Many religious folk have been rejoicing at the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the case concerning the Obama Administration’s attempt to force Hobby Lobby and other religious businesses to pay for contraceptive and abortifacient drugs for their employees under the Health and Human Services Mandate. The Court held that the [...]
Most of us have been told from a young age that religious beliefs cause strife. The early modern “wars of religion” are portrayed as merely the most overt form of what happens when religion is allowed too much influence in public life. Of course, Protestant and Catholic forces fought on both sides of these conflicts. [...]
I love reading The Imaginative Conservative. This online journal welcomes a variety of authors representing the spectrum of conservatism who converse on topics related to truth, beauty, and goodness. Sometimes, however, conservatism rightly deserves its reputation for nay-saying. Such is my response to Bruce Frohnen’s essay, “Malevolent?…No…Maleficent?…Whatever.” Mr. Frohnen detects a feminist reading underlying the plot that [...]
“Fractured” fairy tales have a long history in American popular culture. Jay Ward was noted for a segment with precisely that title in his Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon shows. Even in the small doses provided by Ward, fairy stories stripped of their original drama with winks, nods, popular references and, of course, colloquial language, came [...]
Any doubts any of us might have had that Obamacare is, by design, a transitional program leading to socialized medicine should, by now, be part of the past. A recent article sums up the facts, noting that analysts on both the left and the right agree that the vast majority of us who currently get our [...]
What Steve Jobs “sold” with his Apple devices was the myth of control, of importance, and of connection through technology. In truth, the vast bulk of what these personal devices offer constitutes a massive waste of time—and, worse, a diversion from genuine interaction with actual people, or nature, or our own minds. Redesigning the World [...]
I admit to being rather pleased when I first read that a number of “actors” in pornographic films had been told by their banks that their business was no longer welcome. It seems the banks had determined that such persons posed a “reputation risk.” Too distracted by other things to pay much attention, I assumed [...]
What are we to make of this powerful, contradictory figure and his influence on our society? Origins A decade after his death from cancer, Steve Jobs remains an icon of contemporary business and popular culture. Co-founder of Apple, he amassed a fortune of mammoth proportions and built the most highly valued corporation in the world. [...]
My goal in this essay is less to impart a specific teaching than to tell a story. This story, I first should point out, is not a myth made up for didactic purposes, as so many such stories tend to be. It is rather a true story, one rooted in things we know about history, [...]
Conservatives to a significant degree are defined by their respect for historical origins. In the American context this has meant recognizing the importance of a tradition with its roots in England, but also further back, and further East. To put it in terms reminiscent of Russell Kirk, the religion of Jerusalem, the philosophy of Athens, [...]
That a French socialist economist is trashing the American economy for fomenting inequality should hardly be news. But Thomas Piketty is enjoying some moments in the popular press, before returning to the usual comfortable sinecure for the left—academia. Why? Well, we are told, economic inequality is on the march again, and must be stopped. Stopped [...]
From early in our history, Americans have been proud of being a “meritocracy.” Anyone, we claim, can rise to the heights of our society through brains, effort, and perseverance. And it certainly is true that we have no traditional, inherited aristocracy. But what is the “merit” that it takes to succeed in America today, and [...]
Lacking a genuine, common mind concerning the nature of virtue and the requirements for good reputation, auxiliary precautions like our Constitution’s checks and balances no longer will suffice to protect our constitutional order. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. [...]
I am not terribly accustomed to attending bilingual masses. I have avoided them rather religiously (sorry) ever since my wife and I went to a Spanish-English mass on Ash Wednesday when she was very pregnant. After well over an hour and a half of hearing each part of the mass said in one language, then repeated [...]