Carl Wells Books

If there is a better magazine than “Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture,” I don’t know about it. It is a monthly magazine published in the heartland, at Rockford, Illinois.

Its political orientation is usually called paleoconservative. Paleoconservatives are not eager to attack other countries. This distinguishes them from neoconservatives (in reality, a type of liberal) and from more mainstream conservatives (alas, far too often as warmongering as the neoconservatives). So, if you are beginning to smell a rat in regard to all these foreign interventions–or if you smelled a rat ages ago and didn’t realize there were other people like you in the world–“Chronicles” will introduce you to people who don’t automatically assume that the U.S. has a right or sacred duty to run all the other countries on the planet. A quaint, novel notion, obviously, but it takes all kinds to make up the world.

The regular writers represent a mixture of religious points of view. The editor, Chilton Williamson, Jr., is Roman Catholic, and the strongest religious strain is decided RC. One might think this would be terribly off-putting for Protestants, but I, at least (Protestant to the core), am able to scrape off what I don’t like. Protestantism is well-represented by the thoughtful and uncompromising Aaron D. Wolf, and the Orthodox faith is represented as well. The magazine might appeal to non-religious libertarians. Justin Raimondo, a foe of idiotic wars, is a libertarian–although I think he has further defined himself as paleolibertarian.

There are monthly columns by a regular group of writers. Chilton Williamson, Jr., is especially good at evaluating or dissecting the liberal worldview.

Roger D. McGrath introduces little-known or forgotten areas of history. His column alone would be worth the price of admission, for any historians or potential historians, or for people who just want to appreciate how various the world is. He will open up countless avenues of possible exploration for you. History is not the white-people-did-everything-bad-especially-Southerners-let’s-destroy-civilization-to-get-revenge story we are currently hearing. History is rich and deep, with countless things we know little or nothing about. Mr. McGrath’s column reminds us of that.

James O. Tate will be a treat to anyone with a love of classical music. His breadth of knowledge is remarkable.

George McCartney reviews movies. He does so from what seems to me to be a very insightful point of view. It is refreshing to read reviews of movies written by someone other than politically correct liberals. Mr. McCartney has a fair-minded willingness to see the good side even of movies that are very flawed.

Srjda Trifkovic’s specialty is foreign policy. The U.S. would be a lot better off if he were our Secretary of State, rather than the mindless interventionists we always have these days.

There are lots of other recurring writers (appearing on an occasional basis, some more frequently), plenty of book reviews, editorials, feedback to previous articles, and even a bit of poetry each month. The people at “Chronicles” are extremely well-read.

“Chronicles” is not a perfect magazine. Occasionally one gets a whiff of protectionism, which is a breaking of the Eighth Commandment that we not steal (Exodus 20:15), because protectionism prevents ordinary people from buying items at the world market price. Not everyone at “Chronicles” is a protectionist, fortunately. You will find other faults. But we are all learning, right? The people at “Chronicles” are trying to do their part to help preserve civilization. They are doing yeoman work.

The influence of “Chronicles” is not as great as I could wish. A couple years ago their subscription list ran to just slightly under 7,000. This reminds me of the 7,000 in Israel who had not bowed their knee to Baal (1 Kings 19:18). But that was in a small country with relatively few people. The U.S., a country of 320,000,000, ought to be able to come up with many more than 7,000 people who would appreciate and learn from “Chronicles.” I think there are a lot more people than 7,000 in the U.S. who would enjoy this magazine, if they knew about it.

But maybe not. Maybe “Whatever” should be the motto inscribed on our national shield.

A year’s subscription is $44.99 for “Chronicles.” The most recent issue had 50 pages, with no advertisements interspersed. Almost $45.00 is quite a bit of money to pay for something you are not sure about. So, if you tell me you would like to try a copy of “Chronicles” before you invest your children’s grocery money in buying a subscription, let me know and I will do my best to see that you get one copy of “Chronicles” to read at your leisure.

“Chronicles” also has a good Internet presence, with four blog posts, constantly changing, always available. But the Internet presence is a pale imitation of the print magazine.

“Chronicles,” thank you for being there.

Well, there is no debt limit, for one thing.

We pretend we have a law which sets a debt limit for the national government, but when we approach the debt limit, we simply vote to raise the debt limit higher. Democrats and Republicans cooperate in doing this, while we proles look on in bovine indifference.

How can you have a debt limit of (for example) 25 trillion dollars, when you could not pay back even 5 trillion dollars?

It might help to look at this from a smaller, more personal angle. Suppose I petition you for a loan of $2,000.00. You decide to take a chance. You loan me $2,000.00, at 5% interest, with the principal and interest both to be paid off a year from the date of the loan. I will pay you $2,100.00 on that date.

The date rolls around, and I am not quite ready to pay the money back. I make a plausible explanation of why I can’t pay it all back. If only you’ll loan me another $2,000.00, I will be able to pay you at least the interest. Doubting your own wisdom, you loan me the additional $2,000.00. I promptly pay you the $100.00 interest. Now I have a debt of $4,000.00. I will owe you $4,200.00 in another year. Except I won’t be ready to pay you back then, either.

This might go on for years, depending upon how gullible you are. (I fully understand that you, my beloved reader, would not have been foolish enough even to lend me the first $2,000.00. This is just a way to help us think through these issues.) Let’s say you are very gullible. Eventually my debt reaches $20,000.00. Belatedly, you figure out that I am not really interested in paying back what I owe. You could loan me another $2,000.00, and pretend/hope that somehow or other I really will begin to pay you back. Or you could face reality, and say, this guy is a crook. You stop being a sucker, and will loan me no more. You cut your losses at $20,000.00. We are both enormously harmed. You have lost $20,000.00, no small sum. (Even $2,000.00 was no small sum–you should have investigated my character more deeply!) I have gained $20,000.00 if I am able to avoid paying you, but my character as a crook is firmly established. If God exists, I will answer for my dishonesty. It may not be pretty, when I stand in the presence of God. You may not have gotten vengeance on me, but God will (Romans 12:19).

The U.S. has no intention of paying back its debt. The only question is when the world will stop being gullible, and will admit that we are not good for the money we owe. We are already bankrupt. It is just a matter of people realizing we are bankrupt.

I remember hearing, a few years ago, in the midst of a discussion of whether the U.S. should raise its debt limit again, there were a few Republicans upset about the possibility of raising the debt limit higher. The government would have to be shut down. One of the parasites at National Public Radio, her voice dripping contempt for the budget scolds, made it clear how irresponsible they were. There were I think a couple other NPR parasites talking with her. They raised no objection to her comments.

This tells us at least five things about liberals. 1/They have zero understanding of economics. 2/They have zero interest in learning anything about economics. These are adults of good intelligence. They could learn, if they had a heart to do so. They have no desire to learn. 3/For liberals, reality is an intellectual construct, rather than an objective fact. To believe that one must live within one’s means is clearly to be irresponsible. 4/Spending other people’s money is obviously the best way to live. People who doubt that are mean-spirited charlatans, playing to the bigoted Neanderthal crowd of idiots still living in this country. 5/Liberals are, according to themselves, righteous people, responsible and generous.

Sorry, lady. You’re a parasite. No semi-sane person wants NPR to exist, and no semi-sane person wants to pay you to be a parasite. We need to close down NPR completely, and maybe then you can get a real job.

The government can pay the interest on the national debt only because: 1/they can create money out of thin air (thereby lowering the value of the money you and I earned); 2/they can force us to pay taxes with which they can pay the interest.

If tax money goes to pay the interest on our debt, such tax money cannot be spent for other things.

The national debt is part of the reason we can initiate evil wars on other countries. We put the death-dealing and the crippling and the destruction on the national credit card, rather than pay for our murders in good honest fashion as we go along.

One interesting fact about when the government is mostly shut down because the debt limit has not been raised, is the fact that when the debt limit is finally raised, suddenly the workers who were not being paid while the government was shut down, are paid for all those days when they were off work while the government was shut down! Amazing! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if those government workers were not paid for the time they were off? But that would begin to alert us to how much smarter it would be to get rid of most of those people so we don’t have to pay them ever. That would also be fair, since those people did not show up for work those days. Fair? Sorry, I think I forgot my meds this morning.

Will our children be stuck with the bill, when it becomes clear that the U.S. has no desire or intention to pay back what it owes? I doubt it. What will happen will be an enormous default, probably a default all at once. I don’t know what this will mean. Will all of us lose our savings? (As we lose part of our savings due to inflation?) Will there be violence? Starvation? A break-up of the country? I don’t know. Maybe the bad things that will come will be balanced by the country breaking up into many small units. Maybe in some of those units freedom and responsibility and Christianity will not be bad words. Maybe the bad things that come will jar pietist, antinomian Christianity out of its stupor, so that we begin to think about how we can defend and grow Christian civilization, rather than think about what’s on TV tonight. I don’t know. But a default is coming.

“I will gladly pay you tomorrow, for a hamburger today.” Thus said Popeye’s friend Wimpy. Somehow I doubt if Wimpy ever got around to paying for that hamburger. Our national government is a lot less responsible than Wimpy. They will gladly pay us tomorrow for $20,000,000,000,000.00 loaned to them today. Tomorrow never quite seems to come.

Maybe the parasites at NPR are correct. Maybe there is no financial reality bringing bad consequences for irresponsible debt. Our “elite” believes that. You will have to decide what you believe. I think financial reality exists, and that the national debt is dangerous and a disgrace.

It is crucial to remember that this is not just the fault of the Democrats, Republicans, the elite, the parasite class, or any other group that represents “those people.” This happened on our watch. This happened when Christians, numerically, represented half the country. This happened when we had copies of Bibles that included things like ‘”You shall not steal”‘ (Exodus 20:15) and the teaching of Proverbs that debt was slavery. It’s not “them” ultimately; it’s “us.”

Jack Cashill (b. 1947) foolishly was born on the east coast, in Newark, New Jersey. However, he has been making amends ever since. I am glad to say he has a Hoosier connection. He took his Ph.D. in American Studies at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He currently lives in Kansas City, Missouri.

Mr. Cashill is a conservative writer with a significant handful of non-fiction books to his credit. The three that I have read have all been excellent. He is a talented writer, and has a strong Internet presence. In the acknowledgments to Scarlet Letters (2015) he thanks his wife “for understanding my mission.” (p. ix) He does not expand on what his mission is, but it must include telling the world difficult truths we need to hear, whether we want to hear them or not. It is heartening to see a man stand up on his hind legs and fight for the truth, no matter what comes as a result. May his tribe increase.

Scarlet Letters: The Ever-Increasing Intolerance of the Cult of Liberalism Exposed is the full title of the book I have just finished reading. It makes fascinating and shocking reading. If you think it is impossible to be shocked any more, read this book. The intolerance of the left is indeed “ever-increasing.” Cashill’s chief way of demonstrating this is through brief anecdotes about things that actually happened.

Chapter 1 points out the moral root of liberalism–a desire to be as gods. The enemy is God, and therefore the secondary enemy is Christianity and of course Christians. To establish control over the world, the left attempts to take a moral position which paints their foes as enemies of the good. One way of doing this is to brand their enemies as carrying various scarlet letters which show that their enemies are without questions supporters of evil.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter was a novel in which a central character bore the scarlet letter A to represent adultery. The leftists paint their enemies as carrying scarlet letters of several sorts. Mr. Cashill devotes a chapter to each of six scarlet letters leftists try to use, and indeed successfully use.

The six scarlet letters used by the left are R (racist), D (denier of global warming), S (Sexist), I (Islamaphobe), C (classist), and H (homophobe). Here is a quote from each of four categories.

“Liberal white guilt hovers over the campus like smog, and administrators reach the top only by acclimating. When racial issues arise in this environment, professors and students alike can be confident of only one thing: no one has their back.” (p. 33)

‘For the West, said [Michael] Crichton, “one of the most powerful religions” was environmentalism. He called it, in fact, “a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.” This was the belief system that gave meaning to the life of the secular elite and shaped their sense of the world.’ (pp. 61-62)

“What saved Ted Kennedy’s career is what saved [Bill] Clinton’s is what saved [James] Carville’s: the impressively selective indignation of the neo-puritans.” (p. 112)

“The more [Ayaan] Hirsi Ali spoke about Islam, especially its ritualized abuse of women, the more threats she received from her [Muslim] coreligionists and the less support she got from her friends on the left.” (p. 153)

Some of the stories he recounts are amazing, but we hear similar stories all the the time these days. The word “ever-increasing” in his subtitle was very well chosen by Mr. Cashill.

The intellectual dishonesty of the left is astonishing. They seem to feel no particular need to stick to the truth. It seems there has been a continuing moral deterioration among Mainstream Media. There used to be a strong right and a strong center; they kept the pressure on the left. The left has always been morally corrupt, but now there is little counterbalance to them, so that they feel freed to say and do whatever they want without fear of contradiction. Moreover, the determination to stand firmly for the truth, no matter what the consequences, seems to be a moral quality in rare supply.

Near the end of the book, Mr. Cashill points out that our culture will only change for the better when many people “tell the truth, tell it loudly, and refuse to back down.” (p. 213)

“To reverse the progressive tide will take a thousand acts of courage or more.” (p. 214) I’m not sure exactly what he means here. If he means a thousand or more well-known acts of public courage by people refusing to be intimidated, then I will agree with his comment. But looked at from my angle, it seems to me it is going to take tens of millions of acts of courage, most of which will get no particular public recognition. We are going to win this battle, if we are going to win it, one individual and one family at a time. Tell the truth and refuse to back down, and be prepared to pay a cost. It is going to take every committed Christian who understands what is at stake. Many million acts of courage are needed. But one is a big number–much bigger than zero. So your one act of courage, whatever that might be, is important.

We Christians have let this happen. Our pietism, our antinomianism, our dispensationalism, our amillennialism, our anti-intellectualism, are things which, taken together, created a “perfect storm” for disaster. We needed to be a strong countervailing force in the country, and we were not. We have slept through the battle. Christians remind me of the frogs put in the kettle of cool water. The heat is turned on, and the temperature in the kettle rises so slowly that the frogs don’t stir. They are boiled to death. We are in the boiling pot, and aren’t stirring yet. I sense no wide awakening in the church as a whole. I probably should grow up and stop being shocked by that. It is always only a few people who care much about ideas and truth. On the bright side of that fact, one person makes an enormous difference for good. One family is a battalion.

Jack Cashill is an example for us. He is one man, and his one book helps a lot of us. The battle for civilization is always fought by a few individuals with a sense of justice.

Scarlet Letters is available on the Internet is a used hardcover version for a reasonable cost. A few days ago I saw a copy for $6.98 (shipping included) from Amazon. If the book as described above sounds like it might be as entertaining and thought-provoking as I found it, steal a few dollars out of your child’s piggy bank, and introduce yourself to a gifted conservative writer, Jack Cashill.

Don’t.

Your natural desire to protect your home will make you a sucker for “elites” who want to use your body to advance their agenda. Their agenda has nothing to do with protecting this country. If they wanted to protect this country, they would have stopped illegal immigration from Mexico and from other Latin American countries. They would have stopped permitting Muslims to immigrate to this country. Islam is incompatible with a free and Christian civilization.

When you sign up for the U.S. military, the elites have control of you. They will send you wherever they want. No matter how idiotic the foreign intervention, or foreign war, they will send you there to be killed and crippled, and to kill and cripple people who should not be killed and crippled.

One example will suffice. The Iraq War should never have been fought. We had no right to butt our nose into Iraq’s business. Iraq apparently had no weapons of mass destruction, but even if they had had them, we still had no right to attack them. Preemptive war is wicked. As a result of the Iraq War, untold tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed and crippled. Estimates of casualties range from 110,000 to 650,000 and even beyond. Their country was trashed. Their country was destabilized. The Iraqi Christian community, protected under Saddam Hussein, was devastated, with long-term consequences for hundreds of thousands of people.

Consider American dead only. Over 4,400 U.S. soldiers lost their lives, another 31,000 were wounded, many of whom were crippled for life. For what? For less than nothing. For an evil agenda set by power-hungry, unprincipled men who don’t mind in the slightest that you are killed or crippled, or that hundreds thousands of foreigners are killed or crippled, but who never lead from the front carrying weapons of war.

You may be thinking that I am a cowardy custard, unwilling to fight under any circumstances. Well, maybe. I am not a pacifist. I believe in the right and wisdom of self-defense. But assume the worst about me. Consider instead the comments of Smedley D. Butler. Butler (1881-1940) was a Marine. He was the most decorated soldier in U.S. history. He earned 16 medals, five of them for heroism. He didn’t just win the Medal of Honor–he won it twice. When he woke up to how he was being manipulated, he wrote a short book entitled War Is a Racket, first published in 1935. He exposed the moral corruption of the people running this country, and running this country’s foreign policy. Our wars are stupid and solve nothing, and hurt a lot of people. The book is currently available at abebooks for $5.75 total cost, shipping included.

If you think the U.S. military is a good place to be, please take ten minutes and read Wikipedia’s article entitled “Sexual assault in the United States military.”

I have some really bad news for you. Then after a bit I have some good news. The bad news first.

You are used to thinking that the adults around you more or less know what they are doing. They raised you, they sent you to school, they cared about you, and you assumed they knew what they were doing. However, that is only true in a very approximate fashion. The adults in your life are not responsible moral thinkers. Consider: half of them vote for the Democratic Party. That’s a party whose bedrock principle includes murdering unborn children. That’s a party whose idea of morality is to steal the property of others via taxation, and give it to whoever they want to give it to. The quaint notion that ‘”You shall not steal”‘ (Exodus 20:15) has no place in the moral economy of the Democratic Party.

The other half of the adults in your life vote for the Republican Party. The Republicans are an unprincipled lot unwilling to stand up for anything good. They never saw a foreign intervention unworthy of support. They are the willing accomplices of the military-industrial complex bankrupting our country.

All of the adults in your life are idolaters of the United States. They keep calling this a great country, even after 57,000,000 unborn children have been killed since Roe v. Wade 1973. They shrug; they do nothing to stop the murders.

Here is worse news. Your adult Christian leaders are also idolaters of the United States. They have shown themselves unable or unwilling to challenge the cliches by which we all live.

The adults in your life have not helped you to learn to think. They can’t think themselves, and naturally as a result they have zero ability to help you to learn to think.

The above news is all bad. But here is some good news.

Your life is potentially valuable far beyond your ability even to imagine right now. It takes courage to be in the military. But if you really want to discover a place to exercise courage, consider the possibilities offered by daily life. Consider the courage and practical wisdom needed to get up and go to work to earn a living, to love and respect a spouse, to raise anywhere from one to twelve children to learn to think and act as true Christians. Consider the courage needed to learn to think, to develop a brand of truly biblical Christianity, and to live that Christianity without compromise.

One person is very important. Most people will not think. The adults in your life did not think. The young people around you do not think. Therefore, since so few people think and live as Christians, one person who does think and live as a Christian is all the more important and valuable. Do you have what it takes to learn to think?

Few do. But you have read this far, and that indicates . . . well, I’m not sure what it indicates. It indicates, at the worst, that you are willing to read unusual ideas. Think for yourself, as to whether these ideas make sense. Don’t trust me. Read the Bible for yourself. Not just once. Read it over and over until you begin to see what God is getting at.

The writer to the Hebrews challenged his audience that they were not thinking as clearly as they had potential to think. The people had become dull of hearing. “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” (Hebrews 5:12-14)

The adults in your life have been feeding you milk. They are babes, and they will keep you babes as well. If you want solid food, you are going to have to want to become mature. This takes “practice.” Your senses need to be “trained.” You have the potential “to discern good and evil.” But potential is only potential until you want to become mature.

The cliched assumption is that being in the U.S. military is a good thing. “Thank you for your service,” we prate. Service doing what? Killing foreigners who should have been left alone? Think for yourself. We need you to become a mature Christian. We don’t need you killing foreigners, and dying or being crippled so that conscienceless sociopaths can push people around to their hearts’ content.