The Week

los nuevos dominÓ s. Amnesty International reports that Guatemala’s government has been guilty of massive human-rights violations, including five thousand killings of people seized without warrant, since 1978. You’ll be hearing much more about the corrupt and repressive regime of Guatemala, which is right next to El Salvador, which is right next to Nicaragua.

The murder of (at last count) 17 black children in Atlanta does not appear to be a “racial issue” in the usual sense, nor does the case of June Cromer, the schizoid murderer of a black child in Oakland. It is difficult to arrive at any conclusion, given the murkiness of the evidence, about the precise character of the multiple assaults recently carried out against blacks in Upstate New York. But something peculiar seems to be going on. Insanity is always with us, but its expression varies with the sane climate of opinion. Thus, just this side of the certifiable, we have had Nazi and Klan candidates for public office who have run surprisingly strongly. We may suppose that a climate of irritation with black demands has come into being, as well as a climate of anger over federal initiatives, and that this is so widespread that the lunatics are beginning to pick it up and act upon it. If so, this would be one more unintended consequence, a tragic one, of the schemes of our social engineers.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

los nuevos dominÓ s. Amnesty International reports that Guatemala’s government has been guilty of massive human-rights violations, including five thousand killings of people seized without warrant, since 1978. You’ll be hearing much more about the corrupt and repressive regime of Guatemala, which is right next to El Salvador, which is right next to Nicaragua.

The murder of (at last count) 17 black children in Atlanta does not appear to be a “racial issue” in the usual sense, nor does the case of June Cromer, the schizoid murderer of a black child in Oakland. It is difficult to arrive at any conclusion, given the murkiness of the evidence, about the precise character of the multiple assaults recently carried out against blacks in Upstate New York. But something peculiar seems to be going on. Insanity is always with us, but its expression varies with the sane climate of opinion. Thus, just this side of the certifiable, we have had Nazi and Klan candidates for public office who have run surprisingly strongly. We may suppose that a climate of irritation with black demands has come into being, as well as a climate of anger over federal initiatives, and that this is so widespread that the lunatics are beginning to pick it up and act upon it. If so, this would be one more unintended consequence, a tragic one, of the schemes of our social engineers.