Modern Western societies are commonly called industrial or democratic societies. They might just as well be named mass-communication societies, for the average citizen is supposed to be informed about what goes on in and around the city whose welfare and leadership he is supposed to assume. As the medium through which comes the data about...
“All we want are the facts, ma’am.” —Sgt. Joe Friday Not long ago I was sorting through old papers for disposal. I came across a clipping saved for some forgotten reason. On the reverse was this headline: “NAACP Chief Says More Assistance Needed.” This headline might have appeared in my hometown paper today (though I...
Americans can now pick from a welter of news outlets on the internet and from such independent sources as this magazine. Yet most Americans still get their news from the usual disinformation sources: the major newspapers and broadcast and cable TV. This became clear to me in 2012. After resisting for decades, in July 2012...
There “does not exist an engine so corruptive,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1821, “of the government and so demoralizing of the nation as a public debt. It will bring on us more ruin at home than all the enemies from abroad . . . ” Jefferson left Paris in 1790 three years before the French...
Several months ago I spoke briefly at the Baltimore Bar Library against passage of the Maryland Dream Act, the state version of the federal initiative that has been hanging around the capitol for a dozen years now. My remarks were countered by two supporters of the act, a pair of earnest young men: both Catholic,...
Democracy was born as a protest against what was felt to be an oppression of man by man, a rebellion against some men having the nerve to behave as if they had a natural right to command their fellow men—whether to enslave them, to lead them, or to tell them what to think and believe. ...
Some people have no sense of humor. In the summer of 1998, Eric Rudolph, bomber of two abortion clinics, a lesbian bar, and the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics, was on the run from the law in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Scores of FBI agents and other officials, trailed by reporters and television crews,...
There’s a monster on the loose It’s got our heads in a noose And it just sits there—watching. —Steppenwolf (the rock group) Big Brother is watching you; he’s also listening, sniffing, recording, and analyzing. His private little brothers—everyone from major corporations to your doctor and your local grocer—are also snooping on...
California continues its essential role as the proving ground for bad ideas. The latest is the demolition of “popular” initiatives to decide important issues. Of the 11 initiatives on the ballot last November in the Golden State, 8 were funded primarily by multimillionaires, according to MapLight, which tracks election funding. And Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry...
The presidential election of 2012 was no ordinary contest. The University of Colorado’s political-science department had developed a model, based on the state of the U.S. economy, that had accurately predicted the outcome of every presidential election between 1980 and 2008. This year, the model predicted a Romney victory. The explanation for Obama’s victory lies...
Throughout the 2012 political season, attention was fixed on the contest between President Obama and Mitt Romney. A few other races garnered some media attention, but Americans treated the presidential election as the Super Bowl of politics. The winner, we were told, would chart the nation’s future. Largely lost in the presidential hype were the...
People forget, in an age of promotion, self-promotion, publicity, advertising, the internet, and social media, that personal privacy is essential not only to civility but to civilization. Today, as never before in history, the maintenance of privacy depends on the moral fortitude to resist intrusion by others and the self-restraint and tact not to intrude...
If asked to choose one word to define the basic creed and catchword of Western modernity, I would not hesitate: That word would be freedom, provided one understands that, for a modern, there can be no freedom where there is no equality. If endowed with a minimum capacity to express himself, the average citizen would...
At the heart of the Christmas story is the lowly birth of Christ, surrounded by beasts of the field and honored by Magi bearing gifts. But consider how differently the Christmas narrative might have unfolded if ancient Judea had been organized as a free-market economy of the sort trumpeted by our libertarian friends. Imagine Joseph...
It is often said that “history repeats itself.” The recent history of Afghanistan confirms that view. The scheduled withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan in 2014 recalls the withdrawal of Soviet military forces from that country in 1989. The United States in 2001, like the Soviet Union in 1979, dispatched her Armed Forces to...
Over drinks in the hotel lounge in the course of a scholarly meeting a year or so ago, I mentioned to a professor of political science and philosophy that I was writing a book on democracy. “Can you give me an example of democracy in its perfect, most complete form?” he asked. “National socialism,” I...
Critical stands against democracy, when not simply ignored or mechanically rejected as mere fascist outbursts, are usually met with a supposedly wise objection: You may be right, except that you’re targeting an imperfect form of democracy. Thus, Tocqueville never addressed the principle; he decreed democracy would perfect itself as it matured. This is why I...
“O Fame, O Fame! Many a man ere this Of no account hast thou set up on high.” —Boethius “It is a kind of baby talk, a puerile and wind-blown gibberish. . . . In content it is a vacuum.” —H.L. Mencken on Warren G. Harding’s speeches Americans are a practical people. They don’t want...
There are numerous references to gold in the Bible. Gold was used to construct the ark and tabernacle (Exodus 25), adorned Solomon’s court (1 Kings 10), and is visible in Heaven in St. John’s Apocalypse (Revelation 4:4). Gold symbolizes value (Proverbs 8:10) and earthly wealth (Acts 3:6); among its many descriptors is “fire-tried” (1 Peter...
“ . . . Zapparoni approved only of sexless workers and had solved this problem brilliantly. Even here he had simplified nature, which . . . had already attempted a certain ‘economical’ approach in the slaughtering of the drones.” —Ernst Junger, The Glass Bees (1957) When, in her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, second-wave feminist...
On the day that three members of the punk band Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years’ prison for having interrupted a service in the Christ the Savior cathedral in Moscow in February to sing in front of the altar a blasphemous “prayer”—which included the refrain “Sh-t, sh-t, the Lord’s sh-t”—a group in the Ukrainian...
Life was much simpler for those of us who grew up in 1950’s America than it is for children today. We took for granted an intact family with a breadwinner father and a stay-at-home mom. America was the number-one manufacturing country in the world, and our society was anchored by a strong middle class. Yes,...
A unique exhibition was held from March 1 to April 15 in the Vatican’s Braccio di Carlo Magno (Charlemagne wing) next to St. Peter’s Basilica. Entitled Verbum Domini, it was dedicated to telling the story of the Bible amid a mounting wave of anti-Christian secularization. “This is the most valuable exhibition the Vatican has ever...
Since 1945, democracy’s reputation has climbed so high that, by the beginning of the 21st century, democracy itself had become nothing short of an idol throughout much of the world. This makes it difficult to imagine a time when democracy was widely regarded by political philosophers, writers, and artists not as the best but rather...
In Britain, the late 1940’s and early 50’s were probably the hardest years of the 20th century. For millions of people, the postwar decade was one of icy nights in gaslit rooms, interminable queues, and meals composed of whale fat and tinned beef—the comically vile ingredients of a serious sacrifice that particular generation is unlikely...
“As a busily growing animal, I am scatterbrained and entirely lacking in mental application. Having no desire at present to expend my precious energies upon the pursuit of knowledge, I shall not make the slightest attempt to assist you in your attempts to impart it. If you can capture my unwilling attention and goad me...
Welcome to Britain. The day I arrived, just as London’s mayor officially declared the city open for the Olympic Games, there were two-hour lines to pass through border controls at Heathrow, and that was just for us lucky British passport holders. Earlier that morning, police had been forced to intervene to deal with unrest after...
Pop pulled the sky-blue 1963 Chevy Impala out of the driveway in Wayne, Michigan. With Mom and three kids along for what our family would call our 9,000-mile trip, he jogged a block to Michigan Avenue, which, as US 12, always beckoned West to Chicago and, beyond that, to California. The kids: Johnny, nine; Caroline,...
Over the weekend of March 11, our daughter, Virginia, was married in the Arches National Park near Moab, Utah. She said she wanted to be married in a place surrounded by natural beauty, well away from trite tourism. After some web-surfing, she picked the Delicate Arch (one of the most photographed natural arches in the...
As a confirmed member of the Ninety-Nine Percent, I do not believe that the One Percent has too much money. I think that it does not have money enough. Even President Obama is unclear about his reasons for wanting to raise taxes on the well-to-do (the people with an income of $250,000 he regards as...
Vote for Chicagoland politics, get Chicagoland politics. Inspired by President Obama’s slash-and-burn tactics on his opponents, Democrats, radical labor, and left-liberal activists have begun full Saul Alinsky-Bill Ayres-style assaults on conservative and libertarian groups. Media Matters for America is the barking brigade leading the charge. A battalion in the war is another website called Color...
Bodie, July 1881—The early morning hours found deputy constables Richard O’Malley and James Monahan patrolling the streets of the mining town of more than 5,000 residents in mountains immediately east of the Sierra. Bob Watson and George Center happened by. A young miner, Center was “quiet when sober,” said the Daily Free Press, “but when...
Americans have been captivated by the February incident in Sanford, Florida, that resulted in the death of Trayvon Martin and the eventual arrest and charging of George Zimmerman. If the case could be resolved today, Trayvon Martin’s family would still be without a son, George Zimmerman—even if exonerated—will never live a normal life, Sanford Police...
Peter Hitchens, writing in The Spectator last March, asked why we should be concerned with stopping several thousand homosexuals from getting married when heterosexual marriage is so threatened by dysfunction and divorce. The social conservatives’ obsession with the subject is, he argued, simply “a stupid distraction from the main war,” like the battle of Stalingrad. ...
Most retrospectives take the Swinging Sixties, and more particularly Swinging London, on their own terms. “Society was shaken to its foundations!” a 2011 BBC documentary on the subject shouted. “All the rules came off, all the brakes came off . . . the floodgates were unlocked. . . . A youthquake hit Britain,” and so...
“A crocodile has been worshipped,” wrote John Taylor of Caroline, “and its priesthood have asserted, that morality required the people to suffer themselves to be eaten by the crocodile.” Such was his final judgment on the central government of the United States and the advocates of its power. This prophecy, if such it may be...
It has been seven years since Sam Francis died. But the years since his untimely death merely show the accuracy of his insights. Francis’s writing was marked not only by loyalty to the people from whom he came but by an unswerving devotion to telling the truth about the way the world really is, not...
At a recent dinner party, a Republican senator in the Wyoming legislature remarked that the most common personal call she receives from her constituents begins with, “I’m a Republican, but . . . ,” and ends with a request for some or another government benefit or service. Americans are fond of complaining that their political...
According to family records, ten of Great-Grandma’s twelve sons died in the Civil War. Thus it was that Allie Johnson Puett, the girl who became my Grandma Evetts, learned the lessons of self reliance, the duty of the defiance of illegitimate authority, the comforts of firearms, and the necessity of knowing how to shoot—wherein...
For the last several years Texas farmers and ranchers whose lands butt up against the Rio Grande have complained about cross-border raids by thugs of Mexican drug cartels. “It’s a war. Make no mistake about it,” said Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples. “And it’s happening on American soil.” Staples thinks the bountiful productivity of the...
The question of war with Iran over her nuclear program has been around for a decade. In October 2005 Iranian Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a speech at the World Without Zionism conference in Asia, in which he allegedly said, “Israel must be wiped off the map.” The propaganda war, with mutual demonization, was initiated. ...
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has had a rough time of it lately, and I won’t say they don’t deserve it. Barack Obama is their President, after all, when it comes to most political issues; for example, immigration and immigrants’ rights, tax policy, economic inequality, “social justice,” peaceful internationalism, and national healthcare. The exception,...
A theory about the mafia that was advanced in these pages by the late Samuel Francis about 15 years ago explains how Walmart, Costco, and Home Depot drive out your corner grocery, the local pharmacist, and Joe’s Hardware. The national expansion of these blights isn’t free enterprise. It’s more akin to the nationwide expansion of...
“Economy, n. Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford.” —Ambrose Bierce “That was the summer of seventy-three,” writes Forrest McDonald. “Remember it well, and cherish the memory, for things will never be that good again.” This is from his little book...
Partisan. That’s the complaint many Americans have with the state of politics. The country would be better off, we are told, if only the Republicans and Democrats could put aside petty differences and work together. Can’t the left and right find some common ground and build on it? Unfortunately, when it comes to the power...
At least one historian has noted that democracy is inherently inflationary. The phenomenon of inflation is not restricted to money and finance. Too much of anything reduces the value of that thing, and others with it. Political inflation, or extreme democracy, degrades the political system, as well as the economy it is tempted to inflate...
In 1861 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln launched a war of conquest against the South, and legend claims it was all for the abolition of slavery, officially declared by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Yet exactly 101 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the forcefully reinstated Union, signed the Civil Rights Act...
When novelist Zora Neale Hurston died penniless in a Florida nursing home in 1960, she was buried in a charity cemetery in an unmarked grave, an ironic resting place for a talented American writer and folklorist who, by all accounts, was a dazzling and memorable personality. Though her success had never been more than modest,...
In January, I was tasked by the London Daily Telegraph to track Rick Santorum through the wilds of New Hampshire. Following his impressive gains in Iowa, many were giving Santorum good odds for winning the Granite State’s presidential primary. His appeal was a mix of religion and class war. At an Elks Lodge in Salem,...
Apologists for industrialism, as well as its critics, agree that the industrial mode of economic production, and industrial society itself, do not have the choice of arresting their growth at a desired level, or even to slacken momentum. Like the cancer cell, when the system stops growing, it dies. A carcinoma perishes only after it...