California’s AB-5 law severely limits the type of freelance work that people can do. Several other blue states, including New York and New Jersey, are considering some variation on this unintentionally harmful law. It would be nice if legislators aiming to help workers would recall the adage, “First, do no harm.” Is schadenfreude, the phenomenon [...]
We’ve been dumping Shakespeare, Milton, and Eliot in favor of the latest, trendy lesbian poet or controversial rapper. And then we wonder why fewer and fewer college students are majoring in English. What can be done to renew and revive our English departments in this age of political correctness? Q. What’s the difference between a [...]
Our age is undergoing what many have described as a “Great Realignment.” This is nowhere more true than among conservatives. The fusion that brought together under Ronald Reagan social conservatives, free marketers, and national defense hawks has largely un-fused of late. Many conservatives have begun to talk about a “dead consensus.”[1] Given the nature of [...]
Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life” does not drag. Its deliberate pace describing why its protagonist—a Catholic who defied Hitler’s Reich by refusing military service—died is a moving icon, a window into that mystery of why and how silence and conscience lead to true freedom. “There isn’t any twirling, is there?” I asked my former student [...]
Michael Naughton’s book, “Getting Work Right,” is a wonderful invitation to share a vision of work that goes beyond resume obsession or Thank-God-It’s-Friday attitudes. It’s an invitation to Thank God It’s Sunday and keep thanking all week long. Getting Work Right: Labor and Leisure in a Fragmented World, by Michael J. Naughton (200 pages, Emmaus [...]
Chick-fil-A’s decision to stop donating to the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes last month was met with a lot of anger on the part of conservatives and Christians because it was seen as a betrayal of a large portion of its customer base, many of whom were fans of the place for [...]
If family and their funerals remind us of the duties imposed by God and Tradition, they doubly remind us of the gratitude we owe God for putting us into a world with families that not only are not perfect but do not meet our own silly notions of what they should be. The office of [...]
The coach insists on his team’s behavior as gentlemen. He insists that they work hard in practice no matter how much playing time they’re getting. And he insists that they see that whether they’re playing a lot or not, whether the position is glorious or not, they understand their work is part of a bigger [...]
Ryszard Legutko gained fame this spring when he was informed by Middlebury College’s president that his lecture was canceled. Though 40 brave students gathered to hear Prof. Legutko speak in a classroom, the irony was that the episode confirmed his very point that liberal democratic societies have become in many ways just as barbarous and oppressive [...]
Avarice brings to mind the image of a hoarder—one who simply wants things for himself. However, while wanting more of something is certainly one side of avarice, it might not be the most important side. The image that always comes to mind for me when thinking about the vice of greed, or avarice, is that [...]
Drag Queen story hour is actually not the worst part about public libraries these days. The worst part is that these days you can’t actually take your kids to the library and simply let them check out books on their own. So what to do? The intra-conservative battle over liberal institutions and their relation to [...]
John Henry Newman wished people to flee from the love of money, but he didn’t wish them to stop making it. He wished them to flee similarly from love of erudition for its own sake, but he didn’t want them to stop loving the Lord with mind as well as heart, soul, and strength. He [...]
For much of the last two centuries, many have treated their lives as consisting of three stages: the play and education of youth, a long “middle age” of work and the raising of family, and retirement, which means a long period of leisure and play. But is there something both unpatriotic and, dare I say, [...]
Rich Mullins seemed different from most other contemporary Christian artists, and somehow more real than the standard imitation-rock bands that were and are popular. But I was only a casual fan. So I was blown away when I was told after his fatal car accident in 1997 that he was on his way to be [...]