Many Americans were upset at President Obama’s use of the mass murder of Christians at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon as yet another occasion to demand further restrictions on Americans’ right to bear arms. The move was quite rightly seen as disrespectful toward the victims as well as unseemly in its political opportunism. Perhaps [...]
When Russell Kirk wrote America’s British Culture it was as a necessary corrective to frequent claims that ours is a polyglot culture, a “multi culture” held together solely by certain abstract political principles, generally summed up in a phrase from the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence (“all men are created equal,” with “inalienable [...]
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz I for one was sad when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker dropped out of the race for the Republican Presidential nomination. Then again, I had been saddened by Mr. Walker repeatedly during his time as a candidate—by his failure to take a consistent stand against massive and even illegal [...]
A typical description of conservatism by liberals might run thusly: Conservatism is the attempt to prevent emancipation of the lower orders. It is a creed for those with privilege and a taste for violence who see their power being threatened and are willing to do almost anything to put down calls for freedom and equality [...]
Until 1947, few Americans knew about Thomas Jefferson’s comment, made in a private letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, that the First Amendment’s guarantee against a federally established church made a “wall of separation between church and state.” It was in that year, in the case of Everson v. Board of Education, that the Supreme [...]
The Common Good of Constitutional Democracy: Essays in Political Philosophy and on Catholic Social Teaching by Martin Rhonheimer, edited by William F. Murphy, Jr. (Catholic University of America Press, 2013) This collection of essays is billed as a defense of “constitutional democracy” or, in a more exact translation from the German, “the democratic constitutional state.” That [...]
Not very many people have had the courage to object to the trend among Democratic Party activists to erase the names of former heroes like Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson from official events on account of their views (and practices) regarding race. Rejection of our ancestors because of their failure to achieve perfection is, of [...]
I have added my name to a friend of the court brief in the case of Little Sisters of the Poor vs. Burwell. Professor Nathanial Oman of the law school at William and Mary proposed and took the lead in writing this brief, which was joined by a number of concerned law professors. It was [...]
Person using drugs on having his offer to share refused—“You think you’re better than me?” Person doing the refusing—“Of course I am, have you looked at yourself lately?” It might be wrong to respond to an offer of drugs, or any other vicious “good,” with the lack of charity encapsulated in the very judgmental statement [...]
What can one say about a film director whose career was built on the adolescent pseudo-intellectualism of Pi (not Life of Pi, but the other, really depressing movie harking back to film school), the false-spiritual incoherence of The Fountain, and the aggressively offensive Black Swan? Not surprisingly, if one looks up Mr. Aronofsky at Wikipedia [...]
John Profumo has died. You may not have heard of him. Few people have, especially in the United States. But for years he was a prominent British politician—Secretary of State for War during the early 1960s under Harold MacMillan. In 1963 it was discovered that Profumo had had marital relations with a prostitute who also [...]
In a recent article in The New Yorker, Rachel Aviv depicts how Belgium has “embraced euthanasia as a humanist issue.” Not only the terminally ill, or even those in intense pain, but also those suffering from depression may receive “The Death Treatment” and be treated to a “dignified death” through a fatal chemical cocktail. How [...]
The state of New York has enacted legislation aimed at making certain that, where sexual intimacy is concerned, only “yes means yes,” and that this standard will apply to activities at private colleges and universities. “Yes means yes,” for those fortunate enough not to have their minds invaded by the latest pseudo-intellectual doublespeak, refers to [...]
In a recent editorial, demographer Joel Kotkin laments both the practical and the normative consequences of the rejection of family ties among members of modern societies: Although sensible for many individuals, the decision to detach from familialism augurs poorly for societies, which will be forced to place enormous burdens on a smaller young generation to [...]