Over at NRO, Mona Charen announces that she will be attending a rally to support Israel in front of the Israeli embassy today, and she asks NRO readers to “please come and help demonstrate that millions of us passionately support Israel’s right to exist in peace and security.” One wonders how it would be possible...

I propose, in the two weeks I have before going to Florence, that we look at two works of Dante: the Convivio and the De Monarchia .  Although the whole of the Convivio is worth our attention, I am only going to talk about Book IV, in which Dante talks about the empire, Rome, the...

Here is the way the Constitution works now.  Roland Burris, a longtime public servant in Illinois, will not be allowed to take his seat in the U.S. Senate because he has been appointed by a corrupt governor in a corrupt state.  No matter that the Senate has never in its history denied a seat to...

On the last day of the old year in the newsletter CounterPunch, two Israelis—Jeff Halper, who heads the Israeli peace movement ICAHD, and Neve Gordon, who is chairman of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University—asked, “Where’s the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?” “Not one of the nearly...

On September 10, 2008,the New York Times reported that, back in July, President Bush had authorized ground incursions and missile attacks to destroy Taliban and Al Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.  As the Times noted, “It is unclear precisely what legal authorities the United States has invoked ...

My farewell column has a melancholy air not only because all partings are inherently sad, but because the times are genuinely grim. The world is changing . . . not for ...

The title of my article comes from the sermon of the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., John Bryson Chane, delivered on Oct. 5, 2008, at St. Columba Church. The bishop’s eyes were opened to Israel’s persecution of Palestinians by his recent trip to Palestine. In his sermon, he called on “politicians seeking the highest office...

Before going on the Eumenides , let us reflect a little on the theme.  The Greeks regarded homicide with awe.  Like Montenegrins and Albanians until recently, the brother or father of a murder victim felt a physical burden.  The would-be avenger could not eat or sleep until revenge had been ...

. . . the human mind, as allotted by the Creator to certain of his creatures, is capable of receiving any impression it chooses, and holding it as a fixed conviction.  Other minds may gather a different and more rational conclusion. . . .  —Dr. John A. Wyeth The dismaying sense of it, perhaps the...

Unwilling to control its fighters, who fired scores of missiles into Israel at the end of their six-month ceasefire, Hamas gave Israel the provocation it needed to deliver a savage blow to the Palestinian enclave in Gaza. Saturday was the bloodiest day in the history of the Palestinian people since being driven from their homes...

At a time when the U.S. power and authority are increasingly challenged around the world, the incoming team sees the Balkans as the last geopolitically significant area where they can assert their “credibility” by postulating a maximalist set of objectives as the only outcome acceptable to the United States, and duly insisting on their fulfillment....

Satan knew what he was doing when he aided and abetted the fall in the Garden.   —Robert M. Peters As we consider the world’s rulers, one question overshadows all others: are they fools or charlatans? . . . I lean toward the view that they are both.   —Robert Higgs It must be noted to that...

“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” President Bush told CNN, defending his offer of $17 billion in loans to the Big Three “to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse.” Thus did Bush concede that protectionism, if a critical U.S. industry is in peril, must trump free-trade ideology. For in offering the bailout...

After the defeat of the Persians in 480/479 Athens was  united as never before.  There was little division in the social classes, and leaders of the Alcmeonid party like Aristides cooperated with rivals like Themistocles and even with Cimon, of the enemy Philaid clan, in the continuing war against Persia.  The lowest class, the day-laboring...

“De mortuis nil nisi bonum.”  (Of the dead, nothing but good.)  So said Dean Acheson of Sen. Joe McCarthy on his death in 1957. “Tailgunner Joe” had bedeviled the secretary of state for his lassitude toward communist penetration of State in President Truman’s time. But the passing of Mark Felt, associate director of the FBI...

The Choephoroe (Libation Bearers) is the most dramatically interesting of three play.  The dramatic focus is on Agamemnon’s two children–the long-suffering Electra and the heroic Orestes–and also highlights minor players such as the loyal Pylades, and even the lower-class character of the faithful nurse who intrigues with the Chorus to keep Aegisthus in the dark...

“Something is rotten in the state,” says Marcellus in Hamlet.  Well, it certainly is in the state of Illinois. Yet, on hearing U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald describe a plot by his governor to sell his Senate seat—”conduct (that) would make Lincoln roll over in his grave”—how did reform President Barack Obama respond?  “I had no...

So what is the real significance of Barack Obama’s victory?  Pundits’ fingers and tongues have been flying, of course, scoring the triumph in a variety of ways: the terrible legacy of slavery and racism has been dealt a conclusive blow; the Democratic Party has displaced the Republicans as the party of Middle America; the nation...

The Pearl Harbor anniversary passed a few days ago.  I remembered my father’s account of his walking downtown that Sunday morning in 1941 with the six-months-old Yours Truly in a stroller, when people began yelling and running. Grandmother always pointed out that I and my cousins were not “war babies.”  We were born before Pearl...

Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald may be right about a lot of things when it comes to former Illinois Gov. George Ryan’s future cellmate—current Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich—but he got one thing very wrong at today’s press conference. In a nutshell, Governor Blagojevich is being charged with trying to squeeze the Chicago Tribune into firing editorialists...

In the seven years since my first essay on the War Against Christmas appeared in Chronicles, I have had no trouble writing at least one such essay per year, because each year brings new and outrageous attempts to suppress the public celebration of Christmas.  My favorite example was the 2002 winner of VDare.com’s invaluable War...

That India should accuse Pakistan of involvement in recent Islamic-terrorist outrages in Bombay was to be expected. That the accusation would turn out to be so well founded so quickly, was not. The only lasting solution to the problem of Pakistan is the disappearance of Pakistan from the political map of the world. This goal...

For the past 67 years America has commemorated over 2,400 sailors, soldiers and airmen who were killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Every such anniversary reminds us that all history is to some extent contemporary history: Almost seven decades after the event, the myth of FDR’s goodness and greatness—revived for...

Much of the commentary on the current economic crisis has compared 2008 to 1982, the depth of the last major recession. But there are some important differences, chief among them that, despite losses in manufacturing in ...

The foreign adulation of Obama proves only one thing—they like him because they see him as not very American. I’m sorry, President-elect Obama, but I don’t feel very healed by this election. Opposed to a black President?  I am not reconciled yet to John Quincy Adams. I hear that local gun sales are up 49...

The Agamemnon Concluded: I’ll be very brief with the rest of the Agamemnon in order to discuss, more rapidly, the next two plays, where the moral and political crisis becomes apparent.   The central scene of the play, in dramatic terms, is the confrontation of Clytaemestra and Agamemnon.  She is the complete master of the situation,...

Just when I thought I’d seen it all, I discovered that Planned Parenthood of Indiana has deployed a new weapon in the War on Christmas—er, Holiday.  Not to mention the War on Life—er, inconvenience. There’ve been some real dingers lately in the War on Holiday.  I just heard an ad on a sports-talk-radio station in...

Arguably the most successful act of revolutionary terror was the June 1914 assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Believing his mission to murder the heir to the Austrian throne had failed, Gavrilo Princip suddenly found himself standing a few feet away from the royal car. He fired twice, mortally wounding the archduke and...

Socrates and Xanthippe have been discussing a proposed bailout of the cartmakers in the Peiraeus.  They are joined by a very young Plato and  Pheidippides, the dissolute son of Strepsiades, who sent him to study in order to find out how to evade his debts. Socrates:  Well, I see we have reached another impasse, Xanthippe. ...

PERSPECTIVEChristmas Nightmaresby Thomas Fleming VIEWSSola Scriptura: The Case for the Crusadesby Hugh Barbour, O.Praem.Following Christ. How to Win the War Against Christmasby Tom PiatakRemembering how we got here. Muslim Pressure and Christian Appeasementby Christie DaviesThe British retreat as the Muslims advance. NEWSThe Cold War Never Endedby Joseph E. FallonU.S.-Russian relations since September 11. REVIEWSThe Fall...

The recent invasion of South Ossetia by the U.S.-trained and -equipped Georgian army turned into a debacle for both Tbilisi and Washington.  It also demonstrated that, for the U.S. government, the fall of the Soviet Union on December 8, 1991, did not mean the Cold War had ended.  Washington simply shifted focus to the newly...

These theories are interesting and valuable, although it is possible to stray too far along the road of geographical determinism.    —John Davies A socialist firebrand could rapidly become a jingoistic warmonger. . . .    —John Davies [T]he sole problem of our ruling class is whether to coerce or bribe the powerless majority.   —Gore Vidal We...

According to all accounts, the United States faces its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, with $2 trillion in near-term financing needs for bailouts and economic stimulus. This is an enormous sum for any country, especially one that is so heavily indebted that it is close to bankruptcy. If the money can’t be borrowed...

Thankful for … what?! The question is bound to surface the moment heads incline in reverence at the Thanksgiving table, over pre-dinner drinks, post-dinner drinks, kitchen clean up, trash take out. Answers will vary. What won't vary is the ...

Teams of heavily armed terrorists carried out seven coordinated attacks in India’s financial capital

The morning after Barack Obama's election, the congratulatory message from Moscow was in the chilliest tradition of the Cold War.

No secretary of state will come to that office with stronger pro-Israel credentials or closer ties to the Jewish community than Sen. Hillary Clinton, Douglas Bloomfield assures his readers in The Jerusalem Post. Good for them, and for Bosnia’s Muslims and Kosovo’s Albanians; but for the rest of us Mrs. Clinton’s appointment as the third...

“The prospects of a government rescue for the foundering American automakers dwindled Thursday as Democratic congressional leaders conceded that they would face potentially insurmountable Republican opposition,” reported the New York Times last Friday. Wow! The entire country is steamed up over the Republicans bailing out a bunch of financial crooks who have paid themselves fortunes...

Who killed the U.S. auto industry? To hear the media tell it, arrogant corporate chiefs failed to foresee the demand for small, fuel-efficient cars and made gas-guzzling road-hog SUVs no one wanted, while the clever, far-sighted Japanese, Germans and Koreans prepared and built for the future. I dissent. What killed Detroit was Washington, the government...

The placard in the photo of a recent rally favoring gay marriage asks, bluntly, “Family. Isn’t It About Love?” Well, hmm. You might indeed incline to such a view. Then, again, you might wish to broaden the perspective, in keeping with normative modes for understanding the foundational human structure we call family. You’d want to...

“What do you think about the bailout?” The old philosopher sighed.  Xanthippe had been getting market gossip again from the slave girl she sent to the agora.  How many times did he have to tell her to pay no attention to these rumors?  News, he snorted to himself.  Those people were right in Thurii who...

Understandably, Republicans are seething.  When Hank Paulson demanded $700 billion to haul away the trash in the dumpsters of JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs—assuring us we could hold a garage sale of the junk—they rebelled. They acted as the nation, by 100 to one, demanded. They killed the Wall Street bailout.  The Dow quickly sank...

Call me simple, but I just can’t understand why I have to pay the banks’ losses but I don’t get a share of their profits. I know that the music business is very profitable, but I am still cautious about investing in CDs. I am sorry to admit it, but I may have been wrong. ...

Over at Takimag, Chronicles contributing editor Tom Piatak has a thought-provoking piece on the proposal to extend $25 to $50 billion in government-backed loans to the Big Three automakers. Among other points completely ignored by those who reflexively shout “Let them die!” whenever the American auto industry is mentioned are, as Tom notes, that as...

If the change that President-elect Obama has promised includes a halt to America’s wars of aggression and an end to the rip-off of taxpayers by powerful financial interests, what explains Obama’s choice of foreign and economic policy advisors? Indeed, Obama’s selection of Rahm Israel Emanuel as White House chief of staff is a signal that...

The collective knowledge gained over time includes an awareness of mankind’s tendency to miscalculate.  —Wiley Sword History tells us where we have been.  Our minds define where we are going.  —Wiley Sword In every economic boom and bust there are winners and losers.  —Gary North What goes up must come down.  —Proverbial I’d like someone...

I find that local radio gives me a good view of the state of American consciousness, or unconsciousness. Just today I learned that the government is studying how to help “ailing mortgages.”  Defaulters, it seems, have been struck by an unfortunate epidemic.  Anyone can get sick, and sick people have to be helped.  I also...

I was leaving for Ft. Worth early Wednesday morning and, although I did not turn on the radio, watch television, or buy a newspaper, “the news was out all over town” and impossible to evade, even though I have avoided the media ever since.  Yesterday, my wife asked me to listen for the weather on...

Imagine the reaction at National Review and in other neocon precincts if Barack Obama had indicated that his chief of staff would be someone who had volunteered for the military of a foreign nation, but had never volunteered in the American military, if his father had been a member of a terrorist organization,and was unrepentant...

“In the name of God, whom we all revere, in the name of liberty we hold so dear, in the name of decency, which we all cherish—what is happening in America?” —Gov. Orval Faubus, broadcast to the people fifty years ago as the city of Little Rock was occupied by bayonet-wielding paratroopers and swarms of...