From the July 1988 issue of Chronicles. If is ironic that the thoughts of this essay, extracted from a commencement address I gave at Claremont McKenna College in the spring of 1987, celebrate an old Stanford University tradition of submerging all students in the classical thought of the West as a precondition to graduation, no...
In its lead editorial Wednesday, The New York Times called upon Congress to amend the National Emergency Act to “erect a wall against any President, not just Mr. Trump, who insists on creating emergencies where none exist.” Trump “took advantage” of a “loophole” in the NEA, said the Times, to declare “a crisis at the...
From the October 1992 issue of Chronicles. Probably not since Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind has a popular novel influenced Americans as deeply as Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. Appearing in 1969, the book remains, according to the inflated come-on of its publisher’s blurb, “the all-time best-selling novel in publishing history.” If true, that claim...
“I take refuge under the impenetrable arch of probability” said Poincare—the mathematician, but the French President of the same name might have adhered to the same doctrine. It remains good advice for politicians, and for those writing about politics. So: there are excellent reasons to expect that Theresa May will shortly be obliged to stand...
As President Trump flew home from his Hanoi summit with Kim Jong Un, Mike Pompeo peeled off and flew to Manila. And there the Secretary of State made a startling declaration. Any armed attack by China on a Philippine ship or plane in the South China Sea, he told the Philippine government, will be treated...
Visiting Brussels is like visiting an acquaintance who is well informed but whose company you don’t enjoy. It is not fun but it can be useful. The European Union is in a state of latent crisis which has the potential to turn acute at any moment, but the massive bureaucratic machine in its capital pretends...
The “tech totalitarians” of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Google have been joined by financial services corporations like Paypal in not only “de-platforming” and censoring alternative voices on the Right but “de-financing” them by blocking access to their services. Paypal is teaming up with the leftist, anti-Christian Southern Poverty Law Center to determine who to ban...
“Politics stops at the water’s edge” was a tradition that, not so long ago, was observed by both parties, particularly when a president was abroad, speaking for the nation. The tradition was enunciated by Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan in 1947, as many of the Republicans in the 80th Congress moved to back Truman’s leadership...
“In delay there lies no plenty” sang Feste, the controlling figure in Twelfth Night. Theresa May would disagree. She has used delay as the vital investment of her government since its formation, and her personal plenty is the dividend. Her plan, as I set out in my July (2018) piece in Chronicles, is to rely...
Having mistakenly thought that he had killed his rival during a fight over a girl, 16-year old Simon Kenton headed west from Virginia into Kentucky. Before he turned 20 Kenton had established himself as a first-rate ranger and Indian fighter, and he had become a frontier icon by the time he died in 1836 at...
Having embraced “Medicare-for-all,” free college tuition and a Green New Deal that would mandate an early end of all oil, gas and coal-fired power plants, the Democratic Party’s lurch to the left rolls on. Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren both called last week for race-based reparations for slavery. “Centuries of slavery, Jim Crow,...
Immigration is to Donald Trump what Central America was to Ronald Reagan. It’s where a presidency would succeed or fail. When Reagan left office, the Sandinista were still in power in Nicaragua, but the Cold War, as anyone could see, was winding down. And it did just that, on Nov. 9, 1989, with the collapse...
This weekend brought the sad news of the death of Hollywood director Stanley Donen, at the age of 94. Donen directed many fine films, including the wonderfully Hitchcockian Charade, but the focus of the tributes is rightly on an undoubted American masterpiece, Singin’ in the Rain, a film that epitomizes Hollywood’s Golden Age. The entire...
In the Venezuelan crisis, said President Donald Trump in Florida, “All options are on the table.” And if Venezuela’s generals persist in their refusal to break with Nicolas Maduro, they could “lose everything.” Another example of Yankee bluster and bluff? Or is Trump prepared to use military force to bring down Maduro and install Juan...
On February 19, Serbia’s Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic received Venezuela’s Deputy FM Ivan Hill and reiterated Serbia’s position of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs. The following day U.S. Ambassador in Belgrade Kyle Scott responded with a tweet (in Serbian), warning that “Serbia is on the wrong side of history” for not recognizing “the provisional...
Britain today presents the exhilarating spectacle of its two main political parties facing imminent collapse. If there is No Brexit, the Tories will split, says Charles Moore, the doyen of Conservative commentary. Labour has already split, with Monday’s announcement that seven MPs have resigned from the party (and eighth has since done so as well)....
From the December 1991 issue of Chronicles. “Contrary to widespread belief, evidence is accumulating that Western democracy is in continuous and serious decline,” writes Claes Ryn in the opening of this eloquent, concise, and hard-hitting manifesto that goes immediately to the heart of our times. “Many commentators proclaim democracy’s triumph over evil political forces in...
“If you look at Trump in America and Bolsonaro in Brazil, you see that people want politicians that do what they promise,” said Spanish businessman Juan Carlos Perez Carreno. The Spaniard was explaining to The New York Times what lay behind the rise of Vox, which the Times calls “Spain’s first far-right party since the...
The Left’s assault on history comes up with an old favourite—you have to crank up your gramophone by hand to get its flavour, as the record strives to speed at 72 revolutions, wheezing and crackling—with their latest discovery that Churchill was a “villain.” That’s the word chosen by John McDonnell, deputy to Jeremy Corbyn. His...
I just retired after serving 30 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and 16 years before that as a lawyer and Judge. Of all the great men and women with whom I have worked during my career, Walter Jones was one of the best. There is greater turnover in elective office than ever before,...
Both of America’s great national parties are coalitions. But it is the Democratic Party that never ceases to celebrate diversity—racial, religious, ethnic, cultural—as its own and as America’s “greatest strength.” Understandably so, for the party is home to a multitude of minorities. It is the domain of the LGBTQ movement. In presidential elections, Democrats win...
President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency to fund the wall along the nation’s southern border. Speaking in the Rose Garden, Trump said there was an emergency at the border which could only be fixed by building a wall. House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer had said before Trump’s address...
Nancy Pelosi is warning that, if Trump declares an emergency over the border, a future Democratic President could declare an emergency over gun violence. This argument is intended to frighten Republicans from taking action to prevent millions more potential Democrats streaming from Latin America into the United States. Republicans should not let themselves be frightened....
From the October 1990 issue of Chronicles. F.A. Hayek, in The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, offers us one insight into the nature of freedom and morality. Hayek argues that the major world religions have succeeded and endured because they reinforce the weak and imperfect points of human nature. Hayek believes that civilization is...
After reading an especially radical platform agreed upon by the British Labor Party, one Tory wag described it as “the longest suicide note in history.” The phrase comes to mind on reading of the resolution calling for a Green New Deal, advanced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and endorsed by at least five of the major Democratic...
The Woman in White was Wilkie Collins’s finest novel. That title is on his chosen headstone. I thought of Collins, as I viewed Nancy Pelosi, “clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful” at the State of the Union address. She led a cohort of Democrat ladies, cast somewhat implausibly as Vestal Virgins. You can push symbolism...
If the pollsters at CNN and CBS are correct, Donald Trump may have found the formula for winning a second term in 2020. His State of the Union address, say the two networks, met with the approval of 76 percent of all viewers—97 percent of Republicans, 82 percent of independents and 30 percent of Democrats....
From the October 1988 issue of Chronicles. “Ask the booksellers of London what is become of all these lights of the world.” —Edmund Burke Some 40 nonclassic books are discussed by Professor Perrin in this pleasant volume of literary preferences. By a classic, Noel Perrin means a work that everyone recognizes as highly important, even though...
In the course of his 48-hour visit to the United Arab Emirates, Pope Francis addressed an “interreligious meeting” in Abu Dhabi on February 4 and celebrated an open-air Mass attended by 135,000 Catholic guest workers the following day. His homily at the city’s Zayed Sports Stadium, inspired by the Sermon on the Mount, was unremarkable but...
“Once that picture with the blackface and the Klansman came out, there is no way you can continue to be the governor of the commonwealth of Virginia.” So decreed Terry McAuliffe, insisting on the death penalty with no reprieve for his friend and successor Gov. Ralph Northam. Et tu, Brute? Yet Northam had all but...
You would have thought Virginia Democrat Governor Ralph Northam had been a co-conspirator in the assassination of Martin Luther King, given the reaction to what appeared to be a page in his 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook. Both the Democrats on the Left and the “virtue-signaling” Republicans and movement conservatives—that is, the near entirety...
Pope Francis arrived in the United Arab Emirates yesterday, February 3. Tonight he will address the “Muslim Council of Elders,” a body based in the UAE which supposedly “seeks to counter religious fanaticism by promoting a moderate brand of Islam.” We’ll reserve our judgment until we see the text of his speech (cf. Part II...
De Gaulle, by Julian Jackson (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard; 928 pp., $39.95). Here is no doubt the best, most comprehensive, most politically balanced and appropriately distanced of the now four notable biographies of Charles de Gaulle. Previously, those by Jean Lacouture (1985-88), Paul-Marie de La Gorce (1967, rev. 1999), and Éric Roussel took pride...
In its issue for December 20, 2018, the New York Review of Books published an essay by Mark Lilla, a professor at Columbia University, titled “Two Roads for the New French Right.” The piece caught the attention of many American conservatives—I personally received a number of emails drawing my attention to it, all by people...
Dining out with my wife in a restaurant in Paris recently, I became aware of the well-dressed Frenchman seated with his wife two tables away from us listening in on our conversation. The table for two between us was unoccupied. “Where are you from?” he inquired, in excellent English, when he saw I had noticed....
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Produced by Annapurna Pictures Written and directed by Ethan and Joel Coen Distributed by Netflix Roma Produced by Participant Media Written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón Distributed by Netflix Near the end of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coen brothers’ latest cinematic whimsy being shown on Netflix, Brendan Gleeson...
For Texas conservatives, a surprisingly strong showing by Democrats in their deep-red state in November’s midterm election was an unexpected wake-up call. The results also set me to thinking about my own personal history with the Lone Star State. And how, in the absence of vigilance, the long, proud heritage of a particular place can...
Sometimes the best things come in distorting packages, no matter how good they are. And sometimes that good is itself misleading when it has great appeal, or even particularly then. I was not yet a teenager when I stumbled into the discovery of a recording of tremendous command—an LP with Schumann’s Carnaval, Op. 9, on...
It came as a bolt of lightning out of the blue. One moment the Trump administration was besieged on all sides. The media were accusing him of treason, and the Democrats, having just taken control of the House of Representatives, were promising multiple investigations. Robert Mueller was reportedly sharpening his prosecutorial knives, getting ready to...
The current American cultural and economic transformation, which arguably started in the late 20th century, is now approaching its nadir. Americans will more likely mourn this transition than celebrate it. The United States has regressed in terms of the typical evolution of a country since roughly 1980. Rather than evolving into a higher level of...
One of the easiest-to-diagnose symptoms of the existential crisis that is causing the decline and fall of Western civilization is the deepening disconnect between peoples and governments. A perfect example is Britain, where in the 2016 Brexit referendum 17.4 million people voted to leave the European Union (a clear-cut majority of 52 percent on a...
To manifest his opposition to President Donald Trump’s decision to pull all 2,000 U.S. troops out of Syria, and half of the 14,000 in Afghanistan, Gen. James Mattis went public and resigned as secretary of defense. Now Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, in public testimony to Congress, has contradicted Trump about the threats that...
The world lacks drinking games relating to women’s studies, so here’s a suggestion: If you can get a women’s studies stalwart to say the word coverture before the conversation’s second minute elapses, throw one back for the 21st Amendment. Then you’ll be comfortable as you receive a wealth of information about women under English Common...
Of our 20th-century wars World War II stands alone. In a sneak attack early on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, Japanese naval forces bombed Pearl Harbor. As reports were broadcast throughout the day American shock turned to anger. The following day Congress, with but one dissenting vote—pacifist Jeannette Rankin—declared war on Japan. We were a...
Last year, just before his 21st birthday, my son Jacob learned of a condition called aphantasia. In its strictest form, aphantasia is the inability to create mental images. Like many such conditions, aphantasia affects those who have it to varying degrees. In Jacob’s case, his mental images are very fuzzy and indistinct. In my case,...
President Donald Trump’s announcement last December 19 that he would immediately withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria (and one-half of the Afghan contingent) is the most important single decision of his presidency. The mission in Syria had never been about “regime change” in Damascus, or “eliminating Iranian influence,” or establishing Kurdish autonomy. Two years ago...
Thank you for publishing the piece by David B. Schock on the Elkhart Jazz Festival of 2018 (“Blowing for Elkhart,” Correspondence, December). As a longtime resident of New Orleans in the past, I have particular reasons to savor his reports and the expressive photograph. It was dismaying, however, to learn of the marked disinterest in...
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.” Richard II’s lament might seem to apply to Theresa May, as she contemplates a near future when the final Withdrawal Agreement has to be submitted to the Commons in two weeks time. There is small prospect that the Commons will support whatever May comes with, since...
In his latest interview with Serbia’s top-rated Happy TV Morning Program, Srdja Trifkovic shares his impressions after a two-week tour of Egypt. [You can watch the interview here.] Q: So you’ve just come back from Egypt, perhaps the only country which has managed to be affected and then recover from the Arab Spring revolutions. In...
Has the Arms Industry Captured Trump’s Pentagon? By Mandy Smithberger and William D. Hartung The way personnel spin through Washington’s infamous revolving door between the Pentagon and the arms industry is nothing new. That door, however, is moving ever faster with the appointment of Patrick Shanahan, who spent 30 years at Boeing, the Pentagon’s second...