Archive for April, 2010

The Mental Time Machine

Politics in the Western world has become a futuristic activity, so that it has got ahead of itself, chronologically speaking. Progressive politics has succeeded in progressing beyond history. This is why modern governments are so far out of step with their publics.

Katyn and ‘The Good War’

The decapitation of the Polish government last weekend, including President Lech Kaczynski and the military leadership, on that flight to Smolensk to commemorate the Katyn Massacre, brings to mind the terrible and tragic days and deeds of what many yet call the Good War.

Register Today for Summer School: Early-Bird Rate Expires Soon

My prep-school headmaster, an Englishman named Robert Jackson, was more a quiet example of virile Catholic piety than a dispenser of rules to live by, but I remember the day he ridiculed a hapless classmate for using the word “domicile” in a paper. “The word is house!” Dr. Jackson declared in his West Country accent. “When you have a choice between the Latinate word and the Anglo-Saxon word, use the Anglo-Saxon word!”

Don Quixote at West Point

On a Wednesday morning in late October 2009, my wife and I made a brief visit to the West Point Post Exchange with our little daughter. It is a place where cadets and military families with their young children often visit. Shortly after our arrival, I turned to find my wife and suddenly faced a scene I had never before witnessed in a military store, especially not at West Point.

Christopher Hitchens and the Days of Rage

On March 23, the Associated Press published a story dealing with sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church to little fanfare. It noted that allegations of sexual abuse involving the Catholic Church in the United States dropped in 2009, and that most of the alleged offenders “are dead, no longer in the priesthood, removed from ministry, or missing.”

The New Intolerance

“This was a recognition of American terrorists.”

That is CNN’s Roland Martin’s summary judgment of the 258,000 men and boys who fell fighting for the Confederacy in a war that cost as many American lives as World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq combined.

The New Yorker Under the Glass

The first issue of The New Yorker (February 21, 1925) showed on its cover a dandy in top hat, high collar, and morning suit gazing through his monocle at a butterfly. The drawing is reproduced yearly, and butterflies became a cover motif. Whatever tastes, affectations, or snobbery the artist, Rea Irvin, wanted to suggest, it is time now to turn the monocle on the magazine and subject it to scrutiny.

From Good War to Bad Social Engineering

The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for more than eight years. That is longer than our involvement in both world wars combined. Yet the end of the conflict appears to be further away than ever. It is not even clear what would constitute victory.

For the Children—May 2010

Sneak Peek at May: The May 2010 issue of Chronicles just went to press. It includes features by William Murchison on the children of “gay marriage,” Scott P. Richert on the effects of radical abortion protests on children, and Thomas Fleming on the legacy of the child-savers. Plus William J. Quirk answers the question, “How do you make $100 million per day?”

Anti-Catholicism and the Times

“Anti-Catholicism,” said writer Peter Viereck, “is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual.” It is “the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people,” said Arthur Schlesinger Sr.

If there was any doubt that hatred of and hostility toward the Catholic Church persists, it was removed by the mob that has arisen howling “Resign!” at Pope Benedict XVI.