The American people should be eternally grateful to Old Europe for having spiked the Bush-McCain plan to bring Georgia into NATO. Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow’s superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in...

A week after Georgia’s failed attempt to conquer the breakaway province of South Ossetia, the crisis is over. The only major issue still unresolved concerns Mikheil Saakashvili’s motivation. His order to attack on the night of August 7-8 was a breathtakingly risky move; but was it a calculated, or reckless gamble? That Saakashvili acted with...

As of Saturday, 16 August, both the Russian and Georgian sides of the conflict over the “unrecognized republics” of South Ossetia and Abkhazia had signed a six-point cease-fire agreement stipulating that Georgian forces must move back to their bases, while Russian troops are supposed to draw back to pre-conflict positions. The agreement does, however, leave...

A review of The Happening (produced and distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox and UTV Motion Pictures; written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan) The star of M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film, The Happening, demonstrates once more how unaccountably loathe producers are to give their boom microphones top billing. During the showing I attended last night, the...

Who are the spear-carriers of government policies? This is a tale that puts pieces together over the course of a few decades. Neocons eat stories like this for breakfast. Like most teachers, I have learned at least as much from my students as they have learned from me. An Argentinian graduate student at St. Louis...

Just after the Berlin wall came down, I flew to Berlin with my German-Austrian wife and traveled around the city and its eastern parts. On visiting the Olympic stadium I told the taxi driver that my ...

In this space in the June issue, readers learned about a flock of students from the American Studies program at Randolph College who flapped off to the Chicken Ranch Brothel in Nevada to study the profundities of ...

Take one part high fuel prices. Mix in stagnant wages and high consumer prices generally. Stir in global uncertainty and an ever-exploding human population. Add misplaced production and chimera-chasing. Add to all ...

Now that military officers selected by the Bush Pentagon have reached a split verdict convicting Salim Hamdan, a onetime driver for Osama bin Laden, of supporting terrorism, but innocent of terrorist conspiracy, do you feel safe? Or are we superpower Americans still at risk until we capture bin Laden’s dentist, barber and the person who...

In his 1937 Great Contemporaries, Winston Churchill wrote, “Whatever else may be thought about (Hitler’s) exploits, they are among the most remarkable in the whole history of the world.” Churchill was referring not only to Hitler’s political triumphs—the return of the Saar and reoccupation of the Rhineland—but his economic achievements. By his fourth year in...

Decaffeinated coffee.  (What’s the point?) The hula hoop. Political nominating conventions. Criminal athletes. The Celebrity, a meritless and insignificant person famous for being famous. The Celebrity as a political force. Purposeless voting. Patriotic balloons. Carnival tent religion. Mass-produced food and patented food crops. Mothers in combat. Euphemisms for war: Preserving the Union, War to End...

In last weekend’s edition of CounterPunch, Alexander Cockburn updates the ongoing persecution of Sami Al-Arian by federal prosecutors. Al-Arian was a Florida university professor of computer science who was ensnared by the Bush regime’s need to produce “terrorists” in order to keep Americans fearful and, thereby, amenable to the Bush regime’s assault on U.S. civil...

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was one of the few giants of our age, a courageous witness against the irremediable evil of Communism and a prophetic voice against the dangers of amoral Western materialism. He also used to be a hero of American conservatives.  But the sort of men who now are exalted in “mainstream conservatism” have a...

I foolishly used an early version of my article.  Rather than repost everything, I am putting in a few omitted extracts: Introduction“Poor Mexico,” sighed Porfirio Diaz, “so far from God, so close to the United States.”  Though a hero in the Battle of Puebla (May 5, 1862) in which the Mexicans defeated French troops supporting...

PERSPECTIVE Lost in the 50′sby Thomas Fleming VIEWS Yankee, Go Homeby James O. TateYankee, come home—Yankee, get lost. Videitesby Roger D. McGrathAn alien invader from the 50′s. Alfred Hitchcock’s Empty Suitby George McCartney50′s counterculture. NEWS The Burmese Tragedyby Doug BandowForeign hindrance, not aid. REVIEWS The Necessary Centuryby Chilton Williamson, Jr. Patrick J. Buchanan: Churchill, Hitler,...

The following is the first in a series of translations of Chronicles articles into Spanish, as part of our outreach to the Spanish-speaking world. (TJF) Durante los días que siguieron a los recientes asesinatos a tiros ocurridos en el campus de la Northern Illinois University (la universidad del Illinois del norte) los noticiarios de las...

“We have to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in,” says Barack Obama of the U.S. war in Iraq. Wise counsel. But is Barack taking his own advice? For he pledges to shift two U.S. combat brigades, 10,000 troops, out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, raising American forces in that country...

[The discomfort of light skin.] Barack Obama has said that his mixed-race heritage would serve to make him a uniter. But the violently militant roots of Obama's church of 20 years, which advocate “the destruction of the ...

“You can’t make a republic without republicans.” —Stendhal Just asking— What happens to a “service economy” when people no longer have the money to pay for service? What happens when “precision” bombs and missiles are not really as precise as they are supposed to be? What happens to a country where judges make up the...

As any military historian will testify, among the most difficult of maneuvers is the strategic retreat. Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, Lee’s retreat to Appomattox and MacArthur’s retreat from the Yalu come to mind. The British Empire abandoned India in 1947—and a Muslim-Hindu bloodbath ensued. France’s departure from Indochina was ignominious, and her abandonment of hundreds...

The spirit of the media frenzy surrounding the arrest of the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on July 21 is based entirely on the doctrine of non-equivalence inaugurated in 1992: Serbs willed the war, ...

National Public Radio has been spending much news time on Darfur in Western Sudan, where a great deal of human suffering and death are occurring. The military conflict has been brought on in part by climate change, according to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Drought is forcing nomads in search of water into areas occupied...

Persuading a libertarian that a negotiation between one worker and a huge corporation is not a simple free market transaction. Persuading a libertarian that the Lord gave us the earth for our use, not for our maximum exploitation. Persuading a Republican that tariffs were NOT responsible for America’s past prosperity. (Tariff “protection” did not create...

The socialist-conservative coalition led by Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, which collapsed on July 7, had been faltering for months. When I arrived in Vienna two days later, the only surprising element in what appeared to be a mundane story concerned its immediate cause. Eighteen months of endless bickering over Austria’s economic, fiscal or social policy could...

Yet more proof that National Review has redefined itself as a fashionable font of social democracy recently came from Canadian interloper David Frum, who used successive posts at his diary to claim that, “Among the European dictators, [Francisco Franco] ranks behind only Hitler and Stalin in monstrousness,” and to denounce Jesse Helms for his “racialism.”...

After the assassination of the archduke in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, Austria got from Kaiser Wilhelm a “blank cheque” to punish Serbia. Germany would follow whatever course its ally chose to take. Austria chose war on Serbia. And World War I resulted. On March 31, 1939, Britain gave a blank check to Poland in...

“A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.” —Matthew 5:14 How many Americans are aware that Abraham Lincoln was well known for telling dirty stories, engaged in antics (like playing with his feet) when he did not want to answer questions, and was flippant when his attention was called to Union soldiers’...

Over the years, John McCain has acquired a reputation as a maverick Republican. Independents and even some Democrats who loathe George W. Bush’s foreign-policy record seem to believe that McCain would be a significant improvement. In several GOP primaries earlier this year, most notably those in New Hampshire and Michigan, nearly one third of voters...

Dean Olson, the chairman of Rockford Acromatic Products, an after-market auto-parts manufacturer, is a longtime supporter of Republican candidates. Still, he is not optimistic about the November election: “Even though the Democrats are in full rout, we’re not able to mount an effective challenge. I don’t see the leadership there.” While Rockford voters lean Democratic,...

“Socialism will bring in an efflorescence of morality, civilization, and science such as has never been seen in the history of the world.” —Ferdinand Lassalle Modern American conservatism has been marked by a fascination with ideology. Despite arguments that conservatism is not an ideology or is opposed to all ideology, American conservatives have regularly attempted...

A review of Iron Man (produced by Marvel Studios; directed by John Favreau; screenplay by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby; distributed by Paramount Pictures) and The Visitor (produced by Groundswell Productions; directed and written by Thomas McCarthy; distributed by Overture Films) [amazonify]B00005JPS8[/amazonify]It is always reassuring when a big-budget superhero film fulfills its responsibility to edify...

At the heart of Barack Obama’s “Patriotism Tour” speech (discussed recently by Dr. Fleming and Dr. Trifkovic) lies the concept of credal nationhood. In the previous two installments of “Church and Nation,” I have mentioned that credal nationhood makes no sense whatsoever without reference to the state, because the promotion of credal nationhood has always...

If you were a patriotic “American” of Mideast origin, wouldn’t you willingly cooperate with “ethnic profiling” since it would help to save the lives of your “fellow” citizens? Want to know how many traffic deaths in my State last year were caused by aliens, mostly drunk illegals? 807. How many Americans are aware that Osama...

[Aaron D. Wolf on the revolution in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, grandfathers, the Devil, and the fate of Issues, Etc.] My grandfather has congestive heart failure. I hate to say it, but I probably won’t see him this time next year. “Gramp,” as I’ve called him since I can remember, taught me how to shoot...

The political situation in Serbia is both unprecedented and unexpected. No analyst had predicted, three or four months ago, that the election on May 11 would result in such impressive gains by the Democratic Party (Demokratska ...

PERSPECTIVE Bush's Whips, McCain's Scorpions by Thomas Fleming VIEWS John McCain on Foreign Policy by Ted Galen Carpenter Even worse than Bush. Neo-McCainism by Leon Hadar The highest stage of neoconservatism? The Dream Ticket by Srdja Trifkovic The most dangerous man in America, bankrolled by the most evil man in the world. A ...

“So should we vote for Obama?” Having devoted some thousands of words to the unveiling of John McCain low character and sordid record, online and in the current issue of Chronicles, I am asked this question with some regularity. Of course not, I reply; being anti-cancer does not make one pro-HIV. McCain is a neurotic...

Barack Obama has kicked off his “Patriotism Tour” with a speech that is designed to depict the candidate as a thoughtful man who has meditated long and hard upon the history of our country and the meaning of patriotism. In fact, it reveals him for what he is: a knee-jerk Marxist who has swallowed hook-line-and...

What an orgy of Churchill and Britain bashing we have had of late! One would almost begin to think that the Brits bear most of the blame for World War II and all its attendant horrors. (Actually there is nothing new here. The interpretations that have recently appeared were all debated vigorously in the immediate...

Pundits and politicians have been sounding off, lately, about the cruel dictator Robert Mugabe and the imperfection of the democratic process in the Zimbabwe elections. On NPR, Dan Schorr–that thing that would not die–blames George Bush, because if he had not got us into a war in Iraq, we could be intervening in Zimbabwe. I...

The modern age is the age of revolution, and the Eurabian Revolution is but a continuation of a process that hearks back to before the French Revolution of 1789. Today’s Eurocrats are on the verge of accomplishing what previous generations of revolutionaries, with all their evil genius, failed to bring about: the destruction of Europe...

Of the Axis-of-Evil nations named in his State of the Union in 2002, President Bush has often said, “The United States will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.” He failed with North Korea. Will he accept failure in Iran, though there is no hard evidence...

“Politics is too serious a matter to be left to politicians.” —De Gaulle Some things are, as they say, harder to find than a hen’s tooth: An American college without a commercial sports program. A Republican politician who really believes in “family values.” A federal judge who actually follows the law. A federal judge who...

Did Hitler’s crimes justify the Allies’ terror-bombing of Germany? Indeed they did, answers Christopher Hitchens in his Newsweek response to my new book, Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War: “The stark evidence of the Final Solution has ever since been enough to dispel most doubts about, say, the wisdom or morality of carpet-bombing German cities.”...

[A look at the Drive-By Truckers] Sometime in the early 1990’s, while attending an event called a “song swap” in Athens, Georgia, I met an extraordinarily gifted songwriter named Patterson Hood. The swap itself was essentially a ...

The United States has three large economic problems. The overarching one is that the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency is wearing out from continuous and large trade deficits and from government budget ...

Between the conversion of Constantine and the French Revolution, most Christians in Europe and North America assumed that they lived either in a Christian society or at least in a society that was not alien or hostile to their faith. By now, we know better or at least we ...

John Yoo stands outside the Anglo-American legal tradition. His views lead to self-incrimination wrung out of a victim by torture. He believes a president of the United States can initiate war, even on false pretenses, and then use the war he starts as cover for depriving U.S. citizens of habeas corpus protection. A U.S. attorney...

The California Supreme, in a recent decision striking down the state’s ban on same-sex “marriage,” has issued a declaration of independence from the human race. Progressives have inevitably hailed this latest break-through, comparing it to the legalization of inter-racial marriage, but the same progressives just as inevitably will hail the inevitable legalization of cross-species marriage...