A review of Stop-Loss (produced by Paramount Pictures, Scott Rudin Productions, and MTV Films; directed by Kimberly Peirce; screenplay by Kimberly Peirce and Mark Richard; distributed by Paramount Pictures). [amazonify]B0013FSL1Q[/amazonify]On March 29, 2008, Suffolk County police officers vigorously fulfilled their sworn duty at the Smith Haven Mall in Lake Grove, New York. Alerted by the...

September 11, 2001, we are often told, “changed everything.” In Washington, D.C., and Baghdad, Iraq, that may have been true. President George W. Bush and a handful of his advisors, who had been itching for a fight with Iraq since before the inauguration, now saw their opening. It would take another year and a half...

The mainstream media is catching up with Chronicles. On Tuesday, June 17, the Chicago Tribune published a major article exposing Sen. John McCain’s connection with the Reform Institute (RI), a Washington think tank founded in 2001 ostensibly to promote transparency and accountability in government. But behind the scenes, the paper says, the Institute’s practices have...

The European Union’s Lisbon Reform Treaty was decisively defeated by the Irish electorate in a referendum on June 13. The Euro-federalist project will be at least delayed, if not derailed, thanks to the vote. The victory of the “No!” campaign was due to a variety of factors, but whatever its causes it reflects the fatal...

Thursday, June 1—My final American Interest was published today in Chronicles. In the aftermath of the Second Revolution, the column has outlived its purpose. Pontificating on the evils of one-worldism, empire, global hegemony, propositional nationhood, jihadist infiltration, foreign interventionism, and “nation-building” was a necessary and often frustrating task, back in the awful days of George...

“Curious Barbara’s got her nose in a sling,” goes the Russian admonition against prurience, more puzzling, if anything, than the equivalent English adage concerning the killing, in similarly umbrageous circumstances, of the cat. Why should Barbara meet with such a fate? Just how did it happen that curiosity brought about the death of Fluffy? As...

“American culture is an infinite regression to moronic vulgarity.” —Thomas Fleming Napoleon famously called the English “a nation of shopkeepers.” Can we say that Americans are a non-nation of shoppers? Are you ready for our first Luo-American president? Are you ready for C-H-A-A-A-N-G-E!? Are you ready for a President who got his start in politics...

These are bad times to be an eater in America, as anyone who has suffered sticker shock at the supermarket can tell you. The cost of necessities such as bread, milk, and eggs has risen steadily in the last two years—by as much as 30 percent in some parts of the country. Vegetables, fruits, meats,...

A month has passed since the parliamentary election of May 11, and Serbia is still without a new government. The new National Assembly was convened briefly on May 10, while the Municipal Council of Belgrade remains paralyzed for at least another month. A new general election, some time in early fall, may prove to be...

How to explain the oil price? Why is it so high? Are we running out? Are supplies disrupted, or is the high price a reflection of oil company greed or OPEC greed? Are Hugo Chavez and the Saudis conspiring against us? In my opinion, the two biggest factors in oil’s high price are the weakness...

Various multiethnic states (imperial Russia, the Habsburg Monarchy, pre-World War II Kingdom of Yugoslavia) have been labeled—often unfairly—as “prisons of nations.” That designation will apply more aptly to the European Union when the Lisbon Treaty, signed by all 27 EU heads of states ...

A select few who see the peril to which their neighbors are oblivious and who proceed to save their community against overwhelming odds, is a familiar literary and cinematic concept. Earlier this month (May 11-12) I had the pleasure of addressing one such real-life group ...

Recent press reports inevitably describe Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica as a

Revolutions turn into institutions; revolts that renew the youth of old societies in their turn grow old; and the past, which was full of new things, of splits and innovations and insurrections, seems to us a single texture of tradition. . . . . ...

PERSPECTIVE The Pursuit of Happiness by Thomas Fleming VIEWS The Decline and Fall of the American Economy by Paul Craig Roberts Offshoring our security. Outgrowing Agriculture by Katherine Dalton Food and national security. States of Autarky by Greg Kaza The benefits of self-sufficiency. It’s 2028, and All Is Well by Srdja Trifkovic The ...

Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, by Patrick J. Buchanan. New York: Crown. 544 pp. $25.95 A Review published in The Wanderer . Since this is my unedited text, any errors are the fault of the author and not ...

In introducing this series last week, I noted that I had been careful in my choice of the title

After losing both houses of Congress in the 1994 election, Bill Clinton expostulated: The president of the United States is not irrelevant! On learning his trusted aide from Texas Scott McClellan has denounced as an “unnecessary war” the same Iraq war McClellan defended from the White House podium, George Bush must feel as Clinton did....

Can a faithful Catholic be a good American? Can a good American be a faithful Catholic? While these questions may seem relics of the era of the Know-Nothings and “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,” they are still around today. And, as some comments on recent posts on this website have shown, an increasing number of people—both...

If Obama is not elected will there be riots? If Obama is elected, will there be riots? Are Americans capable of recognising and electing good leaders? (We can't know because it has been so long since they have seen one.) What would happen if a ...

The Epistle to the Romans is in many ways the most significant contribution made by St. Ignatius to the formation of the early Christian Church. Before plunging into the text, though, I would like to sketch a little of what I think we can agree on. The Church begins ...

As Israel enters its 61st year, Israelis may look back with pride. Yet, the realists among them must also look forward with foreboding. Israel is a modern democracy with the highest standard of living in the Middle East. In the high-tech industries of the future, she ...

Last Sunday night, as the results of Serbia’s parliamentary elections became known, the country’s President Boris Tadić made a remarkable statement. “I warn the parties that have lost this election,” he declared, “not to play games with the will of the citizens and try to form a government that would take Serbia back to the...

Modern liberalism, so apt to see every social pathology as a form of mental or emotional illness, invites the application of a similar perspective on itself. Whether the issue in question has to do with teenage promiscuity, adultery, prostitution, drug and alcohol abuse, kleptomania, school shootings, child abuse, gang warfare, or corruption in government (though...

If you relied on wire service accounts, Catholic commentary, and the few snippets of video on the evening news, you can be forgiven for believing that the White House Welcoming Ceremony held for Pope Benedict XVI on April 16 was entirely “warm,” “friendly,” and marked by “mutual admiration and respect.” But beneath the surface, the...

PERSPECTIVEBeastie Boysby Thomas Fleming VIEWSFederales, Gringo Styleby Roger D. McGrathThe exponential growth of federal police. Do We Want a Federal Police Force?by William J. QuirkThe Supreme Court and Congress versus the people. Jack Bauer, Agent of Anarcho-Tyranny, U.S.A.by R. Cort KirkwoodAmerica’s most wanted. NEWSThe Surge “Success”by Ted Galen CarpenterTriumph of hope over experience. REVIEWSTowers of...

The foolishness of political debate in America has discouraged me from writing this column, but I have decided to come out of semi-retirement to ask this chicken-and-egg question: Which came first in America, the narcissistic obsession with personal trivia or the blogosphere? In other words, did Internet blogging reduce the mentality of young Americans to...

“This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper,” wrote T.S. Eliot in the closing couplet of “The Hollow Men.” Eliot’s poem was written after the Great War of 1914-1918 had carried off 9 million soldiers, wounded twice as many more, brought down the Romanov, Hohenzollern and Habsburg empires, and ushered...

The great events of the world take place in the brain. —Oscar Wilde A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.  —G.B. Shaw . . . a brave nation fights only because it must; a cowardly nation fights because it can.  —Ilana Mercer War is a racket....

The neocons may yet get their war on Iran. Ever since President Nouri al-Maliki ordered the attacks in Basra on the Mahdi Army, Gen. David Petraeus has been laying the predicate for U.S. air strikes on Iran and a wider war in the Middle East. Iran, Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee, has “fueled...

In the tumultuous six months between his election in November 1860 and the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, Abraham Lincoln rejected all diplomatic efforts to resolve the deepening crisis peacefully.  In the political dispute with the newly constituted, but militarily weak, Confederate States of America, there would ...

PERSPECTIVE Little Aristocracies of Our Own by Thomas Fleming VIEWS The End of the American Middle Class by John Lukacs The lonely new age. Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be by James O. Tate Arriving at indistinction. STORY Your Hit Parade by Anthony Bukoski NEWS Anatomy of a Meltdown by David ...

Truth does not reside in a collection of facts; truth is shown by the form of their presentation, once their significance has been seized on. In the record, little of all this is given. Telling the truth, then, requires sagacity and style, ...

It is almost inevitable that a reader of my interests and disposition should slightly miss the point of this book, described in a Daily Express blurb as “a good spy thriller,” and that is precisely what I propose to do. Spy thrillers are plentiful; ...

On reading George Bush's discourse to the New York Economic Club last week, Cicero's insight came to mind:

The weather in Rome has been on the chilly side, but compared with Rockford in January, it’s positively balmy. Warm enough, in fact, to risk a charge of heresy (or at least philistinism) by capping the first full day of The Rockford Institute’s ...

Sudan and Ethiopia are neighboring countries that are both ruled by authoritarian regimes; each is engaged in a brutal counterinsurgency operation against rebel forces—the former, in Darfur; the latter, in Ogaden. Curiously, these countries are treated quite differently by Washington; and this difference reveals a great deal about the ...

Americans are a people of deeply held religious conviction. If any has doubts, let him look on the most serious of our sacred holidays and believe. Naturally, it is a federal holiday, but that fact alone does not convey the magnitude of this special ...

The long campaign of 2007-08, already sputtering out in fizzled squibs, childish ploys, and pointless personal recriminations, has offered few of the moments of drama or high comedy that Americans have rightly come to expect of our political candidates. The debates ...

Some of the postings follow the usual pattern witnessed here in the UK. The fanatical Europhiles just hurl abuse. Some more intelligent critics get things wrong by relying on established, politically controlled, or popular sources, which are incomplete. Regarding my alleged Germanophobia (the classic ad hominem ...

“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie . . .” —2 Thessalonians 2:11 American public life thrives on delusions treated as facts: *That you can have a First World economy and military with a Third World population. *That the U.S. government, which has almost unlimited access...

It should be obvious to anyone who has taken the slightest trouble to examine the immigration question that America is faced not with an immigration “problem,” or even a “crisis,” but with a massive ...

PERSPECTIVE Our Open (Borders) Secret by Thomas Fleming VIEWS The Loss of American Identity by Roger D. McGrath California, today—your state, tomorrow. The Tragedy of Mexico by Gregory McNamee Riches unrealized. NEWS Facts? Who Needs ’Em! by William Lutz Some critical thinking in Texas. REVIEWS After the Deluge by Jack Trotter Chilton Williamson, Jr., ed.: Immigration and the American Future Clark ...

A strongly shared sense of right and wrong has maintained a working peace and harmony within many societies over long periods. This is probably what saw the class-ridden British through an empire and two world wars. It is what kept the South ...

There are many self-styled friends of Israel in the United States who have been enthusiastically supportive of Kosovo’s independence for years. People like Sen. Joe Lieberman, Rep. Elliot Engel, Morton Abramowitz, William Kristol, Douglas Feith and ...

In Africa last week, President Bush deplored the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s, defended his refusal to send U.S. troops to Darfur and decried the ethnic slaughter in Kenya. Following a fraudulent election, the Kikyu, the dominant tribe in Kenya, have been subjected to merciless ...

It is impossible to keep up with all the Bush regime’s lies. There are simply too many. Among the recent crop, one of the biggest is that the “surge” is working. Launched last year, the “surge” was the extra 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops sent to Iraq. These few extra troops, Americans were told, would...

The grotesque charade in Pristina on Sunday, February 17, crowned a decade and a half of U.S. policy in the former Yugoslavia that has been mendacious and iniquitous in equal measure. By encouraging its Albanian clients go ahead with the unilateral proclamation of ...

HARD RIGHT The Suicide of the West by Thomas Fleming VIEWS The Everlasting Frontier by Chilton Williamson, Jr. Wilderness democracy. The Curious Career of Billy the Kid by Gregory McNamee The man behind the myth. Westerns by Roger D. McGrath America’s Homeric era on the silver screen. The Death of the Western by Clay Reynolds Back-trailing for affirmation. REVIEWS He ...

Over at NRO, an entertaining spat has developed between Ramesh Ponnuru and David Frum over Ponnuru’s criticism of Frum’s book Comeback. Ponnuru writes that “none of [Frum’s] facts can be trusted without independent verification” and that Frum’s pose as a “bold truth-teller” is “insufferable.” Frum, for his part, describes Ponnuru’s “distinctive Grand Panjandrum manner” as...