The amoeba. You remember it from biology class; it’s your long-lost relative. Don’t believe it? Well, you’re probably one of those pro-life Christian homeschooling losers. You don’t play nice with others. You are socially maladjusted. “Amoeba are essentially everywhere and have probably existed . . . ...

In 1960, my father attended what was then Case Institute of Technology. Even though it was the most expensive school in Ohio, he was able to pay his tuition with his summer jobs. When he graduated, mechanical engineers were in demand; American manufacturing was booming, and the jobs being offered to good young engineers generally...

Reading up for a book on the fate of democracy since Tocqueville published Democracy in America in 1835, I recently came across an excellent study, Aristocratic Liberalism: The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville, by Alan S. Kahan. Professor Kahan includes these men in a group of...

Nearly a century ago, G.K. Chesterton wrote of “the modern and morbid habit of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal.” Today the very word normal is almost taboo. Perish the thought that there is anything abnormal—let alone sinful, vicious, perverted, abominable, sick, unhealthy, or just plain wrong—about sodomy. (Unsanitary? Let’s not go there.) As...

Which presidents of the United States have done a job of work? This little survey is limited to those born in the 20th century. Before that, everybody worked. Let’s start with our present leader. He has never lifted a shovel or driven a truck or had to make a payroll. He has never grown a...

Are you puzzled and irritated by the  viciousness and falsity  of most of what is being published these days about the South and Southern history?   The beginning of all wisdom on this subject is to know that in American public discourse  and so-called scholarship there is usually no effort to understand the South, like any...

A review of The White Ribbon (produced by Canal+ and Wega Film; written and directed by Michael Haneke; distributed by Sony Pictures Classics). German director Michael Haneke loves to sneer at his middle-class patrons. In Funny Games (1997, remade in the United States in 2007) and Caché (2005), his affluent characters are shown to be...

A congressional proponent of the nation’s first federal income tax law, enacted in 1894, was, to say the least, beside himself over the wonders he and his colleagues had wrought. “The passage of this bill,” burbled Congressman David Albaugh DeArmond, “will mark the dawn of a brighter day, with more of sunshine, more of the...

So, thanks again for the love in the cradle and all of the changes that kept me dry. And thanks again for the love at our table and tannin' my bottom when I told you a lie . . . It’s a tear-jerker of a song, and the only thing that rescues Ricky Skaggs’ “Thanks Again” ...

“Why,” Sheila Ramus asked, “if there are so many pro-lifers here, does Rockford have an abortion clinic?” Sheila, my wife and I, and our pastor, Fr. Brian Bovee, were waiting to check in at Rockford’s annual Pro-Life Banquet. An hour before the dinner was scheduled to begin, the Holy Family ...

The awful Obama is pushing terrible things on our country like socialised medicine, big spending, corporate bailouts, affirmative action, and amnesty for illegal aliens.  He must be defeated so the Republicans can get in and push socialised medicine, big spending, corporate bailouts, affirmative action, and amnesty for illegal aliens. Obama ...

The decapitation of the Polish government last weekend, including President Lech Kaczynski and the military leadership, on that flight to Smolensk to commemorate the Katyn Massacre, brings to mind the terrible and tragic days and deeds of what many yet call the Good War. From Russian reports, the Polish pilot ...

The Metropolitan Opera has a new production of Bizet’s Carmen, which premiered in New York City last New Year’s Eve. I read the review by Anthony Tommasini, the New York Times’ most competent music critic, who understands singing as well as he knows operatic literature. Mr. Tommasini raved over the production, the work of the...

A recent incident at West Point involving my wife and our little daughter has given us much to ponder. The initial responses, and later silences, of the military authorities were both surprising and perplexing. I became even more reflective and pensive, however, after my own well-informed and honest and very candid West Point classmates further...

On March 23, the Associated Press published a story dealing with sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church to little fanfare. It noted that allegations of sexual abuse involving the Catholic Church in the United States dropped in 2009, and that most of the alleged offenders “are dead, no longer in the priesthood, removed from...

“This was a recognition of American terrorists.” That is CNN’s Roland Martin’s summary judgment of the 258,000 men and boys who fell fighting for the Confederacy in a war that cost as many American lives as World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq combined. Martin reflects the hysteria that seized Obamaville on hearing...

The first issue of The New Yorker (February 21, 1925) showed on its cover a dandy in top hat, high collar, and morning suit gazing through his monocle at a butterfly. The drawing is reproduced yearly, and butterflies became a cover motif. Whatever tastes, affectations, or snobbery the artist, Rea Irvin, wanted to suggest, it...

perspective Save the Childrenby Thomas Fleming views Adopting Indecencyby William Murchison For the Childrenby Scott P. Richert news How Do You Make $100 Million Per Day?by William J. Quirk reviews Soulcraft as Leechcraftby Derek Turner [A.N. Wilson, Our Times: The Age of Elizabeth II] Parallel Livesby John Lukacs [Nicholas Thompson, The Hawk and the Dove:...

The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for more than eight years. That is longer than our involvement in both world wars combined. Yet the end of the conflict appears to be further away than ever. It is not even clear what would constitute victory. Afghanistan began as the “good war,” receiving near-unanimous...

“Anti-Catholicism,” said writer Peter Viereck, “is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual.” It is “the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people,” said Arthur Schlesinger Sr. If there was any doubt that hatred of and hostility toward the Catholic Church persists, it was removed by the mob that has arisen howling “Resign!” at Pope...

“Diplomacy has failed,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told AIPAC, “Iran is on the verge of becoming nuclear and we cannot afford that.” “We have to contemplate the final option,” said Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., “the use of force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.” War is a “terrible thing,” said Sen. Lindsay Graham,...

perspective Cheating “Honest” Menby Thomas Fleming views Putting America Back to Workby Tom Pauken Bringing Back the Old Economyby Tom Piatak news Sam Francis’s Mad Tea Partyby Chilton Williamson, Jr. reviews Brush the Distanceby John Freeman [Catharine Savage Brosman, Breakwater: Poems] Dark Age to Dark Ageby Thomas Fleming [Adrian Goldsworthy, How Rome Fell] A Man...

Throughout most of American history region has been a better predictor of political position than party.  That aspect of our reality has been neglected and suppressed in recent times  as the rest of the country has conspired or acquiesced in transforming the South into a replica of Ohio. Yet the notorious squeak vote on the...

“[With health care done] Democrats will turn unequivocally to the economy, putting forth additional efforts to accelerate the recovery.”—John Harwood, The New York Times, March 29 “Efforts” such as, um, well, hmmmmm . . . Something anyway: a cycle of speeches from the White House; federal grants for job creation; exhortations to start hiring and...

As Democrats, after a Sunday rally on the Capitol grounds, marched to the House hand-in-hand to vote health care reform, Tea Partiers reportedly shouted the “n-word” at John Lewis and another black congressman. A third was allegedly spat upon. And Barney Frank was called a nasty name. Tea Partiers deny it all. And neither audio...

“The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital.” With this defiant declaration, to a thunderous ovation at AIPAC, Benjamin Netanyahu informed the United States that East Jerusalem, taken from Jordan in the Six Day War, is not...

By now, many Chronicles readers have no doubt heard that David Frum was fired from his cushy job at the American Enterprise Institute, following an online column claiming that the passage of Obamacare was the GOP’s “Waterloo,” which could have been avoided if the GOP had been more willing to negotiate with Obama.  Frum is...

When the noble art of casuistry was driven from the field by an army of moral pygmies led by Descartes, Locke, and Kant, a gaping hole opened up.  In an ethical system devoted exclusively to abstract rights or abstract duties, how could the real problems of life be discussed?  The answer (and I owe this...

Benjamin Netanyahu is back in the United States, rallying his troops and hectoring the administration.  I stand in such awe of this man that I propose we suspend our now pointless requirement of being American born and run Mr. Netanyahu as the candidate of both parties.  Why not?  It’s not as if the US government,...

The Sydney Carton Party by Patrick J. Buchanan • March 23, 2010 • Printer-friendly “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” From “A Tale of Two Cities,” Sydney Carton’s words, as...

That cry you heard when the 216th vote was cast in favor of President Obama's

When the Soviet Union disintegrated, most Americans likely had never heard of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan. Yet the ethnonationalism of these Asian peoples, boiling to the surface after centuries of tsarist and communist repression, helped tear apart one of the great empires of history. There swiftly followed the collapse of Yugoslavia. Yet, if one...

According to news reports, the U.S. military is shipping “bunker-buster” bombs to the U.S. Air Force base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Herald Scotland reports that experts say the bombs are being assembled for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The newspaper quotes Dan Piesch, director of the Centre for International Studies...

My goodness, it’s just one favor after another the U.S. government wants to do for us. By week’s end, the president and his minions hope to have bought, embarrassed or intimidated enough fellow Democrats into passing, at long last, health care “reform.” In the meantime, the White House lets us know it wants action on...

Actually, Joe set himself up. From the moment he set foot on Israeli soil, our vice president was in full pander mode. First, he headed to Yad Vashem memorial, where he put on a yarmulke and declared Israel “a central bolt in our existence.” “For world Jewry,” Joe went on, presumably including 5 million Americans,...

Are they really bumblers? The opinion columns quiver with reproofs for maladroit handling of foreign policy by President Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Those who cherished foolish illusions that Obama’s election presaged a substantive shift to the left in foreign policy fret about “worrisome signs” that this is not the case. It’s...

Though Bush 41 and Bush 43 often disagreed, one issue did unite them both with Bill Clinton: protectionism. Globalists all, they rejected any federal measure to protect America’s industrial base, economic independence or the wages of U.S. workers. Together they rammed through NAFTA, brought America under the World Trade Organization, abolished tariffs and granted Chinese-made...

In February 1861, Joseph Sadoc Alemany, the first Roman Catholic bishop of the state of California, wrote an urgent pastoral letter to his flock.  This letter was published immediately in the New York Freeman’s Journal, and for this indiscretion its editor was imprisoned for a year in Fort Lafayette, and ...

What’s behind the cult of “global warming”?  We’ve been hearing about it for years on television, in magazines, from politicians, and from certain corporate entities: Mankind is destroying the earth, and the only solution is to “go green.”  Unless we radically change our behavior, the oceans will rise, catastrophe will ...

Stendahl begins his peculiar autobiography, The Life of Henry Brulard, with his alter ego standing at the summit of the Janiculum Hill, surveying the city of Rome, west to east.  It is October 16, 1832, and Brulard faces his cinquantaine in three months.  Fifty years, he thinks!  But Raphael’s Transfiguration ...

According to John Harwood in The New York Times, public support for

Greece this past weekend saw the worst rioting since the debt crisis began. After Athens had announced new tax hikes and budget cuts to reduce a deficit of 13 percent of gross domestic product, mobs drove guards from Greece’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and attacked police. In our own country, students, teachers and administrators...

The television screen shows five-year-old Tara being awakened from a sound sleep at 6 a.m.  She has a beauty pageant to get ready for.  To shake off her sluggishness she is given a carb-rich donut and some caffeine-loaded Mountain Dew. After “breakfast” Tara is dressed in a two-piece bathing suit and ...

A review of The Hurt Locker (produced by First Light Production and Kingsgate Films; directed by Kathryn Bigelow; screenplay by Mark Boal; distributed by Summit Entertainment). At last we have a movie that makes us feel the full obscenity of the Iraq war.  Other films have been well intentioned but have ...

The story thus far: Not content with plunging the world’s economy into the worst crisis since the 30’s, the avaricious and reckless bankers have been saved from ruin—momentarily—by our taxes, yet they continue to treat us with breathtaking contempt.  Far from feeling any remorse or humility, they pay themselves annual ...

A review of Up in the Air (produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures; directed by Jason Reitman; screenplay by Sheldon Turner, adapting Walter Kirn’s novel) and The Road (produced and distributed by Dimension Films; directed by John Hillcoat; screenplay by Joe Penhall, adapting Cormac McCarthy’s novel). George Clooney, well-groomed and exceedingly fit at 49, seems...

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,...