On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became Germany’s Chancellor after the corporate Germany decided to bet on him – in spite of his radical rhetoric – because it believed it could control him. On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama will become the 44th president of the United States in large part thanks to gigantic contributions from corporate...

Driving out from town to feed my horses the morning of November 5th, I passed a house in West Laramie with the Stars and Stripes waving from the front gate.  The flag hung upside down.  A fitting salute, surely, for the most radical candidate ever to become president-elect of the United States. The election of...

So Americans have elected another president who is in not in any visible way a real American. He is from Hawaii and Chicago. From Kenya and Indonesia. From nowhere and everywhere. He‘s

Chronicles contributing editor Tom Piatak wishes Patrick J. Buchanan a happy 70th birthday.  [Link courtesy of VDare.com.] Share This Add to Favorites

On the last day of October I appeared to have been libeled on B92, a leading “pro-Western” TV network in Serbia, in a live program in which I appeared as an invited guest. It subsequently transpired that the network used an unpleasant quote from an article published under my name – but without my knowledge or authorization – in a leading...

PERSPECTIVE Whither the Republic?by Thomas Fleming VIEWS Paradise Lostby Roger D. McGrathThe white minority. The Promise and Peril of Identity Politicsby Tom PiatakHope in a dismal season. The Burden of Racial Guiltby Hugh Barbour, O.Praem.A new declaration of independence. Pro-Choice Christiansby Aaron D. WolfShattering nature’s glass ceiling. NEWS Spain Embraces Changeby José  Javier EsparzaCanceling the...

This election is too tedious a farce to deserve a serious editorial, but since I wake up every morning with a few complaints that I inflict upon my family, I may as well subject my ...

A 1992 Wisconsin law limits the revenue a school district can raise through property taxes.  When operating costs exceed that limit, districts have to ask voters to make up the difference.  The idea behind the law was to control skyrocketing teacher salaries and benefits by holding annual increases to 3.8 percent per year.  The state...

Xenophon's Oeconomicus offers a pragmatic alternative way of looking at questions of wealth, property, and human happiness.  He is neither an economist nor a philosopher, only a man who, though he valued courage and honor above wealth, understand the true significance of property as the foundation of prosperity and happiness.  ...

Over at NRO, David Frum is maudlin and indignant that his friend Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum came in for some rough criticism at National Review over her endorsement of Obama. 

What explains the paradox of the dollar's sharp rise in value against other currencies (except the Japanese yen) despite disproportionate U.S. exposure to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression? The answer does not lie ...

I am not an economist.  I do not want to be an economist, because  I do not believe there is a science of economics, and from all I can gather there is no kind of ...

North Korea’s “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il is rumored to be ailing or even dead. Given his furtive ways and the nature of his regime, denials from Pyongyang are meaningless unless ...

Earnest readers want to know what the difference is between the two major political parties. I have tried to provide some helpful guidance. Democrat. Someone who believes that when people who have enjoyed a wealthy life but behaved badly get into trouble they should be rescued by non-wealthy people who have worked hard and played...

Was race a factor in the decision of Colin Powell to repudiate his party’s nominee and friend of 25 years, Sen. John McCain, two weeks before Election Day, and to endorse Barack Obama? Gen. Powell does not deny it, contending only that race was not the only or decisive factor. “If I had only that...

When it comes to be once understood that politics is a game; that those who are engaged in it but act a part; that they make this or that profession, not from honest conviction or intent to fulfill it, but as the means of deluding the people, and through that delusion to acquire power  ....

As Americans render what Catholics call temporal judgment on George Bush, are they aware of the radical course correction they are about to make? This center-right country is about to strengthen a liberal Congress whose approval rating is 10 percent and implant in Washington a regime further to the left than any in U.S. history....

Jörg Haider, the best known Austrian politician, was killed in a car crash on October 11. His death marks the end of a colorful career untypical for a “far-Right” figure. Armani-clad fitness fanatic, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pal with a permanent tan, Haider cut a figure vastly different from the bland establishmentarians who have ran Austria for...

America has become a pretty discouraging place. If Ronald Reagan were still with us, I wonder if he would again refer to the United States as a city on a hill, a light unto the world. I think not. Reagan brought America back from discouragement, but it didn’t stick. Subsequent administrations erased Reagan’s accomplishments. Reagan...

[Rescuing America from the idiocy of rural life.] I hardly agree with agrarian poet & essayist Wendell Berry on every question.  For example, he espouses pacifism—a creed I regard as indirectly contributing to America’s irresponsible imperialism rather than as a potential solution.  A somewhat idiosyncratic Protestant, Mr. Berry seems dubious at times of what he...

PERSPECTIVE The Audacity of Hateby Thomas Fleming VIEWS The Obama Presidencyby Doug BandowThe triumph of (lots of) experience over (a little) hope? Boogaloo Down Broadwayby Tony OuthwaiteThe charade of liberal change. The Revelations of the Obama Planby David A. HartmanChange we can’t afford. Obama on Foreign Policyby Ted Galen CarpenterA mysterious work in progress. ROUND...

“The global economy is like the St. Andreas Fault: You know that a terminal disaster is inevitable, but you keep your fingers crossed and try not to think about it,” I wrote in the print issue of Chronicles seven months ago (“Waiting for the Big One,” March 2008). “When a tremor occurs, you often fear...

It looks like the economy is in for hard times and that we plain folks are facing a decline in our standard of living.  But you can  be sure that the politicians and financiers who ...

I began this discussion with a promise to elucidate the question of Ms. Palin's candidacy.  In general, I have been pointing out that by nature, tradition, and revelation, the sexes have been assigned quite different ...

Is it fair that businessmen who fail in neighborhood stores have to close shop and often sell their homes, while Wall Street titans are spared the consequences of monumental stupidity and greed? No, it is not fair. ...

All history is to some extent contemporary, but none more so than that analyzed, interpreted, and sometimes constructed by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague. ...

Are you enjoying your New American Century? You may as well enjoy it.  It is all you are getting instead of your “peace dividend.” Justice Ginsberg has recently invoked the laws of some foreign states in justification of her Supreme Court decisions.  The Founding Fathers and subsequent generations would have found this impeachable and treasonous. ...

British papers are reporting that shari’a law has been officially adopted in Britain, with shari’a courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases, notably including wife beating. Gordon Brown’s Labour government “has quietly sanctioned ...

The Dalai Lama is revered around the world, and not just by his Tibetan Buddhist followers who believe he’s the incarnation of the Buddha of Compassion. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who preaches non-violence toward the Chinese communists who invaded and now ...

Will the neocons who tutored George W. Bush in the ideology he pursued to the ruin of his presidency do the same for Sarah Palin? Should they succeed, they will destroy her. Yet, they are moving even now to capture this princess of the right and hope of the party. In St. Paul, Palin was...

Christian Marriage Christianity, although it did not overturn the basic pagan view of marriage, strengthened and disciplined the institution. Christian marriage is as much a break with Jewish traditions as with the somewhat easy-going pagan customs of the Empire.  Polygamy had been taken for granted in the OT, and even an ...

Evil rulers then are a sign that God is wroth and angry with us.   —William Tyndale Though there is little personal likeness, the President that Junior Bush most resembles in actions and conduct in office is Grant—incompetent, corrupt, clueless, easily led, elected under a false impression, misusing the military.  However, Grant, unlike Junior,  was articulate...

At Christmas a couple of years ago I was given a daily planner called The Worst Case Scenario Survival Calendar. It gives you advice on how to deal with seriously dire emergencies, like free-falling from 10,000 feet with a parachute that wouldn’t open, facing shark attack far from shore, being bitten by a cobra with...

The nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate (a phrase suddenly suggestive) has reopened the question not only of women in politics but a woman's role in society. I am finishing a book, tentatively titled Thicker than Water, sketching out a political order based more on ...

Thomas Fleming, Scott Richert, and Aaron Wolf have all offered typically thoughtful pieces raising important points to consider in evaluating Sarah Palin.  But I would like to offer a different perspective, focusing on the speech Palin delivered at the Republican Convention and the reason the speech succeeded, to the point that Palin now enjoys a...

ST. PAUL, Minn.—The American Right has just died and gone to heaven. Wednesday night’s convention address by Sarah Palin here in St. Paul has confirmed the bold decision of John McCain to choose the Alaska governor as his co-pilot and united the Republican Party as it has not been since the second term of Ronald...

I will resist the temptation to steal my own thunder for next week’s John Randolph Club meeting in Philadelphia, where I intend to talk about the most important aspect of the Palin Pandemonium: the conservative Christian rejection of the natural order. There are at least two other aspects of McCain-Palin that are troubling: abortion and...

John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin to be his running mate was surprising, but the surprise pales in comparison to the reaction of conservative Christians, especially Catholics. In their race to endorse McCain-Palin, they have cast aside any questions about the complementarity of the sexes, or even the late John Paul II’s theology of the...

La Iglesia Católica en los Estados Unidos ha tenido un sesgo político izquierdista desde hace ya tanto tiempo que esta realidad es, a estas alturas, apenas noticiable. Este fenómeno viene de muy largo, desde que el cardenal Gibbon rechazara el llamamiento a la paz lanzado por el Papa Benedicto XV durante la Primera Guerra Mundial....

PERSPECTIVE Chinese Monkeys on Our Backsby Thomas Fleming VIEWS Beginning With Historyby Clyde WilsonRevisions and deviations. David Hume: Historianby Donald W. LivingstonThe core of the bookshelf. The Dean of Western Historiansby Roger D. McGrathBillington and the frontier culture. BIOGRAPHY George Garrettby Fred Chappell1929-2008. REVIEWS How Posner Thinksby Stephen B. Presser Richard A. Posner: How Judges...

I have not turned on the television in over a week and have refused to listen to NPR’s reverent coverage of the Democratic National Convention.  Still, I cannot help picking up stray bits from here and there.  What self-absorbed little people, doing star turns in the little plays they have scripted for themselves.  Even James...

Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia makes it imperative to analyze the situation in the Caucasus dispassionately and comprehensively. The mainstream media (MSM) treatment of the crisis has been predictably monolithic, however -- almost as biased (“bad ...

Me seemes the world is runne quite out of sqaureFrom the first point of his appointed sourse,And being once amisse, growes daily wourse and wourse.—Spenser, The Faerie Queene It looks like the economy is going bad, but don’t worry. Congress will make sure the bankers and speculators don’t suffer. Could military failure in Iraq have...

Anyone questioning the wisdom of neoconservative foreign policy is likely to be told that he is “blaming America first,” as if American foreign policy were synonymous with the nation.  So it is only fair to point out that neocons, too, “blame America” when it doesn’t follow their policies.  Reviewing a book about the 1920 presidential...

Plastic grocery bags guaranteed to spill or break. Mass telephoning of recorded sales messages (at suppertime). A minority group endowed with large, unprecedented privileges by law, that continues to complain of oppression by the “privileged” majority. Advertising and government spending on welfare defined as contributions to the Gross National Product. Professors of humanities who have...

On August 21, 1968—40 years ago today—the Soviet army entered Czechoslovakia, followed by smaller contingents from four other Warsaw Pact countries. The occupation (“Operation Danube”) marked the end of the Prague Spring, a doomed attempt ...

The success of the Bush regime’s propaganda, lies and deception with gullible and inattentive Americans since 9-11 has made it difficult for intelligent, aware people to be optimistic about the future of the United States. For almost eight years, the U.S. media have served as Ministry of Propaganda for a war criminal regime. Americans incapable...

The Book of Moroni. Replacing the White Man’s Burden with the Multicultural Gender-Neutral Burden. The Lincoln cult. Politicians and journalists guaranteed to have integrity—they tell you so themselves. Deification of “education.”  Along with the belief that all students are, or can be, above average. Disguising professional athletes as “students.” The infomercial.  (Actually, a commenter on...

Parties comprising Pakistan’s ruling coalition continue to be deeply divided in the aftermath of former president Pervez Musharraf’s sudden resignation last Monday. The late Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), which lead the coalition, were able to agree on impeachment charges that forced Musharraf out of...

The appearance of John McCain and Barack Obama at Saddleback, California’s “purpose-driven” church marks the ultimate ascent of Rick Warren to the Gantry-in-Chief of the P.T. Barnum Church of America. Warren’s success is living proof of Barnum’s oft-quoted observation that there is a sucker born every minute. In the event, Obama’s imitation of Christianity was...