company.rnThe plot of Utopia, Limited may well have been too complexrnfor an audience expecting an evening of cheerful tunes andrnlighthearted absurdity, but the libretto is one of Gilbert’s best.rnParamount, the Anglomaniac king of Utopia, is a despot inrnname, but he lives under the shadow of the public exploder,rnwho is empowered to blow up the king...

lars and to endless narratizations of the adolescent role-playingrngame “Dungeons and Dragons.” The rocketships, space aliens,rnand other paraphernalia are still on hand, but the impoverishedrnsensibility of the mass audience has banished everything else.rnConsider last summer’s Independence Day, which raked inrnbig bucks and has since acquired cult status. Despite the factrnthat the film represents the vaunted...

But it is possible to identify more proximate reasons for therngenre’s extinction. Two are obvious, one is less so.rnThe first obvious reason is the decline, if not yet the demise,rnof scientific literacy among the American populace. In a recentrnsurvey, only 15 percent of Americans could define terms likern”molecule” or “element.” Once science had been replaced...

interplanetary fiction and dreamed of sending explorers to thernMoon and Mars. It was a primary motivation.rnThis brings me to a third cause of the death of science fiction,rnperhaps not so obvious as the others. Science fiction, justrnlike the space program which it inspired and celebrated, alwaysrnhad a spiritual component. Clarke put it simply in his...

Our Phildickian Worldrnby Jesse Walkerrn••”^’^ ^^y^^ A ^ ^ j/^y^^’^ V’^^’^’A/v/U–rn^^^^^/V^S/VJ^/.’VNl^ggi.,,^rnSometime during the last decade, the Philip K. Dick cultrncame out from underground. Those of us who spent thern1980’s trying to explain our affection for this pulp writer no onernelse had heard of, this author of surreal science fictions andrnbleak realistic novels, have watched both...

insight is still valid, even if there is no God. (In at least two ofrnDick’s books, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and ArnMaze of Death, religions demonstrated beyond a shadow of arndoubt to be frauds nonetheless work miracles. And in at leastrntwo more. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and A ScannerrnDarkly, men have...

tive establishment began parroting the ridiculous claim (firstrnmade, I believe, by Bill Buckley) that throughout the Cold War,rnHollywood never made any anticommunist movies. WhilernThem! can stand on the strength of its story, the ants can bernseen as American communists, establishing cells (nests) inrnwhich new agents are trained (queens are hatched), to go forthrnand repeat the...

Man was the elusive “Raoul.”rnWhen Gorbachev resigns, Cancer Man thinks that his missionrnhas been fulfilled, but that very night, an actual alienrnspaceship crashes in Virginia. Cancer Man reveals more aboutrnthe depths of the government conspiracy when he remarks,rn”The timing couldn’t be worse. The Roswell story we concoctedrnwas gathering momentum. Had them all looking in thernwrong...

i ^rn1997 SoutHem League Summer Institutern* * *rnJuly 6-11,1997rn(Sunday evening through Friday noon)rnCamp St Christopher, Johns Island,rnSouth Carolina (Near Charleston)rnJirst-dass resort accommodations on the. beach, ^om ((DouSk occupancy),rnBoard and tuition: $375 per student Before jium 1; $42$ thereafter.rnSeminars in Soutfiemfdstory, literature, poUticdpfMbsopfiy, tfieology,rnand art By some of the South’srnfinest unreconstructed scholars, incfudir^rnThomas Fleming, David Aiken,...

hero of his youth, Edgar Allan Poe.rnIn the 1920’s, there emerged a smallrnnational market for the genre of popularrnliterature known as “supernatural horror”rnor “weird fiction,” mainly through arnnow-famous pulp magazine called WeirdrnTales. Lovecraft published frequently inrnWeird Tales and similar pulps in that period,rnand indeed the principal reasonrnthey are remembered today at all is becausernof him....

morphous insects compounded withrnreptiles and crustaceans) but possessedrnof vastly superhuman intelligence andrnpowers, they are hostile to human beingsrnand can be revived, resuscitated, or invokedrnthrough a kind of black magicrnknown to a few and practiced by nonernbut the degenerate (usually nonwhites).rnThe techniques for invoking them are tornbe found in various ancient tomes alsorninvented by Lovecraft, chiefly...

of those who have truck with them, butrnrather the discovery by the scholarlyrnbachelors who recount the tales that thernuniverse has no meaning at all, that allrnthe conventions and ideas and values onrnwhich their lives and those of mankindrnrest are but shadows in the ceaseless playrnof impersonal if not actually hostile cosmicrnforces. As Mr. Joshi summarizesrn”Lovecraft’s...

is over in his view—that would protectrnthe freedom and dignity of all Russians,rnthat would end forever the rule of corruptrnelites who have exploited the people,rnand that would nurture what talentsrnthe people themselves possess to buildrnsomething for themselves and theirrnposterity. Lebed calls his vision for Russiarnderzhavnost, literally “great powerness,”rnbut his notion of what makes arngreat power...

who ranges comfortably along the thousandsrnof years that make up the historyrnof literacy to spin a narrative that runsrnfrom cave paintings to CD-ROM, fromrnancient Chinese “bone-shell scripts”rncarved on turtle carapaces to technologiesrnnot yet in place. His History of Readingrnspans vast territories of the mind,rndropping names and tantalizing arcana,rnpausing to ponder, in the space of a...

CORRESPONDENCErnLetter FromrnBostonrnby Eugene NairettrnThe Return ofrnKatherine Ann PowerrnLast fall, an editor at my suburbanrnBoston daily urged readers to reflect onrn”a personal essay, lyrical but not flowery,”rnby one of our “neighbors” at thernMassachusetts Correctional Instituternin Framingham, the state penitentiaryrnfor women. “The least we can do,” hernwrote, “is put our ears against the tallrnbrick walls” and let...

only bright, but creative. In prison, shernhas joined a “women’s spirituahtyrngroup” and writes poems. “A long onerndescribes her as a warrior,” gushed an interviewer.rnAnd now she pens op-edrncolumns in which she dwells on sorrowsrnlike the fact that she gets only 20 minutesrnto shave her legs, and sometimes,rnthe water is even tepid! A lengthy puffrnpiece in...

the strangely well-preserved corpses ofrnmedieval Dubliners. There are plenty ofrnsigns of Queen Anne and the Georges,rnwhen Dublin was the second city of thernEmpire. Swift was Dean of St. Patrick’srnCathedral, and is buried there nearrnStella. His annotated copy of Clarendon’srnHistory of the Scotch Rebellionrn(“Thoroughly un-Scotifyed” is one of hisrnapproving comments) is still to be seenrnin the...

Reginald Denny being pulled from hisrncab, during the L.A. riots, and beatenrnby black rioters further worried the company.rnLast summer, Charles Morrison,rnHRC Director, stated that Pizza Hut’srnfailure to deliver to the Trusses was probablyrna case of “illegal redlining.” He toldrnthe Pittsburgh Post Gazette that “Wernhad looked at it every which way andrncouldn’t see Pizza Hut’s defense...

VITAL SIGNSrnLITERATURErnAugust Derleth andrnArkham Housernby Peter RuberrnAugust Derleth was one of the principalrnforees that established sciencernfiction as a legitimate literary genre. Hernwas a product of the “pulp” era, whornfounded a unique publishing companyrnin 1939 called Arkham House. He hadrnno long-range agenda for his progenyrnother than to rescue the writings of hisrnlate friend and mentor H.P....

time helper to take the physical work ofrnfulfilling orders off his shoulders. Then,rntoo, when Arkham’s inventory ran out ofrnspace in his basement and attic, he borrowedrnfrom the bank to build a climatecontrolledrnwarehouse.rnIn addition to extracting a physical tollrnon his health, the demands of runningrnArkham House affected Derleth’s writingrncareer during the last 20 years of hisrnlife....

of murder, non-negligent manslaughter;rnforcible rape; aggravated assault, simplernassault, intimidation; arson; and destruction,rndamage, or vandalism of property.”rnAfter the Attorney General delegatedrnthis responsibility to the director of thernFBI, “the task of developing the proceduresrnfor, and managing the implementationrnof, the collection of hate crime data”rnwas assigned to the Uniform CrimernReports Section of the FBI. Because ofrnthe time which...

which the academy’s board of visitors,rnled by Senator Barbara Mikulski (DMaryland)rnand Representative HelenrnBentley (R-Maryland), certified thernacademy’s conversion from callous disregardrnfor feminine sensitivities to ferventrnchampion of the rights of militaryrnwomen.rnAll of this happened before Tailhook,rnand before the humiliating aftermath ofrnTailhook (which forced a Secretary ofrnthe Navy and a Chief of Naval Operationsrnout of office), and before...

REGIONALISMrnThe AmericanrnRedneckrnby Joyce BennettrnThere ain’t no shame in a job wellrndone,rnfrom driving a nail to driving arntruck.rnAs a matter of fact, I’d like to setrnthings straight,rnA few more people should bernpulling their weight.rnIf you want a cram course inrnreality,rnYou get yourself a working man’srnPh.D.rn—^Aaron Tippin,rn”Working Man’s Ph.D.”rnThe hyperactive shopping mall aficionadosrnand franchise restaurantrndiners who populate...

who received the Purple Heart after takingrnshrapnel in the head in France duringrnWorld War II, and my brother Charles,rnan ex-Marine sergeant who saw action inrnVietnam, both came home. Unlike Daddy,rnCharles had to go to war knowingrnthat he was despised by many of thosernfor whom he fought, but his bred-in-thebonernconvictions allowed him no otherrnalternative and gave...

future, digging up the ruins of our townsrnand cities, may reconstruct a record byrnwhich they beheve these same hadrnnames such as Nixon and Burger King,rnRadio City, Tinseltown, Coca Cola,rnFreeway, and Playboy. And perhaps thernnames will sound as exotic and colorfulrnto them as the Indian names do to us.rnLarry Tritten writes fromrnSan Francisco.rnFAMILYrnEstrogenrnPoisoningrnby Marian Kestet CoombsrnAfirst-grade...

sessing or exercising them. The VirginiarnMilitary Institute’s “rat line,” a typicallyrnmale institution for the breaking ofrnyoung colts by stallions, is horrific ifrnmanned by males, but somehow terrificrnif populated by sweating, shorn, andrnswearing females. Men’s-club or lockerroomrncamaraderie is reprehensible, butrnthe same behavior transposed to a femalernkey is right on. Boys and men arernridiculed (and medicated) for...

of us. (Even so prudently administeredrnan institution as Rose Hill operates at arncost of $3,000 per day.)rnThe stated mission of the college is tornprovide an alternative to “the secularrnagendas, government intrusion, andrnmulticultural superficiality [that] arernnow the rule…. Classes are always small,rntaking the form of tutorials and seminarsrnrather than lectures, and . . . emphasis isrnplaced...

repair did not exceed three percent ofrnthe car’s suggested retail price. Whenrnthe plaintiff discovered his car had beenrnrepainted, he sued BMW. The juryrnreturned a verdict finding BMW liablernfor economic (out of pocket) damagesrnof $4,000, Additionally, the jury heldrnBMW liable for four million dollars inrnpunitive damages because it foundrnBMW’s policy of selling a repainted carrnas new...

cally. By taking issues away from the staternlegislatures—be it abortion, gay rights,rnor, now, tort reform—the Court endangersrnour liberties, and calls into questionrnthe fundamental concept of federalismrnand the very foundation of our governmentrnstructure, representative democracy.rnDavid ]. Owsiany is an attorney inrnColumbus, Ohio, and a member of thernhoard of trustees of the Ohio Alliancernfor Civil Justice. The...

paragraph of the Treaty, conceded thatrnthe former colonies were now not onlyrnwhat they claimed to be in the Declarationrnof Independence, “Free and IndependentrnStates,” but were now “Free,rnSovereign and Independent States.”rnWhen the war ended, relations betweenrnthe states soon deteriorated. Theyrnexercised their sovereignty as individualrnnations by, for example, raising tariffrnbarriers against each other’s importedrngoods. By 1786 relations...

one fell swoop we could eliminate thernunlawful and fraudulent 14th and 16thrnamendments and fix the flaw in thernConstitution that gives Supreme CourtrnJustices lifetime appointments.rnSince the Civil War, or more correctly,rnthe War Between the States, the federalrngovernment has become more and morernabusive and tyrannical. All three branchesrnof the federal government increasinglyrnignore the requirements of the Constitution.rnAs...

INCLUDING ESSAYS BY,..rnPETER BRIMELOWrn{Forbes Magazine)rnALLAN CARLSONrn(The Roekford Institute)rnJEAN BETHKE ELSIITAINrn(University of ChicagornDivinity School)rnRICHARD ESTRADArn(Dallas Morning News)rnTHOMAS FLEMINGrn{Chronicles Magazine)rnSAMUEL FRANCISrn(Nationally SyndicatedrnColumnist)rnPAUL GOTTFRIEDrn(Elizabethtown College)rnGARRETT HARDINrn(Professor Emeritus ofrnHuman Ecology)rnHANS-HERMANN HOPPErn(ITniversity of Nevada,rnLas Vegas)rnDONALD L. HUDDLErn(Rice University)rnE. CHRISTIAN KOPFFrn(University ofrnColorado inrnBoulder)rnIMMIGRATIONrn* ANDTHE *rnAMERICAN IDENTITYrnSELECTIONS FROMrnChronicles: A Magazine of American Culture,rn1985-1995rnAMERICAN IDENTITYrnSBKTKWimwrnChooUtt: A M^raliw 9( 4n«fc(a Cutan,rnIMS-IMSrnRICHARD D . LAMMrn(Former...

transactionrnNew and Recent Books on Family and PolicyrnTHE SWEDISH EXPERIMENTrnIN FAMILY POLITICSrnTHE MYRDALS AND THE INTERWARrnPOPULATION CRISISrnAllan CarlsonrnThis devastating account of the work ofrnGunnar and Alva Myrdal portrays how twornyoung scholars used the power of ideas tornhelp engineer a new domestic order in Sweden.rnIt offers the general reader remarkablerninsight into the nature of Scandinavian socialrnlife,...

EDITORrnThomas FlemingrnMANAGING EDITORrnTheodore PapbasrnSENIOR EDITOR, BOOKSrnChilton Williamson, ]r.rnASSISTANT EDITORrnMichael WashburnrnART DIRECTORrnAnna Mycek-WodeckirnCONTRIBUTING EDITORSrnHarold O./. Brown, Katherine Dalian,rnSamuel Francis, George Garrett,rnPaul Gottfried, Christine Haynes,rnE. Christian Kopff, ].0. Tate,rnClyde WilsonrnCORRESPONDING EDITORSrnBill Kauffman, William Mills,rnJacob Neusner, John Shelton Reed,rnMomcilo SelicrnEDITORIAL SECRETARYrnLeann DobbsrnPUBLISHERrnAllan C. CarlsonrnPUBLICATION DIRECTORrnGuy C. ReffettrnPRODUCTION SECRETARYrnAnita CandyrnCIRCULATION MANAGERrnRochelle FrankrnA publication of The Rockford Institute.rnEditorial and Advertising...

On Franklin PiercernMy esteemed friend Chilton Williamson,rnas is his wont, makes the mostrnconcisely brilliant characterization of thernClintons that has been set down on paperrn(“Four More Years,” February 1997).rnHowever, even though I know the referencernwas ironic, I must take issue with hisrnmentioning the honorable PresidentrnFranklin Pierce even in the same articlernwith those people.rnNo, Pierce was not...

strictly Orthodox and did not know thernHaskalah. Such Jews as those portrayedrnin Eliza Orzeszkowa’s Meir Ezofovitch orrnMaria Dabrowska’s Nights and Days are,rnI feel, an unwelcome memory for sophisticatedrnAmerican Jews. They are rememberedrnas victims of the holocaustrnbut not as part of the Polish nation,rnAmerican Jews of Eastern Europeanrndescent do not wish to know that theyrnmatured as...

ing a rallying point that would be genericrnvet visible, the insurgents conceivedrnthe “privileged, white heterosexualrnmale,” and identified him with ” csternrncivilization” and “Judaism and Christianit.”rnSo what if “Europe,” “whites,”rnand “Christianity and Judaism” werernhardly snonymous? As Jenkins pointsrnout, these religions were born in thernMideast and spread through NorthernrnAfrica and Asia (and some 90 percent ofrnAmerican blacks...

uralization process—was ignored resolutelyrnby the candidates and their spokesmen.rnRumor had it that Jack Kemp acceptedrnthe Number Two spot on thernRepublican ticket after exacting arnpromise from Numero Uno that immigrationrnwould not be made a campaignrnissue by the Republicans—somethingrnthat Numero Uno had absolutely no inclinationrnto do anyway, hi the spirit of bipartisanshiprn(easily confused with therncoming one-party system)...

EPICYCLES:rn• More Cultural Enrichment: Santeria,rnan Afro-American religion that combinesrnChristian symbolism with paganrnpractices such as animal sacrifice, has becomernincreasingh popular in immigrantrncommunities, especially in Miami, NewrnYork, and Washington, D.C. During thernsummer of 1989, while D.C. police werernfinding the remains of chickens andrngoats in local cemeteries, the Smithsonianrnhistitution sponsored Santeria ritualsrnat its annual Folklife Festival on the...

PERSPECTIVErnHanging With Our Friendsrnby Thomas FlemingrnAyear and a half ago, Umberto Bossi delivered a brilliantrnspeech in t:he Italian parliament. Describing Italy’s politicalrns stem as organized corruption, the leader of the Lega Nordrndeclared that left and right showed two faces but were joinedrninto one body. A new Italian regime had to be born, but thisrntvo-headed monster,...

termincd opposition to the regime, even from those whornclaimed to be calling a halt to the march of progress.rnI am exaggerating somewhat. Here and there in an economicsrndepartment there were principled defenders of the freernmarket, and there were cen a few poets and j^hilosophers whorntried to patch some corner of the crumbling edifice of Christendom,rnbut...

journals and think tanks, but student groups, newspapers, rituals,rnmyths, and martyrs. Unfortunately most eonservatives—rnlike most liberals—are children of the Enlightenment; thev arernuncomfortable with sentiment, with irrational attachment.rnLike the bloodless and charmless robots who obey the orders ofrnforeign gurus, conservatives have failed or rather refused to constructrna counterculture, a countermythology. When GeorgernWallace—a man with many flaws...

our national, state, and local laws and punish American workersrnand small businessmen to benefit the global technocrats whornfund the Democratic and Republican parties.rnFinally, if men and women of the right are willing to walkrnsome distance down the road with Gianfranco Fini and PatrnChoate (and his spokesman Ross Perot), with Sir James Goldsmithrnand Pat Buchanan, they...

the same pundits who had applauded at the time of San Diegornwere increasinglv muted by Oetober. More than one Beltwayrnsavant of the right assured me at that time that Dole would certainhrnlose, but it wasn’t important an\a’. What was rcalK’rnimportant was to keep the I louse and Senate, increase the Republicanrnmajority in 1998, and rcalh’...

had sought to pull a once solidly Democratic South into thernRepublican column, Kemp explicitly repudiated it. “All toornoften in the past,” he told the Boston Globe in September,rn”we’ve had that Southern strategy that said we want to go afterrnthe white vote, and had better not try to get black votes becausernit might lose white votes....

to Zionism failed to draw Jewish voters to the ticket; Jews votedrnfor Dole-Kemp bv a mere 16 percent, a far cry from the third ofrnthe Jewish vote consistently won bv Nixon, Ford, Reagan, andrnBush through 1988.rnTwo of the most typically Middle American categories arernthose for family income and the size of the place where the...

that it will triumph.”rnAlthough he does not discuss the Nashville Agrarians or thernBritish Distributists in The Conservative Mind, these were tworn”lost causes” for which Kirk felt a particular fondness. A yearrnand a half before his death, he delivered a lecture entitled “Menrnof Letters as Renewers of Society” at a symposium honoringrnthese two groups. Despite the...

but Adams, however much he might re’crc the Virgin ofrnChartres as incarnation of the idea and as smbol of eternalrnbeauty, could not put credence in the idea of Providence.”rnIf Russell Kirk wrote with a Christian Agrarian bias, the samernis even more true of Walter Sullivan. Born in Nashville in 1924,rnSullivan has spent almost his entire...

nett, who was then director of the National Humanities Centerrnin Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. After a campaignrnthat included egregious misrepresentations of Bradford’s characterrnand views, the Bennett forces emerged victorious, andrntheir candidate went on to become a major figure in Americanrnpolitics. More than any other single confrontation, that battlernhelped to embitter relations between neoeonservatives and...

pathetic echo in an age that survived Hitler and Stalin. Tyrannyrnis naturally radical, Locke argues, and popular government isrnnothing to be afraid of. By and large, and in comparison withrnother svstems, it is conservative.rnModern conservatives have usually been uninterested inrnsources such as these. Anyone who asks his conservativernfriends, as I sometimes do, to explain what...