Claude Lévi-Strauss has died , at the age of 100. He was, in his way, a great mind, if somewhat typical of his era—a fact made manifest by the typical response to his death, which expresses not so much surprise that he has died as surprise that he was still alive, to have died. Without . . . . Continue Reading »
My friends in the Democrat Party (and I do have such friends!) often miss an important point in their analysis of the future of the conservative movement. More people are identifying as conservative, but not as members of the Republican Party. Blame Bush and his spending if you must, but this is a . . . . Continue Reading »
I’ve already had several complaints about bad taste in this post at the First Thoughts blog. Perhaps it will go down better with this . . . . Continue Reading »
I found this gem while mining some old material.Flipping through a local community magazine, I came across the following line:“My neighbor is confused by the whole gay marriage controversy. He just can’t understand why a gay man would want to marry a gay . . . . Continue Reading »
I support necessary medical and scientific experimentation on animals. But I don’t think this experiment is necessary. From the story:Nasa is to expose squirrel monkeys to daily radiation doses to help them understand the effects of long space trips on humans. It will be Nasa’s . . . . Continue Reading »
As someone who has never understood the appeal of Bob Dylan (I don’t get it at all ), I naturally loved Andrew Ferguson’s long, brutal, and funny takedown of the crooner (croaker?) in The Weekly Standard : Deep thinking reviewers from Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone began toying with what . . . . Continue Reading »
Visiting friends, at Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, N.Y.: and at the Jesuit cemetery in Auriesville, N.Y.: . . . . Continue Reading »
Think the Western Church is Jan Crouch or Borgia Popes?Believe that English Protestantism is Oliver Cromwell tyranny in service of the cultural values of Elmer Gantry?Read Spenser and take the cure.The notion that Protestantism, at least of sort, destroys the ability to produce great literature . . . . Continue Reading »
We are now at the happy moment in politics where voters speak. Pundits must wait for the rest of America to vote and only then can they spin, massage, slice, dice and make Julienne fries of the results.Here is my prediction:If the Democrats win in New Jersey and lose in Virginia, it will be seen as . . . . Continue Reading »
I remember being in Rome more than ten years ago and developing a nice camaraderie with the hotel clerk. As we talked about our respective countries, he told me that he was beside himself, to the point of endangering his health, about what he perceived to be the casual corruption and mendacity . . . . Continue Reading »
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