A Southerner’s Movie Guide, Part III
5. Spielberg’s Amistad (1997) If Amistad is not yet a household word like ET or Jurassic Park, it soon will be with the power of Steven Spielberg behind it. (When I started this review awhile… »
NeoCon Jacobins
A recent National Review column in the silly Northern War over 1619 contained this unfortunate paragraph: “In fact, Adams suggested, if there ever were a civil war, the president would have the power to abolish… »
False Idols? Looking at America’s Founders with a Clear Eye
Increasingly, America’s past is becoming a lightning rod for contemporary ideological struggles. Colleges, highways and Democratic Party fundraising dinners are being renamed, monuments destroyed or desecrated, and a general suspicion seems to be growing of… »
Real Conservatism
A review of The Southern Tradition: The Achievements and Limitations of Southern Conservatism (Harvard, 1994) by Eugene Genovese The notion of a Southern political tradition can be understood as conservative, complete, and consistent with its… »
Jeffersonians Against Imperialism
J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power, 1966 and The Price of Empire, 1967 Robert C. Byrd, Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency, 2004 Known and celebrated as a “liberal” during the Vietnam… »
Show Me Where the Statue Hurt You
I attended a protest to tear down the John C. Calhoun monument in Charleston on May 16, 2019. This event was being hosted by “The Independent Media Institute,” and consisted of “artists” explaining how the… »
John C. Calhoun: American
Of all the American vice-presidents, none is more vilified than John C. Calhoun. Calhoun is known as the “defender of slavery,” the “cast iron man,” the “man who started the civil war.” His monument in… »
When Real Historians Understood Calhoun
A review of Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, Vol II. (Washington, 1900) edited by J. Franklin Jameson. It is a fitting crown to Professor Jameson’s efforts in promoting the establishment and successful career of the… »
Lord Acton: Confederate Sympathizer
“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Among Catholic students of political thought, few figures are more liable to provoke vigorous debate than does that famous dictum’s author, Cambridge history lecturer John Emerich Edward… »
John C. Calhoun’s Foreign Policy: “A Wise and Masterly Inactivity”
The dominant powers in American discourse today have succeeded in confining the South to a dark little corner of history labeled “Slavery and Treason.” This is already governing the public sphere of the Civil War… »
