what sort of job it would be. All I can sayrnis that if you join us, you mustn’t bernafraid of forgery, and you mustn’t bernafraid of murder.” Ernest Cuneo, thernlawyer and Roosevelt administration insiderrnwho served as liaison betweenrnBSC, the White House, and various U.S.rngovernment agencies, relates in a recent-rn1″ declassified memo how the BSC operated:rnIt...

Mata Hari known by her nom d’espionage,rn”Cynthia.” In her biography ofrnCynthia, Cast No Shadow, Mary Lovellrnrelates that both Vandenberg and SenatorrnConnally were targeted for seduction;rnwhile Connally told Cynthia, “You’rernwasting your time, my dear,” Vandenbergrnwas easier prey.rnYet another of Vandenberg’s BSC romancesrnwas with Eveline Paterson, arncharming, statuesque blonde and a professionalrnpublicist for the cause of CreatrnBritain:...

defense of human nature, has not Mr.rnBethell attempted to foist on us that discreditedrnconstruct, homo economicus?rnMr. Bethell readily turns this objectionrnaside. Let us suppose that someonerndid limit his own use of commonly heldrnland, hoping thereby to aid conservation.rnHe would fail utterly in his purpose. Hernwould merely provide those more self-interestedrnthan himself with more land tornexploit....

Evelyn Waugh, Virginia Woolf. . . . Thernnames are only a hint at the true dimensionsrnof that amazing rainbow-likernbridge, and whichever way you look at it,rnup or down, Connolly’s playing Sainte-rnBeuve against the three contemporariesrnhe had hand-picked for the purposes ofrnbenign self-identification is reminiscentrnof Mayakovsky’s ingenious claim that hisrndeadliest competitor for the position ofrnRussia’s greatest...

Principalities & Powersrnby Samuel FrancisrnPaleo-Malthusianismrn”Parson,” wrote the Tory radical WilliamrnCobbett in an open letter to ThomasrnMalthus in 1819, “1 have, during my life,rndetested many men; but never any onernso much as you.” Cobbett’s hatred ofrnMalthus, the founder of modern populationrnscience, is comparable to the dislikernthat most conservatives feel toward himrntoday, though they probably would notrncare...

that human nature does not exist, thatrnman is whatever his “environment”rnmakes him, and that if we just managernthe environment, we can also managernand manipulate human beings and theirrnbehavior.rnhideed, as Paul Gottfried points outrn(in an article in the Social Contract),rnMalthus’s essay was written primarily tornchallenge the vapid historical optimismrnbubbled forth by the left of his day,...

CORRESPONDENCErnLetter From Chicagornby Thomas RoeserrnThe World TurnedrnUpside DownrnA truly startling, topsy-turvy race is beingrnrun for governor of Illinois. U.S. RepresentativernGlenn Poshard, the Democrat,rnis embracing more conservative positionsrnon culture and social policy; IllinoisrnSecretary of State George Ryan, thernRepublican, is running away with muchrnof the Democratic base, including gayrightsrnsupporters. On trade, Poshard hasrnsupported a Buchananite economic nationalismrnand...

that a person’s right to hold a job shouldrndepend on performance and qualifications,rnnot “employer bias,” meaning personalrnabhorrence of what biblical patriarchsrnand Christian leaders have calledrnper’ersity. (There would be exemptions,rnhowever, for religious organizations andrnapartment buildings of fewer than fourrnunits.)rnOn this issue, both candidates havernbeen evasive, but Poshard has been morernoutspoken in his opposition. He beginsrnby stating...

Letter From thernArgentariornby Andrei NavrozovrnItalian LessonsrnTwo or three times a week, after dinner,rnI watch the traffic jam outside Franco’srnbar. What causes it nobody knows, but arnperfectly ordinary intersection of twornperfectly ordinary country roads is suddenlyrnblocked. Nobody knows why thernbest watermelon is the one with thernsmallest spot on the bottom, or howcomernthe tastiest tomatoes are alwaysrnmisshapen,...

able, and w liat the Collins Sanson! eannotrnconvey, is the extent to which thernItalians have learned to make a spectacle,rnas well as a irtne, of being cartooncharacterrnpredictable. This is a traitrnwhich their common spoken langnage,rnartificialK’ disseminated at the expense ofrnthe local dialects since the nnifieahon ofrnItah’ (but most ruthlessly since the ad-rnent of national television),...

VITAL SIGNSrnRELIGIONrnBe Fair to thernLiberalsrnby David MillsrnAfter some years of ecclesiasticalrncombat (Episcopal battlefield), Irnthink I know why so many conservativernChristians do not respond to liberalismrnas strongly as one would expect. Theyrnthink that liberals are just cheating: thatrnthey know the rules, but like spoiled andrnwillful children have decided to play byrnrules the)^ like better. Since they...

tliat American democracy was thernfreest form of government in thernworld, by which he also meant thernmost libertine; so free, in fact, thatrnAmerican societ}’ would haverncome apart had it not been for therninternal discipline of the Americanrnpeople. This internal discipline,rnhe said, was rooted in their profoundrndevotion to religion. Wliatrnwe are now seeing is the earnest rejectionrnof...

result may be the loss of millions of livesrnagain, perhaps forever dooming U.S. influencernon the Old Continent, just asrnWorld War I ended the Austro-HungarianrnEmpire.rnWhat kind of Europe may emergernfrom all this? A feudal one: not in termsrnof the tools of production, but in thernsense that nation-states may break up intornsmaller, more manageable regionalrnstatelets, mosdy along...

watched Ozzie and Harriet when I wasrngrow ing up in a home in which both parentsrnworked at factor- jobs, (llnhke Mr.rnRich, we did not consider the Nelsonrntamil’ “omnipresent,” probabK’ becansernwe often made the choice not to watchrnthe show.) Whatever mild appeal Ozziernand Harriet had for us came from the factrnthat Ozzie was a doofus. And...

be anything—sex, drugs, smoking, gluttony,rnadultery, avarice, sodomy—you fillrnin the sin, ancient or modern. Maybe wernneed a new federal ad campaign: “Sinrnsafe, sin smart. Responsible sinnersrnknow their limits. Remember, Hell isrnjust a matter of perspective.”rnAnyway, she was willing to take him inrnand wanted to let us know that, and shernpromised to keep in contact with us....

Adams aroused suspicions, he had nornsuch reservoir of good will to sustainrnhim.rnFrench antagonism toward the newrnrepublic flowered in Adams’ term, andrnAdams and his Federalist-dominatedrnCongress responded with extensive militaryrnpreparations. They also enacted thernAlien and Sedition Acts, a group of legislativernmeasures whose ostensible aimrnwas to allow President Adams to keep arntight rein on Frenchmen and other foreignersrnwhose...

Jefferson pointed to the TenthrnAmendment in support of this mode ofrnreasoning, but his reading of the Constitutionrnwas based in a tradihon that madernthe Tenth Amendment merelv a truism.rnOf course the Congress did not have anyrnpowers that had not been explicitlyrngranted. How else could a written constituHonrnbe understood? Jefferson mayrnnot have known that in the RichmondrnRatification...

The Hundredth Meridianrnby Chilton Williamson, JrrnWriting the WestrnThe Northwest strikes me as a betterrnplace than the Southwest to live in—fewerrnpeople, better hunting, plenty of invigoratingrnArctic air and the cold dryrnsnow—but the Southwest, probably, offersrngreater advantages for the Westernrnwriter. The presence of the Spanish andrnMexicans, the more developed Indianrnpopulations, and the clashes betweenrnthese and the Yankee...

HONK FOR ADMITTANCE] wouldrnbe standing open at the end of the drive.rnI had word of Glenn’s dogs from DavidrnLawrence, a friend in Los Angeles, and itrnseemed a good plan to approach thernColeman-Boyer residence protected by arnsuit of the Ford Motor Company’srnstrongest four-wheel-drive armor,rnI threw a tent and other camp gear inrnthe truck bed and drove...

COLONIAL ORIGINS O FrnTHE AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONrnA Study in Legal and Social History and PhilosophyrnEdited and with an Introductory Essay by Donald S. Lutzrn/ / T ocal government in colonial America was the seedbed ofrnJ—/American constitutionalism.” So begins the introductory’rnessay to this landmark collection of eight}’ documents createdrnby the American colonists—and not English officials—that arernthe genesis...

THE MEDJUGORJE DECEPTIONrnProponents of Medjugorje like to talk about its fruits,rnbut ignore the broken families, the pregnant nuns, the poorrnpeople bilked of their money, the division in the Church, thernde facto schism, the worst fighting in Europe since WorldrnWar II, the ethnic cleansing of Muslims from Gradno, justrnfive kilometers from Medjugorje — all which followedrninexorably...

EDl’IORrnThomas FlemingrnSENIOR EDITOR, BOOKSrnChilton Williamson, ]r.rnASSISTANT EDITORrnScott P. RichertrnART DIRECTORrnAnna Mycek-WodeckirnCONTRIBUTING EDITORSrnHarold O.]. Brown, KatherinernDalton, Samuel Francis,rnGeorge Garrett, Paul Gottfried,rnj.O. Tate, Michael Washburn,rnClyde WilsonrnCORRESPONDING EDITORSrnBill Kauffman, William Mills,rnAndrei Navrozov, ]acob Neusner,rnSrdja TrifkovicrnEDITORIAL SECRE’TARYrnLeann DobbsrnPUBLISHERrnThe Rockford InstituternPUBLICATION DIRECTORrnGuy C. ReffettrnCIRCULATION MANAGERrnCindy LinkrnA publication of The Rockford Institute.rnEditorial and Advertising Offices;rn92S North Main Street, Rockford. IE 61103.rnEditorial...

carr) most of their fat in the abdominalrnarea, and so do many post-menopausalrnwomen. Gaesser is essentially saying thatrnbnllets are harmless —so long as theyrndon’t strike you.rnThe evidence is incontrovertible.rnMore fat equals shorter life and more illness.rnThere’s plenty of room to arguernabout what should be done to curtail thernobesity epidemic, but it is very real andrnvery...

CULTURAL REVOLUTIONSrnTHE ICC, the International CriminalrnCourt—the proposed judicial arm of thernNew World Order—is one step closer tornbecoming a reality. For five weeks thisrnsummer, the United Nations engagedrnin a protracted, angry, and dangerous debaternon the establishment of the ICC. Inrnthe mainstream Western media, thernICC was portrayed as a permanent warrncrimes tribunal, a perpetual Nurembergrncourt. But in...

daughter, we shrugged. When he feminizedrnthe miHtary, corrupted its fightingrnforces with unisex cohabitation, wernshrugged. He’s us.rnHe’s us, but please don’t say that he isrnthe “Great Communicator” —betterrnthan Reagan or Roosevelt. For those ofrnus with long memories, this is outrageouslyrnwrong. He has not coined a singlernphrase, but engages in lachrymosernpandering of unutterable tedium. Hisrnshortest speech—four minutes...

Great Britain and of Canada now rests.rnThe supreme court of Canada did notrnquote what Sir William Blackstone saidrnabout the Glorious Revolution: “Inrnthese, therefore, or other circumstancesrnwhich a fertile imagination may furnish,rnsince both law and history are silent, itrnbehooves us to be silent too, leaving tornfuture generations, whenever necessityrnand the safety of the whole shall requirernit,...

Tlionias Fleming, executive secretarv’rnof The Ingersoll Prizes, says MadisonrnJones is “a novelist who has not beenrnafraid to tackle the most pressing socialrnand moral issues of our time, fiis fifthrnnoel, A Cry of Absence, is the most seriousrnfictional exploration of the painfulrndilemma of American race relations Irnhave encountered. Often considered arnnovelist’s novelist, he has won the...

PERSPECTIVErnJefferson or Mussolini?rnby Thomas FlemingrnThe right side of the World Wide Web has been aquiverrnwith reports on Executive Order 13083, otherwise knownrnas Bill Clinton’s attempted coup d’etat. How seriously shouldrnwe take the Clinton plot to abolish the last vestiges of states’rnrights? Setting aside the equivocations and dissimulations thatrnmark all of Mr. Clinton’s official utterances, one...

ed to it those enumerated powers relating to matters beyond therncompetence of the individual States.” In fact, despite Reagan’srnbest intentions (I think we should grant him that much), therncentralization of power proceeded as rapidly in the 1980’s as itrnhad in preceding decades.rn”True but irrelevant” is the usual response of a sincere Americanrnnationalist. As much as...

other cases of compact among powers having no commonrnjudge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself,rnas well of infractions as of the mode and measure ofrnredress.rnThis is the strongest possible statement of what becamernknown as the “compact theory,” and in the eighth Resolution,rnKentucky laid her cards on the table —and they were...

the manifesth’ incompetent and brutal murderers who work forrnthe BATF, the FBI, and other agencies that maintain strictrncompliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.rnStates’ rights and federalism, we know, are relics in the museumrnof dead ideologies; consolidation of power is inevitablernand progressive, the wave of the future. But we live inrnthe future, and it does...

and Gloria and drive them to a motel. He then hung up. Irnthought no more about it, until a few days later I got a four-pagernclosely typed letter telling me that our friendship was over andrndone with, because I had failed to offer them hospitality thatrnnight. (Because ofthe distance it had not occurred to me.)...

great church once stood.” There was this dour, Scots, monumentalrnprobity of his mind. But there was that other constantrninclination: a revolt against the businessman mentality, seekingrna home in the warm fog and smoke of intellectual argle-bargle.rnHe knew—and with every reason — how much he knew, andrnhow reliable his tastes were. He also thought—with very littlernreason—that...

The Way of LovernDorothy Day and the American Rightrnby Bill KaufiFmanrnThe title “Dorothy Day and the American Right” promisesrna mercihil brevity, along the lines of “CommandmentsrnWe Have Kept” by the Kennedy Brothers. After all, the fonnderrnof the Catholic Worker movement and editor of its newspaperrnlived among the poor, refused to participate in air-raid drills,rnand preferred...

American right—or is it a left, for praise be the ambidextrous—rnin which Miss Day fits quite nicely. Indeed, I think she is morernat home with these people than she ever was with Manhattanrnsocialists. They are the Agrarians, the Distributists, the heirs tornthe Jeffersonian tradidon. The keener of them —particularlyrnthe Catholics—understood their kinship with Day. Allen...

granted privileges and a flowering of old-fashioned Americanrnvoluntarism.rnDuring the heyday of modern American liberalism, thern1930’s, when Big Brother supposedK’ wore his friendliest phiz,rnDay and flie Catholic Workers said No. Thev bore a certain resemblancernto those old progressives (retroprogressives) — SenatorsrnBurton K. Wlieeler, Gerald Nye, and Hiram Johnson —rnwho turned against FDR for what they saw...

The child was given by God to the parents;rnhe was not given by God to the state.rnThis was by now a quaintly reactionary notion. What were childrenrnif not apprentice soldiers? Like their isolationist allies, thernCatholic Workers suffered years of “decline, suspicion, and hatred”rnduring the Good War. Girculation of the Catholic Workerrnplummeted from 190,000 in May...

was dead. Or was it? For in 1956, long after the Agrarian dreamrnhad been purged from the American right, supplanted by thernCold War nightmare, Dorothy Day insisted that “distributism isrnnot dead.” It cannot “be buried, because distribuHsm is a systemrnconformable to the needs of man and his nature.”rnConforming to their decentralist principles—and presagingrna later strategy...

championed the small businessman and the farmer against therndepredations of the railroads and Eastern bankers; stood for therndemocracy embodied in popular referenda, part}’ primaries,rnand the direct election of senators against the inherent elitismrnof part}- politics; jealously guarded the constitutional legacy ofrnthe Founders; and fought against forging entangling alliancesrnabroad. They were the last Jeffersonians, whose insight...

ed on the “right” to travel on the armed ships of belhgerentsrnshould proceed at their own risk; and yet, the rights of neutralsrnmust be protected. Although Robert LaFollette, Sr., his fellowrnprogressive, fought against Wilson’s request for a declaration ofrnwar and delivered a four-hour peroration against the Presidentrnon the Senate floor, Borah voted a reluctant yes,...

gressioual opposition to the court-packing scheme and handedrnthe President his first legislative defeat. The New Deal steamrollerrnwas stopped dead in its tracks —hut a battle was soonrnbrewing on another front.rnAs the financial and political elites re”ed-up the war propagandarnmachine, Borah bitterly obser’ed that the samernforces that had dragged us into the first Great War were...

cialized, level of “liberal arts” scholarship,rnunless those tools of the modernrnacademic method are firmly based onrnand sustained by the pleasure derivedrnfrom personal enjoyment, the)’ will failrncompletely in the aim of transmitting therntradition. “It was never the plan of thernIHP.” Taylor writes, “to simply teach thernbooks of Western culture, but rather torndiscover the roots of that...

create what for nearly 70 years have beenrnrecognized as classics of American children’srnliterature. Holtz’s claim that Lanernfunctioned as Wilder’s ghostwriter madernhim a minor literary celebrity overnightrn—especially in his home state ofrnMissouri —but, while some readers enthusiasticallyrnaccepted his conclusions,rnothers (including long-standing Wilderrnscholars like William T. Anderson) demurred.rnFive years later, the same pressrnhas published a full-fledged rebuttal...

part brief, tightly formal, and ironic, cryrnout for recitation. “Twice Cursed”rnopens the book:rnBristling with fallen treesrnand choked with broken icernthe river threatens the house.rnI’ll wind up planting ricernif the spring rains don’t cease.rnWhat ancestral cursernprompts me to farm and worse,rnconvert my woes to verse?rnRichard Wilbur’s generous introductionrncharacterizes Murphy’s most typicalrnvoice as that of “a Dakota...

Principalities & Powersrnby Samuel FrancisrnInside History’s DustbinrnEver since I committed the blunder,rnnearly 30 years ago, of signing up withrnthe “conservative movement” during myrnfirst year in graduate school, a certainrnpattern of behavior has enforced itself onrnmy decreasingly callow mind. The pattern,rnas a colleague of mine once remarkedrnto me, is that there seems to bernno other purpose...

those rials that bothered him.rnThe left, whether Puritan, Jacobin,rnBolshevik, or other, can do that becausernit generally represents histor’s winners, arnrising social force that actually has anrnagenda with concrete interests and ideas,rnand sooner or later the victorious mainstreamrnsimply cuts adrift the nuts, crackpots,rnand perennial malcontents thatrndeflect it from its main purpose. Butrnthe right, whatever the historical...

CORRESPONDENCErnLetter From Englandrnby Derek TurnerrnA Valediction for Enoch PowellrnEnoch Powell is dead, and it is as if a hillrnhas suddenly vanished from the horizon.rnBritish life, conservative life, politicalrnphilosophy, economic philosophy, classicism,rnBiblical studies, and learningrngenerally are all the poorer for the deathrnof this English original. Powell was arnman of many contradictions —classicistrnand romantic, patriot and imperialist,rnpolitician...

policy of recruiting Caribbean workersrnfor hospitals, for which he came underrnfire after 1968. An amusing anecdote ofrnhis tenure is that when he was visiting arnfriend, he went to say good night to thernfriend’s voung children. He knelt down,rnpicked up a potty from under the bedrnand smelt it. One of the children askedrnhim why he had...

body was allowed to “lay in” at thernAbbey—a privilege granted regularly tornall long-term servants of the church.rnThe (black) Bishop of Croydon, full ofrnChristian charity, said that this privilegernshould have been withdrawn in Powell’srncase, arguing that “Enoch Powell gave arncertificate of respectability to white racistrnviews which otherwise decent peoplernwere ashamed to acknowledge.” Somernleftists were even more...

sion, in addition, can make politicalrn”suggestions” to the EU Pariiament andrnto the European Council.rnThe essential issue for all Europeanrnnation-states is whether their national executivernand legislative bodies will makernsense in the forthcoming borderless andrntariff-free Europe. Why should smallrncountries, such as Estonia or Slovenia,rnwhich opted out of the defunct SovietrnUnion and Yugoslavia respectively, continuernto cherish their sovereignty—onlyrnto...