Whatever happened to Randolph Scott ridin’ the range alone? Whatever happened to Gene and Tex And Roy and Rex, the Durango Kid? Whatever happened to Randolph Scott His horse plain, as can be? Whatever happened to Randolph Scott Has happened to the best of me. So sang the Statler Brothers in their 1974 country hit. ...
The names are legendary; the tales of heroism, a part of our heritage as Texans and Americans. Houston, Crockett, Bowie, Travis: All, save William Barret Travis, were nationally known figures before they came to Texas, which was then considered Mexican territory. Sam Houston had been governor of Tennessee, a protégé of Andrew Jackson, a war...
I first encountered the name Samuel T. Francis in 1984, when Joe Sobran thrust a nondescript-looking little book, published in typically amateurish format by the University Press of America, into my hands and asked my permission to review it. (I was, in those days, the literary editor for National Review.) Its title was Power and...
Let us begin by assuming that we agree that Islam is inherently militant. The words Muslim and Islam are derived from the Arabic word for “submission.” Submission to the absolute authority of Allah is essential. The heart of Islam is submission to the central credo that there is only one god, Allah, and Muhammad is...
An American foreign policy based on a national-security strategy consistent with this country’s traditions and values would have three main objectives in relation to Europe. The first would be to promote the preservation of the Old Continent as the cradle of our common civilization, with which North America shares a similar world outlook. The second...
It is increasingly clear that the Bush administration’s nation-building policy in Iraq is merely one component of an ambitious project to transform the Middle East politically. That goal is consistent with the principles that President Bush expressed in his Second Inaugural Address, in which he announced that “it is the policy of the United States...
When President George W. Bush met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Bratislava, Slovakia, this past February, the first item on the White House’s laundry list of discussion points for the summit was nuclear programs, including Russian aid to Iran’s nuclear-power effort. After the meeting, Putin told reporters that the issue of nuclear proliferation was...
Anyone who doubts that China is rising fast as the new power in Asia need only take the ride I took last fall through Shanghai, from the Hongqiao International Airport to the Bund area along the Huangpu riverfront. It was just after dark, and this mammoth city was lit up in an awesome display the...
In assessing the political conditions necessary to establish a lasting peace in Israel-Palestine, Americans are confronted with a theological question: Does the Bible insist that Christians take a certain view regarding the treatment of the Jewish people in particular, their presence in the Holy Land, or the placement of the borders of Israel? One particular...
The United States is the world’s sole superpower, a globe-spanning “hyperpower” with professed interests everywhere. Israel is a small nation of minimal resources, far from America. Under normal circumstances, such a country would not loom large in U.S. policy. Yet, in the post-September 11 world, Israel sits at the center of American strategy. Israel’s importance...
In the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush promised a more humble U.S. foreign policy. Five years later, that pledge has turned out to be nothing but disingenuous rhetoric used to contrast his campaign with the activist foreign policy of the Clinton-Gore administration. Of course, the Bush administration would claim that September 11 changed everything. ...
Almost three years have passed since the unseasonably warm day in June 2002 when a number of the authors who have contributed to this issue of Chronicles met near O’Hare Airport to sketch out one of the most ambitious projects that we at The Rockford Institute have ever undertaken. We approached the project with a...
The role of Islam in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is a contentious subject with two main schools of thought. One, broadly sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view, treats the conflict in geopolitical and social, rather than ideological or religious, terms. The other, emanating mostly (although not exclusively) from pro-Israeli sources, maintains that the Palestinian cause—even...
Public education exacerbates today’s toxic youth subculture. The combined forces of advertisers, television, teen magazines, and internet spammers have lured our nation’s youth into lives of promiscuity. Government schools add incompetence and dependency to the mix—all wrapped in a façade of “learning” and “testing” packages. Government education, unfortunately, never quite met the promised ideal. Even...
Their effect is especially pervasive and pernicious in respect of empires, as Clyde Wilson has cogently noted. The American empire, at the opening of the 21st century, might be offered as Exhibit A. In the political sphere, corruption is engendered by the magnitude of the stakes contended for; in the economic realm, greed is stimulated...
On our refrigerator door, we have posted photos and stories of Marines who have lost their lives in the Iraq war. Among them are Cpl. Jason Dunham and Lance Cpl. Aaron Austin. Dunham was 22 when he dived onto a grenade to protect his buddies in K Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines. A top high-school...
The kind of regime that is being imposed on the world by what still passes for the West has two basic forms. The form preferred by the Democratic Party in the United States and by the European Union is multilateralist and therapeutic. The form favored by the people who currently control U.S. foreign policy is...
“No change can be made in styles of music without affecting the most important conventions of society. So Damon declares and I agree.” —Plato, Republic The late Sam Shapiro used to tell a story about two Englishmen in China who wanted to demonstrate the superiority of their culture to one of the mandarins they had...
My maternal grandfather was a very practical man, an entrepreneur with a self-made fortune, a local mayor, philo-Dixiecrat, devoted to his wife and three daughters. His habitual reading was the Raleigh paper and the local small-town daily (which, by some miracle, still exists). He died when I was very small, and so I never had...
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image . . . Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them . . . —Exodus 20:4,5 In the fourth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, Satan tempts Jesus with the offer of “all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.” This...
The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis’s masterful critique of the relativism that was as rampant in his day as it is in ours, represented the culmination of the author’s quest for the quintessential meaning of man’s being and purpose. Always a diligent searcher after truth, Lewis had climbed a long and arduous path from the...
In 1997, the headmaster of the English secondary school in which I was teaching ordered a bibliocaust. The inspectors were coming, and he wanted our library to look up-to-date. All the old stuff had to go; only bright, modern volumes relevant to the contemporary curriculum were to be on the shelves. Each department was told...
Iran’s agreement to “suspend” her nuclear program in exchange for economic benefits from the European Union has dampened that crisis for the moment. The Bush administration’s vocal skepticism about the agreement, however, suggests that the crisis has not been defused. Moreover, Iran emphasizes that her nuclear activities have only been suspended, not abolished. That is...
Discussions of jihad terrorism and the best defense against it rarely avoid entanglement in the contentious question of the relationship of terrorist actions to Islam as a religion. Is the terrorism an aberration of Islam, or is it, judged in light of history, the prevailing orthodoxy? Indeed, the question is an important one, and, in...
For all the investment the United States has made in prosecuting the “War on Terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Saudi presence in the United States has gone largely unnoticed—although it may be the most lethal terror front of all. U.S. politicians have been intoxicated by Saudi petrodollars for decades. Saudi greenbacks led Spiro Agnew...
U.S. officialdom calls them “Special Interest Aliens,” as much because they might have a special interest in us as we in them. They are aliens from countries that are considered potential sources of terrorist attacks on the American homeland, and their numbers are reportedly growing. “People are coming here with bad intentions,” an anonymous Border...
Activist, activism: These are two of the ugliest, falsest, and most sinister words in the English language. As citizens of the Age of Activism, subject to the unremitting harassment of activists who refuse to leave society in peace, we need to understand the phenomenon they represent, as well as to recognize it. According to my...
One side is celebrating, the other rending their garments, but both sides are wondering if the outcome of the November presidential election might signal a springtime for traditional moral values in America. Rappers P. Diddy and Eminem doubtless turned more voters away from Kerry than they attracted, and, in all states where voters were asked...
“Render to all what is due them,” writes Saint Paul, “Tax to whom tax is due, custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor” (Romans 13:7, NASB). When a zealous Christian offered to help Mark Twain understand the difficult things in the Bible, Twain said something like this: “It is not...
With difficulty, in a diminished capacity, or perhaps with an alienated attitude because I was watching good old Benny Hill reruns on the BBC America channel at the time, I have become somehow dimly aware that prizes have been awarded to someone for something—but not to the late Benny Hill. Yes, the Powers, always clueless,...
I had taught in private schools for years, but I hesitated before entering the classroom to teach my first lesson in the state sector. I stopped a colleague in the corridor and asked him for advice. Should I expect the children to fall silent and stand behind their desks when I walked in? Thinking I was...
It was in the autumn of 1960, after our Plebe Summer and the test of “Beast Barracks,” that I first heard about the revisions that the West Point academic curriculum had recently undergone, which would be experimentally applied to our incoming class of some 800 men. Colonel Lincoln’s Social Science Department, as it was presented...
Toward the beginning of De Caelo (On the Heavens), Aristotle makes the well-known remark that “the least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold”—or, as it is sometimes phrased, “a small error in the beginning leads to a large error later on.” We can easily see that this is true, whether in...
“How much power Congress has to block Supreme Court consideration of the constitutionality of its laws is an open question.” This, the Washington Post said in a September 23, 2004, editorial, is “somewhat surprising.” The Post shouldn’t be so astonished, for the real surprise is that judicial supremacy—the doctrine that the Court interprets the Constitution...
The severity of the ongoing decline of U.S. manufacturing has placed our prosperity and national security in jeopardy. A principal cause of this crisis is the federal tax code, which currently imposes multiple layers of progressive taxation on U.S. goods. The result, as many economists acknowledge, is crippling: a double taxation of savings for investment...
In all Eastern Orthodox Churches, this troparion or prayer is spoken or sung frequently in worship: “O Lord, save Thy people and bless Thine inheritance. Grant victories to the Orthodox Christians over their adversaries; and by virtue of Thy Cross, preserve Thy habitation.” This ancient prayer was, one might say, a “national anthem” that was...
“Likewise also the chief priests mocking said . . . Let Christ the King of Israel descend now from the cross that we may see and believe.” I have been a citizen of the sovereign state of California for most of my life. I can guarantee you, Alta California is not merely a result of the...
Nelson Head, a boy in a story by Flannery O’Connor, is reared in the rural South, with little sign of education and in obvious isolation. Yet the boy is arrogant to the point of impudence, because he was born in the city. To cure him of this, his grandfather takes him into the city, only...
In “A Mirror for Artists”—his contribution to Agrarianism’s classic manifesto, I’ll Take My Stand, published in 1930—Donald Davidson attacked what he called “the industrial theory of the arts.” According to this Maecenas concept, industrialism can be counted on to create an artistic renaissance in which not the wealthy classes only but the plain people will...
The recent U.S. recession, if judged by its effect on total employment, was the shortest and mildest of the post-World War II period. In the six months from the peak of July 1998 to the low of January 1999, employment declined by only 1.43 million workers, and, by May 2004, 7.5 million additional workers were...
According to most prominent Democrats, the United States is being seriously hurt by the conservatives running Washington today. While their allegations about the damage being done by those in power may be plausible, what warrants skepticism is the premise behind the allegations. Do those whom the Democrats criticize deserve to be called “conservatives”? Given their...
For a political reporter looking for a good story, a national convention has become a pretty barren field. Journalists typically just enjoy the expense account, skip most of the scripted, focus-grouped speeches, and listen instead to Jack Germond or David Broder reminisce about the Taft-Eisenhower floor fight of 1952 or the Chicago riots of 1968. ...
How did the Texas Republican Party, which was in the forefront of the battles to win the Republican presidential nomination for Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980, become a wholly owned subsidiary of Karl Rove and George W. Bush? Today, the Republicans in Texas control every statewide elected office, yet...
I went into the 2000 presidential campaign an enthusiastic supporter of Pat Buchanan’s bid for the White House as a third-party candidate. I emerged more convinced than ever that Buchanan would have made an outstanding president but skeptical that a serious right-wing party will be able to emerge, at least in the short run. I knew...
A nationwide initiative has been quietly in the making since 2002. Conceived in Texas, apparently with President George W. Bush’s enthusiastic blessing, there are now some 27 sites around the country piloting various parts of it. Nationally, however, the proposed legislation earned barely a blip on the radar screen—the project is so hush-hush that two officials...
At the time of Alexis de Tocqueville’s writing, the French Revolution still loomed over minds and, with it, memories of a bloodbath and of a new kind of tyranny. The American Revolution seemed to offer grounds for rosier hopes about democracy. Convinced that there was no turning back to the old days, Tocqueville set about...
A few years ago, I was talking about Timothy Dwight to an audience of people old enough to appreciate both his Christian orthodoxy and his old-fashioned patriotism. When I mentioned Dwight’s passion for farming and his devotion to agriculture as a way of life, a man from Dwight’s adopted state of Connecticut informed me that there...
On July 19, three days before H.R. 3313 was debated, the ACLU issued notice of an “Urgent Briefing” entitled: “How the Marriage Protection Act (H.R. 3313) Will Harm Civil Rights, and Violate the U.S. Constitution.” The flyer explained: “The bill would shut the federal courthouse doors—including the door to the Supreme Court—to an entire group...
What could a world-famous multibillionaire Hollywood star like Mel Gibson have in common with an unknown, cash-strapped, freelance journalist based in Rome? Virtually nothing, it would seem. Yet there is a common denominator: We are both Catholics and cherish the traditional Latin Mass, the primary liturgy of the Church before its post-Vatican II transformation into...
Michael Moore, the leftist director of Fahrenheit 9/11, got one thing right when he proclaimed at a June 24 press conference that, despite the Republican control of the White House and Congress, America is liberal. It is a fact. The Republican Party, the only home conservatives have at election time, does not remotely resemble the...