Archive for Chilton Williamson, Jr.
Three Cities, Three Empires
Stendahl begins his peculiar autobiography, The Life of Henry Brulard, with his alter ego standing at the summit of the Janiculum Hill, surveying the city of Rome, west to east. It is October 16, 1832, and Brulard faces his cinquantaine in three months. Fifty years, he thinks! But Raphael’s Transfiguration has been admired for 250 years already, and better men than he have been dead for centuries. From the Gianicolo he can pick out Castel Gandolfo, the Villa Aldobrandini, and the white form of Castel San Pietro. At his feet below the slope lie orange trees planted by the Capuchins. Beyond the Tiber, he spies the Priory of Malta and the Pyramid of Cestius; at a greater distance, Santa Maria Maggiore and the long lines of the Palazzo di Monte Cavallo.
The Classless Republic
I cannot see the least possibility of recreating either an elite republican class (if, by “elite,” one means an untitled aristocracy) or the American Republic itself. The notion of a republic is a product of classical political thinking, which is now virtually dead in the Western world, and never appeared elsewhere. Not only has the classical political tradition become virtually extinct, the ability to think in classical terms seems to have been lost as well.
Return to Rome
Paul Theroux laments that the world is aging badly, that the world he knew as a young man has nearly vanished, that the decline and decay of precious things is everywhere apparent. Theroux should know; he travels more than I do. Also my own ventures at home and abroad depressingly confirm his impressions. Except when Rome is my destination.
Our President-Elect
Driving out from town to feed my horses the morning of November 5th, I passed a house in West Laramie with the Stars and Stripes waving from the front gate. The flag hung upside down. A fitting salute, surely, for the most radical candidate ever to become president-elect of the United States.
The election of Barack Obama is a fluke, as well as a phenomenon. No great achievement is ever attained without a strong dose of luck, but Obama’s luck throughout the 2008 campaign was exceptional. Indeed, it was nearly incredible.
Liberalism as Addiction
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 never corporate greed, tax evasion, or white-collar crime), the liberal is always in a hurry to attribute the cause to the irrational yet irresistible impulse to antisocial behavior. But this Weltanschauung that dims and enfeebles the moral imagination is a form of mental and moral addiction, operating on the mind and soul much as cocaine or whiskey act upon the body to induce intoxicating highs in the short run and intellectual deterioration, moral laxity, and self-indulgence in the long one.
Will America Survive the End of Its Empire?
America is unsuccessful. That reason is “free trade.” And, once again, this element of the imperial ideology in fact works against the empire, by bleeding it to death. Continue reading . . .
At Home Abroad
The Eternal City is home to many eternal things—or, rather, their representatives, among them St. Peter’s, the Castel Sant’Angelo, the Capitoline Hill, and the Forum. Nevertheless, on recent travels to Rome, my wife’s and my first visit has been to none of these things, but, instead, to our good friends Asha and Bellamy, who reside on the north side of the Villa Borghese gardens two streets over from Il Ristorante The Meeting—an establishment which, though heavily patronized by Americans and Britons on account of its proximity to the U.S. Embassy on Via Veneto, offers a superb Italian menu and wine list. Our friends are hardly Roman notables or intellectuals, and this estimable restaurant in an upper-middle-class residential neighborhood is not listed in any guidebook I know of.
U.S. Leaders Plot New Amnesty Strategy
The defeat of the Grand Bargain in the Senate last June proves to have been the opening battle of the public phase of the Second Civil War that had hitherto smoldered underground, like a fire in a coal mine. Continue reading . . .
Restrictionists Have the Political Momentum—For Now
Whether or not the country has acquired the power and influence to buck the regime when and where it so pleases, it has certainly shown the capacity to do so in respect of immigration. And the months between now and Election Day 2008 will fortify that capacity, not lessen it, if only we use the time to our advantage. Continue reading . . .
Gentlemen Prefer C’s
According to a recent front-page story in the New York Times, the latest innovation of a particularly ambitious segment of the upwardly mobile American middle class is the replacement of the old-fashioned summer camp with getting-into-college camp. In proportion as the Times is ignorant of One Big Thing, its editors are highly knowledgeable about many small ones, among which the modern education rat race ranks high. It seems prudent, therefore, for the rest of us to listen up and pay attention to what they have to say.
Webstore Features
Scott P. Richert's Catholicism GuideSite @ About.com
