Clyde Wilson

"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.

Nathaniel Macon (Dec. 17, 1758-June 29, 1837), "Old Republican" statesman, the foremost public man of North Carolina in the early 19th century, was the sixth child of Gideon and Priscilla (Jones) Macon and was born at his father's plantation on Shocco Creek in what later became Warren County.

A few modest suggestions to keep President Trump and his team busy for the first 100 days.

Donald Trump has done his country great service by simply telling the truth, tearing a few holes in the great fabric of lies that makes up American public discourse. The American people have responded to his boldness and independence.

All but a few of the baker’s dozen contenders for the Republican presidential nomination advocate warlike measures against Russia, Syria, and Iran. Consequences are not discussed.

If Trump should actually get the Republican presidential nomination, then the question arises of his Vice-President-to-be. Of course, we should not count our chips before the last hand.

Will the Establishment hold their collective aristocratic noses and support Ted Cruz to cancel Trump? Cruz is intelligent, unlike the aforementioned, which means he is able to perceive reality and change.

Government is always about managing things for the rich. It makes no difference if you call it “democracy.”

Why is it that every time Muslims kill a bunch of people and declare it is because they are fulfilling their religion, the government tells us Islam is peaceable and we should import more of it?

How is it that the owners of big media and their lackeys control public discourse, but nobody ever voted for them? We don’t even know who most of them are.

Some maxims of American life: Abraham Lincoln was a kind and merciful man with good will towards all.

People love us for our good intentions when we tell them to be like us. If a few bad ones resist we can bomb them. We must be right because after every war our enemies want to move to the U.S.

Americans are more upset by the killing of a wild beast in Africa than they are by chopping up babies and selling their parts.

The run-up to the Presidential sweepstakes for 2016 is not very exciting so far. There are so many Republican wannabes that it is hard to keep track of them all.

Republicans have not been too happy lately looking over the long row of their Presidential wannabes. It is almost embarrassing—so many outstanding candidates.

Today, January 19, is a memorable date, the birthday of one of the greatest of all Americans. He was born in Tidewater Virginia in 1807.

Some more things the Republicans in Congress will not do.

A brief list of issues the Republican Congress will not do not that they have the majority.

William J. Quirk, long-time professor of law at the University of South Carolina and a writer very familiar to Chronicles readers, passed away on September 22.

Dr. Fleming, Mr. Cadfael, and now Mr. Navrozov in recent posts have opened a fruitful discussion of the American tendency to debase the language with prettified terms in order to disguise reality and enforce conformity of thought.

In the primary of June 10, the Republican voters of South Carolina gave a comfortable victory to Lindsay Graham, one of the most notorious and repulsive of the current “invade the world, invite the world” brand of U.S. Senators. Friends from elsewhere have questioned me repeatedly: how could this happen in such a traditionally conservative state?

It is well to remember that ruling powers never exercise censorship to suppress falsehoods. They often themselves perpetrate falsehoods they find useful and are indifferent to others.

California, once the American Mecca of milk and honey, has fallen on hard times.

As a kind of belated conclusion to my "What is History?" series, I quote myself—with a few ideas about “history” that I have promulgated from time to time.

Those who are still addicted to the useless and indeed pernicious vice of following U.S. politics—let me urge you to go into recovery now. The habit of abstinence must be well-established soon or you will be tempted by the hoopla of the 2016 Presidential sweepstakes.

Barack Hussein Obama’s triumphal progress to the presidential mansion was fueled by the utopian sentimentality that dominates the political thinking of large segments of the U.S. population.

Recently I ordered a bit of merchandise from a Carolina town about 30 miles away. It took some time to arrive. With a little research I discovered that the package had been sent by the USPS to Baltimore! And then to Charlotte, 90 miles from its destination and 120 miles from it place of shipping.

The local “authorities” and the corporate media have tried to hide and then minimize the facts, but the blessed “alternative” sources got the news out. In the urban county just over the river, the sheriff’s department has been having “joint maneuvers” with elite Army units from Fort Bragg.

That collecting “the wretched refuse of the earth” was a good thing for the country? (Certainly, the Founders of the U.S. did not think so.)

There will be no master historian in the future, but if there was such a one, he or she would find a great subject in explaining the decline and fall of the American Empire.

. . . The American people ever understanding that government debt does not exist to cover necessary expenditures but to provide risk-free, tax-free income to capitalists.

We have the best armed forces in the world. We can blow up poorly armed peasants on the other side of the world who threaten our freedom. We can even blow them up before they threaten our freedom.

Presumably like every live being in the U.S. 65 or older, I recently received from the government a 152-page paperback book explaining to me the glories and the ins and outs of Medicare. Being of a perverse nature, I became interested in the numerous photographs of happy Medicare recipients and caregivers that were spread through the book to spice up the text. Of the people pictured, 23 are black, 17 are white, and 14 are Asian. There is one who might be Hispanic and one who might be a Nativ

As is to be expected in an organization devoted to selling products, all the instincts of such men are commercial rather than political. They avoid confrontation and dogma, which would be taken by too many Americans as not nice and because they really have nothing to argue for.

Anything not older than a half century past is not history but current events, a fact often lost on Hollywood. So perhaps we should be grateful for these two interesting though flawed dramatizations of the World War II era.

Our lamented friend Sam Francis scored big when he labeled the Democrats as “the evil party” and the Republicans as “the stupid party.” These telling characterizations have appealed to many later observers, as have other of Sam’s apt phrases, like “anarchotyranny.” Sam was always in earnest but his comments were often laced with humour.

It is all too easy to get lost in the hurly-burly of contemporary politics, which is mostly about appetite, and miss larger and more fundamental changes that are taking place.

Dr. Clyde Wilson reviews The Sweeney, directed by Nick Love.

The previous Republican President and his accomplices are war criminals. So the first Republican President and the probably last Republican President were war criminals.

The federal takeover of education and medicine a half-century ago, known as “the Great Society,” has been a colossal failure if its goal was a better society. It has, however, made a lot of people richer than they were and provided politicians with endless opportunities for benevolent posturing, bribery, and patronage. Maybe that was its real goal all along.

The U.S. Constitution is a dead letter except for some procedural matters. Nobody with high political power knows or cares anything about it—especially Supreme Court justices.

Morally responsible people sacrifice in the present to invest in the future. Irresponsible people impoverish the future to enjoy more of the present. Which describes the United States today?

Americans seem to think that they are citizens of a self-governing democracy. Find out why that is not possible in the current regime.

There has been considerable discussion lately about the federal government’s potential use of the U.S. Army against American citizen civilians. It might be worth a moment to pause and remember February 17, 1865.

Here are some more dubious ideas that are taken for granted as true in American public discourse.

Probably all societies work better with a certain quantity of comfortable delusions, but America seems to operate with nothing but delusions. Large policies have been and continue to be based on an imaginary view of the world which trumps common sense.

Dr. Wilson explains the 2012 election (and the next one as well).

Questions for people of my venerable age or even younger, down to about 50.

It is theoretically possible to design a national medical system that is fair, workable, and affordable. However, Congresspersons, who are owned by drug and insurance corporations, will never enact such a system.

”Fighting does not solve anything.” A saw made up to persuade people toward pacifism. In fact, the only potential virtue possessed by fighting is that it sometimes does solve things.

For Southerners, the hatred of so many of their “fellow Americans” comes so steadily and predictably that it is usually best simply to ignore it and let the heathen rage.

The latest scandal among the British royals will doubtless reenergize the long-running argument over the usefulness of monarchy in these times.

Alas, Tea Partiers, you may as well fold your tents and quietly leave the field. Salon (a website that apparently caters to members and would-be members of the national elite) has given your movement the coup de grace. They have uncovered the cruel truth that your movement is a "Southern" movement.

Awhile back the folks out in Seattle got in a dudgeon when they learned that their county, King, was named after William R.D. King, who was elected Vice-President in 1852. They wanted the world to know that the county was ever after to be considered as named for The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have always been amazed at the sub-intellectual process by which liberals all know at almost the same time and in the same form what they are supposed to think. It is amazing.

Democratic Elections: When the rulers permit the voters to keep on voting until they get it right.

How much “diversity” can the West absorb before it is no longer the West and thus ceases to be a haven for people escaping their own non-Western "cultures"—which they bring with them?

Does television corrupt American morals or do American morals corrupt television? If there had never been any racist, sexist, homophobes, would the United States exist to give affirmative action to minorities?

Isn’t a great example of bipartisan statesmanship that all our leaders got together to save “our” economy by giving billions to the New York banks and stock speculators?

A Presidential contender who has once in his life done something that is truly worthwhile, notable, patriotic, or unselfish.

Do you look forward to living in a majority nonwhite country, which the U.S. is predicted to be in a few decades? Will you take a lie detector test about this?

Well, Old Man, 70 today. Who’d have thought? And still in pretty good condition, considering how little care I have taken of the old carcass. I understand now how the accumulation of minor miseries in aging is mercifully designed to let us down slow and easy till we are ready.