Michael Washburn

Latest by Michael Washburn in Chronicles

• Cultural Revolutions

  August 1998

  Not as Welcome

  Criminal aliens are not as welcome in the United States as they once were. In an effort to salvage its credibility, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) deported over 50,000 illegals with criminal records in fiscal 1997.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  May 1998

  Far From Over

  Timothy McVeigh may have been sent off for life, but the Oklahoma City bombing case is far from over. It looks like the federal government knew all along that Oklahoma City, if not the Alfred P. Murrah building itself, would be the target of a terrorist attack, and somehow (or for some reason) failed to prevent it.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  April 1998

  Feeling the Effects

  Caribbean immigrants in New York City are feeling the effects of several new immigration reform laws.

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• Vital Signs

  March 1998

  Another Native Son

  Joe Brewster's film The Keeper came out while New York was reeling from the ease of Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant beaten and tortured by white cops in Brooklyn.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  September 1997

  Is the First Amendment Still in Effect?

  Eugene Narrett has lost his job as a professor of English at Framingham State College in Massachusetts. An outspoken conservative who never misses a chance to bash feminism and liberalism in his columns for the Middlesex County News and in periodic essays for this and other magazines, Narrett thinks that his politics had much to do with his firing.

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• Vital Signs

  July 1997

  The Rise of Louis Farrakhan

  Louis Farrakhan has become the most important black leader in America, if not the world. He has also become a quasi-mainstream figure, and brought to record levels black participation in political life. While Americans in general are less and less interested in politics—as seen in the 1996 elections—the opposite trend is at work within the black community.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  June 1997

  A "Goodwill" Tour

  Hillary Clinton's visit to Africa in late March, which was billed as a "goodwill tour" to strengthen America's ties with developing nations, combined business with pleasure.

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• Reviews

  May 1997

  Red Is Beautiful

  According to Harvard professor James Medoff and financial analyst Andrew Harless, one of the most baleful influences on America's economic health—and a reason for the declining standard of living of both blue- and white-collar workers—is the moneylending sector, which includes many commercial and investment banks and individual investors.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  March 1997

  Afrocentric "Education"

  Leon Todd is the bravest man in Milwaukee. While Afrocentric "education" has always had its white conservative critics, Todd is perhaps the first black school official to seek to cut the explicitly Afrocentric content from his district's curriculum.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  January 1997

  Clandestine Groups

  Terrorism in France has usually come—in recent years—from clandestine Muslim groups engaged in a perpetual jihad against the West.

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• Vital Signs

  December 1996

  The New South

  "A Time to Kill", Joel Schumacher's new film about race relations in the South, has drawn plaudits from many critics. Stanley Kauffmann, writing in the New Republic, hails the return of "the old-fashioned Hollywood liberal film."

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• Cultural Revolutions

  November 1996

  On the Move

  Basque nationalists are on the move. Despite the vigilance of the French and Spanish authorities, the Basques have carried out a fierce summer offensive, the latest stage in a clash between nationalism and federal police power.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  October 1996

  Off the Hook

  Officer Laurence Powell is off the hook, at least for now. Dealing a severe blow to the civil rights establishment and federal police power, the Supreme Court has overruled the Ninth Circuit Court's motion to stiffen the sentence handed down in the federal trial of Powell and Stacey Koon, who were found guilty of violating the civil rights of "motorist" Rodney King.

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• Reviews

  September 1996

  Brief Mentions

  Although it may seem useless in an age of computerized war, rhythmic marching was once as revolutionary as the Stealth bomber is in our own day.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  September 1996

  Mistreatment of Religious Minorities

  Robert Hussein, a Kuwaiti citizen, may be wishing for another Iraqi occupation. After converting to Christianity, Hussein was put on trial for apostasy in an Islamic court, which quickly found him guilty.

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• Reviews

  August 1996

  Brief Mentions

  A devotion to free trade seems to be common among "conservatives." But free trade, according to Louis T. March and Brent Nelson, is a bad idea. "We should defend our markets," they write, "as we should defend our borders."

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• Reviews

  March 1996

  Brief Mentions

  Annotations is broad in scope, dealing with the experience of a few generations of poor blacks, though Keene focuses on his own family. A native of St. Louis, Keene draws on his past to depict the travails of ghetto life: the brutality of white police, the violence of young criminals, the temptation to adopt a "gangsta" way of life.

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• Reviews

  February 1996

  Brief Mentions

  W.H. Auden is famous for poems about totalitarian evil, but he also wrote frivolous verse when in the mood. In assembling As I Walked Out One Evening, Edward Mendelson, the executor of Auden's estate, sifted through the vast corpus of his work, picking out "lullabies, limericks, and other light verse" (to quote from the front cover).

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• Cultural Revolutions

  January 1996

  Headed For Trouble

  The California Civil Rights Initiative was headed for trouble from the start. Conceived by two California professors, Glynn Custred and Tom Wood, the CCRI is a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would bar public agencies and schools from discriminating in favor of women or minorities.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  December 1995

  A Grave Mistake

  Alexander Cockburn, columnist for the Nation and author of Corruptions of Empire and The Golden Age Is In Us, has long been regarded as an enforcer of far-left orthodoxy. But in recent months, Cockburn has taken an unorthodox stance on such issues as the militia movement, the "county supremacy" movement, and federal police power.

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