March 2008
The Big One Is Nigh!
“The global economy is like the St. Andreas Fault: You know that a terminal disaster is inevitable, but you keep your fingers crossed and try not to think about it,” I wrote in the print issue of Chronicles seven months ago (“Waiting for the Big One,” March 2008). “When a tremor occurs, you often fear it could be the Big One and sometimes panic,” I went on, “but then, when the dust settles, you sigh with relief to find yourself alive and the Golden State still above the ocean.” Well, the Big One is nigh; and here’s the rest of that old column in which I argue that, in the end, the meltdown may be all for the best…
Three Coins
The weather in Rome has been on the chilly side, but compared with Rockford in January, it’s positively balmy. Warm enough, in fact, to risk a charge of heresy (or at least philistinism) by capping the first full day of The Rockford Institute’s 2008 Winter School with, not a glass of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, but a pint of beer. And not just any beer, but an unfiltered, heavily hopped light ale named ReAle, from the brewery of the commune of Borgorose, population 4,500, about 70 kilometers northeast of Rome.
Sudan, Ethiopia, and the American Empire
Sudan and Ethiopia are neighboring countries that are both ruled by authoritarian regimes; each is engaged in a brutal counterinsurgency operation against rebel forces—the former, in Darfur; the latter, in Ogaden. Curiously, these countries are treated quite differently by Washington; and this difference reveals a great deal about the current modus operandi of the American Empire.
National Religion
Americans are a people of deeply held religious conviction. If any has doubts, let him look on the most serious of our sacred holidays and believe.
Naturally, it is a federal holiday, but that fact alone does not convey the magnitude of this special day. For, unlike other federal holidays, this one carries with it a gravitas—a holiness—that says it is special. You can tell, because we don’t mark the day with fireworks and pop music, or the pardoning of a turkey, but by a singular devotion to the very words of our national religion’s founder.
Our Open (Borders) Secret
The long campaign of 2007-08, already sputtering out in fizzled squibs, childish ploys, and pointless personal recriminations, has offered few of the moments of drama or high comedy that Americans have rightly come to expect of our political candidates. The debates have been as drab as Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits, as wooden as Barack Obama’s imitation of Al Sharpton, and as predictable as Mitt Romney’s second thoughts on abortion and immigration.
After the Deluge (Review: Immigration and the American Future)
It should be obvious to anyone who has taken the slightest trouble to examine the immigration question that America is faced not with an immigration “problem,” or even a “crisis,” but with a massive demographic invasion that, if not soon addressed by radical means, will permanently alter the nation’s social, economic, political, and cultural landscape. Currently, nearly 40 million Americans are of “foreign-born” stock. Of these, more than 50 percent are Latin Americans (over 30 percent Mexican). Current projections show that, by 2025, non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in at least nine states; by 2050, this number will have increased to 16 states.
TRUCKERS WITHOUT BORDERS—March 2008
PERSPECTIVE
Our Open (Borders) Secret
by Thomas Fleming
VIEWS
The Loss of American Identity
by Roger D. McGrath
California, today—your state, tomorrow.
The Tragedy of Mexico
by Gregory McNamee
Riches unrealized.
NEWS
Facts? Who Needs ’Em!
by William Lutz
Some critical thinking in Texas.
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