dupes (I speak asnone of the duped). Both KaufFman andnGans argue that sympathizers withnHanoi were only an infinitesimal andnunimportant part of the movement.nThere is, I suppose,...

movement — a basically nonradical,nnonpolitical “peace” movement — isnbad history. The problem is that thenmovement, or rather its core of ideologues,ncontinues to exist and function:nit therefore belongs not to history but,nprecisely, to current events.nThe movement cadre never ceasednits activities, not even after the “victory”nof 1975. It formed the Coalitionnfor a New Foreign and Military Policyn(CNFMP)...

hundred undergraduates or undergraduettesn(as distaff students were officiallynknown). It was far from elite. Therenwere at that time only three collegesnwith a majority of public school men innresidence; Christ Church, New College,nand Trinity. These colleges werenpreempted by scholarships establishednfor such schools years, centuries, ago,nand legally impossible to unlock. Winchesternvirtually owned New College,nand Eton Christ Church. There...

AnHow to takenthe mysterynout of economicsnNow Clarence Carson makes it all clear — even makesnit interestingnWarmed-over socialism is the view we get in the media these days … in most of our schools … in thenmainline churches ….. and in most of the pronouncements from the floor of Congress. Why are the correctnprinciples so rarely...

EDITORnThomas FlemingnMANAGING EDITORnKatherine DaltonnCONTRIBUTING EDITORSnJohn W. Aldridge, Harold O.].nBrown, Samuel Francis, GeorgenGarrett, Russell Kirk, E. ChristiannKopff, Clyde WilsonnCORRESPONDING EDITORSnBryce Christensen, Odie Faulk, JanenGreer, Andrei Navrozov, John SheltonnReed, Joseph Schwartz, Gary VasilashnEDITORIAL SECRETARYnLeann DobbsnEDITORIAL ASSISTANTnMatthew KaufmannPUBLISHERnRichard A. VaughannART DIRECTORnAnna Mycek-WodeckinPRODUCTION MANAGERnGuy ReffettnADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVEnGeorgia L. WolfnCOMPOSITION MANAGERnAnita FedoranCIRCULATION DIRECTORnCarol BennettnA Publication ofnThe Rockford Institute:nAllan C. Carlson,nPresidentnEditorial and...

cy is totally dishonest. Except for anhandful of cases, the woman is objectingnnot to the condition of pregnancy,nbut to the prospect of having a child.nEverything testifies to this, includingnmost of the reasons advanced for abortion:na child would interfere with myneducation, my career; I can’t afford tonsupport a child; I have too many childrennalready; the child...

“GLOBALIZATION” —when didnit become a central tenet of conservatism?nAccording to Deputy Secretarynof State John C. Whitehead, it was innthe New Deal era that the US “rejectednisolationism and economic nationalism”nin favor of the “globalization ofnour daily lives.” The text of Whitehead’snaddress to the September meetingnof the Economic Policy Council ofnthe United Nations Association wasngiven wide circulation...

mainly hostile reexamination of annexperiment that has gone on for twondecades. The indictment includes thenusual charges of nepotism, politicalncronyism, ethnic politics, graft, andncorruption, but the situation is aggravated,nso the critics claim, by the powernthat has been transferred to the smallerndistrict boards.nThe whole argument is academic,nsince, in fact. New York public educationnwas never decentralized. Therenare only...

PERSPECTIVEnThe Real American DilemmanA merica is a nation of immigrants. How often is thatndeclaration trotted out to explain why it would benimmoral to do something about controlling immigration, asnif every country were not a nation of immigrants. If Britainnever had an indigenous population, it was overrun by Celts,nGermans, Danes, and Normans—to say nothing of thenHollanders...

country. He waxed eloquent over the family values of thenMexicans and the high intelligence of the Orientals. Finally,nI asked him: suppose we could set off neutron bombs all overnthe United States, wipe out the current citizen populationnand replace them with brilliant and hardworking Chinese.nFrom his perspective, wouldn’t that be a plus? I’m stillnwaiting for an...

South African blacks. What both groups are saying, innessence, is that they would like the United States to turn intonNicaragua or Haiti. Of course, all humane people sympathizenwith the victims of political oppression; wherevernpossible we would like to do something for them. But wenmust never forget that immigration policy is the mostnsignificant means of determining...

ceiling on admission, promising no more than 50,000nadditional immigrants as a consequence.nWhat should come first is not the interest of the alien orneven of US businesses, but the interest of the historicalnpopulation of the country. Family members must, as Lammnand Imhoff among others insist, be included under ancomprehensive total. We should continue, as Jeffersonnwished, to...

In examining the Celtic heritage of the Old South, it isnimportant to recognize that only those cultural traits associatednwith British Celts up to the 18th century are relevant.nThere are two reasons for this: first, all significant migrationnfrom Scotland, Ireland, and Wales to the American Southnended before 1800; and second, long-standing Englishnefforts in Britain to acculturate...

more liquor and tobacco, and were less concerned with thenuseful and the material.nCritics damned the British Celts, calling them “drinkersnand gamblers,” “remarkably lazy,” “adverse to industry,nnever working but from necessity,” and “holding that bodilynlabour of all sorts was mean and disgraceful.” One observerncharged that the Irish would “sit upon their hams, likengreyhounds in the sun,...

looked almost too small to shoulder a gun.” Another visitornin the Old South counted 13 “guns hung up along thenrafters” of a two-room log cabin.nSoutherners were not “bookish.” Formal educationnmeant less to them and their Celtic ancestors than learningnto master their natural environment. The Southern womanndescribed by a traveler as “sitting with a pipe in...

her intensity, her conviction that she has lived a good lifenand a productive one, and that.her one wish now, that keenndesire that keeps the fires of her life burning, is that hernheritage of crafts and wisdom and piety and goodness benpassed on directly by her, now to great-grandchildren.nLater we pay a visit to the outdoor...

be to bring children up without a culture till theyncame to years of discretion, and then let themnchoose. This would mean bringing children upnwithout a home; without intimacy, which getsnunder the skin, penetrates, shapes and forms thenvery tissue and fiber, muscle and sinew, of ournbeing. But children who are held apart from life, ornrushed from...

the “I” of the self was always a “we,” located within a largernweb of intimate human ties and those responsibilities that,nfor her, flowed from such ties. She can no more think ofnherself out of the tissue of unsere Leute than she can fly.nThese ties of community were much eroded and altered bynthe forces of liberalism...

demagogues and therefore be incapable of self-government.nThey must be educated. … A republican form of governmentncannot long last without providing a system of freenschools. . . . Ignorant voters endanger liberty. With freenschools in the South there could have been no rebellion innthe future . . . when our youth learn to read similar books,nsimilar...

Such policies showed that the bureau — and Congress —nbelieved that the freedmen were incapable of making it onntheir own. This enforced dependence required perpetualnfunding, which meant a continued federal presence.nIn an annual report Alvord showed the degree of controlnthe bureau had over freedmen’s lives. In addition to teachingn”sewing, straw-braiding, repairing, cutting, making garments,”nhis idea...

North Carolina is a prime example. And all Reconstructionnstate constitutions had s clause creating public, taxsupportedneducation for all children, regardless of race.nThe Reverend A.D. Mayo was a Radical Republican andnan executive in the quasi-private Peabody Fund. This was angigantic multimillion dollar school endowment, matchingnlocal Southern tax monies. Mayo was considered one of thentop education experts...

would not be temporary. And it was “necessary to preventnthe growth of illiteracy and anarchy in the North, especiallynin Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York.” This wouldnspread mind-control nationally.nPresident Hayes wanted to enlighten the public about thenvirtues of the Blair Bill. He asked an old friend, AlbionnTourgee, to write and speak toward that goal. Tourgee, anformer...

AT LAST: A WAY TO READ BUCKLEYnSOWELL, GILDER, KIRK, FRIEDMAN. .nWHILE COMMUTING TO WORKnCOMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED BOOKS. . .ON CASSETTE TAPESnLOW INTRODUCTORY PRICES OFFERED ON THESE CONSERVATIVE CLASSICSn1007 GOD AND MAN AT YAlE-lfm. E Buckley, Jr.n5 -114 hour cassettes Purchase $22.95n30 Day Rental.. $11.95n1021 F«EE TO CaOOSE-MiltonS Rose Friedmann9 – PA hour cassettes Purchase $36.95n30...

by Bertolt Brecht upon which it isnmodeled. And among these earlynpoems we spot another mentor, too;n”Invitation to a Quiet Life” showsnmore than a hint of W.H. Auden, andn”Carentan O Carentan” is imitationnpure and naked.nO Captain, show us quicklynOur place upon the map.nBut the Captain’s sickly.nAnd taking a long nap.nWell, what’s wrong with that? Fromnwhom will...

tutes reality, and he also sharply dividedn(on some days — Kant is a verynelusive thinker) subject and object; andnstudents of such teaching began tonbrood, “Suppose the mind gets itnwrong? How on earth would we know?nAnd isn’t all value really subjective?nWhich is to say not really true?” (Kantntaught that beauty is absolutely subjectivenand absolutely universal, but...

ten explore self, the brokenness andnelusiveness of self, the attempts tondiscover and reconcile; they also explorenother matters and use othernmethods. The book, then, is in partndeconstructive. For one of his poemsndefines, with clarity and suggestiveness,na major philosophical cause ofndeconstructive verse; and anothernpoem (more strictly a section of anpoem) is, in vivid free verse, a beautifulnexample...

evidence were needed, the degenerationnof the Philippines should be sufficientnargument against crusading democracy.nIn After Apartheid, libertarian authorsnKendall and Louw dispense withnthe “unitary state” presumption. Innplace of “one man, one vote” theynsuggest a system that would enablencitizens to express their political will atnseveral different levels: in short, “onenman, many votes.” On the economicnfront, the authors advocate...

Letter FromnWashingtonnby Samuel FrancisnTabula RasanIf George Bush accomplishes nothingnelse in his lifetime, he has at leastneamed a secure niche in future editionsnof Trivial Pursuit. Not since Martin VannBuren trounced the Whigs in 1836 hasnan incumbent Vice President beennelected to the White House. The lacklusternrecord of Andrew Jackson’s successornperhaps does not inspire optimismnabout the new administration,nbut,...

wasteland over which a leviathan statenpresides for the enforcement of equalitynand in which a political and economicnregimen centered on and driven bynenvy and by what President Washingtonncalled the “spirit of innovation”nprevails?n”Russell Kirk, Friedrich Hayek, andnIrving Kristol,” Mr. Kesler writes,n”would agree that a healthy nationncannot really be dedicated to any propositionnor abstract truth, because a nationnis...

pipe-smoker. Child molesting, maybe,nbut not mugging. Some time ago thenLutheran Standard ran a photographnof a man with a pipe, and somenchurlish Mrs. Grundy wrote toncomplain. Another reader, a pipe-man,nwrote wistfully about “the little songnthat Johann Sebastian Bach wrote fornAnna Magdalene, Erbauliche Gedankenneines Tobackrauchers,” with itsnhappy reflection on the spiritual meaningnof pipe smoking — “the smoke...

white cross that Saint Louis (1214-n1270) and his French knights went tonbattle the Saracens in the Holy Landnand North Africa. It is probably nonaccident that red, being essentially an”hot” color (as opposed to the coolernblue), was chosen as the principal colornfor the flags of Europe’s two mostnardently Catholic nations. In the casenof Poland a white...

whence the title of Stendahl’s LenRouge et le Noir. With the onset ofnindustrialization the red flag becamenthe emblem of the first “socialistrevolutionaries,”npopping up in Parisnand Lyon during the textile workers’nriots of April 1834. Subsequently drivennunderground by a ferocious repression,nit reappeared in February 1848,nwhen the red blinds were torn fromnoverturned carriages and brandishednover the first barricades....

in northern India 25 centuries ago.nWhat did he conclude? All life isnsuffering. Nothing is permanent. Thenego is an illusion. Escape this sufferingnby using your mind—prayers and supplicationsnare meaningless. Whynshould the universe worry about you?nBe a lamp unto yourself.nHis symbol is the lotus: an incrediblynbeautiful purple flower coming up outnof India’s filth. No wonder Buddhanwanted out...

LAWnMaking EnglishnOur NationalnLanguagenby Stanley DiamondnThe 1988 election marked anothernmilestone in the effort to clarifynour nation’s language policy and preservenEnglish as our common language.nArizona, Colorado, and Florida votersnall passed ballot initiatives to make Englishnthe official language of state government.nThis raises the number of states thatnhave declared English their official languagento 17, and momentum is buildingnin other...

grant in his native language.nA prime example of this .can benfound in the continuing debate overnfederal and state policies on bilingualneducation. At times these policies havencome dangerously close to making thenmain goal of this program the maintenancenof the immigrant child’s nativenlanguage, rather than the eariy acquisitionnof English.nUnder the dominant method of bilingualneducation used throughout thisncountry,...

sending to immigrants about the connectionnbetween English languagenability and citizenship when we printnballots in other languages. The ballot isnthe primary symbol of civic duty.nWhen we tell immigrants that theynshould learn English, yet offer themnfull voting participation in their nativenlanguage, I fear our actions speak loudernthan our words.nWhile previous government policiesnonly required the use of foreign...

career. Too, he has baited William F.nBuckley Jr. on this subject, so deftlynthat the imperturbable Buckley oncenthreatened him: “You queer . . . I’llnsock you in the g n face.”nBut Vidal is no Harvey Milk. Henscoffed at the idea of a “gay politicalnidentity” in his quixotic 1982 Californiancampaign for the Senate; apartnfrom endorsing the repeal...

if not embodiments — of Ben Franklin’snnotion of republican virtue. Disparagen”the love of power and the love ofnmoney,” the rake told the ConstitutionalnConvention, and elect to ofiEce “ansufficient number of wise and goodnmen.”nUnderneath Gore Vidal’s cynicalnskin beats the heart of a goodgovernmentnmugwump, surrounded bynfetid grafters and power-seekers, forlornlynseeking those fabled few goodnmen. The mugwump may...

and Bella Abzug. His most notoriousnwork, Myra Breckenridge, leaves mencold. He is disrespectful of, er, familynvalues that I hold dear.nNo matter. Vidal’s novels and essaysnwill outlast his carping contemporaries.nBurr and Lincoln and Empire andneven “The Empire-Lovers StrikenBack” will be read long after backnissues of The New Republic moldernforgotten. But it remains for conservativesnof some future...