The October issue is—such is the way magazines work—in the mail and now available online. It is a full, stimulating, informative, entertaining, and provocative issue, if we say so ourselves.
The issues opens with Joseph Bottum’s “Holy War Over Ground Zero, and continues with three reports, including young and famous pro-life activist Lila Rose’s story of how she came to run undercover investigations of Planned Parenthood facilities, a reflection on life in Mississippi after Katrina, and the history of Catholic professor Kenneth Howell’s struggles with the University of Illinois.
The feature section begins with physicist Stephen M. Barr’s “Fearful Symmetries,” a meditation on sciences’ search for the elegant and elusive simplicity of the universe, and the scientific failure of reductionism. (You will have seen his Much Ado About “Nothing”, posted on “First Thoughts” last week.) The journalist Ron Rosenbaum then offers, in “Rescuing Evil,” his thoughts on the nature of evil, stimulated by his study of Hitler and the story of England’s “psycho-cabbie killer.”
Then, in “Torah and Incarnation,” Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik asks “How can finite man commune with the infinite God?” and then contrasts the Christian and the Jewish answers. McGill professor Reuven Brenner and our senior editor David P. Goldman add a dissection of “The Keynes Conundrum,” beginning with Keynes’ own observation that “the most practical man of business is usually the slave of a defunct economist.” The last feature is the statement of the first annual Neuhaus Colloquium, “Human Embryos in the Age of Obama.”
The issue also includes reviews of George Weigel’s new book on Pope John Paul II, The End and the Beginning, Carl Braaten’s Because of Christ (this one by First Things’ founding editor, James Neuchterlein), Hadley Arkes’ Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths, Christopher Page’s The Christian West and Its Singers (this by Robert Louis Wilken), and William Peter Blatty’s Dimiter.
And the issue includes, of course, thoughtful letters, the architecture column (which looks at the Air Force Academy’s chapel), the crossword, the “Sunday Best” photograph, poetry, and the short, sharp insights of “While We’re At It.”
[Note: The articles by Bottum, Duke, Rosenbaum, and the Neuhuas Colloquium are open to all. The rest are available only to
href="http://www.firstthings.com/subscribe.php">print and digital subscribers.]
And Ron Rosenbaum--wasn't he a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times? He handles fearfully complex subjects with consummate ease, far better than most profs.
Another memorable issue.
One quibble: what has Mr. Goldman's article to do with "first things"? It's purely about economics and takes a swipe at Keynes. But his terminology is obscure or confusing. E,g., what is the role of a "financial intermediary," and is it essential? No answer. And this sentence: "Tax cuts stimulate growth and produce an increase in wealth when the rise in tax revenues exceeds the interest the government pays on the bonds it issued to cover the initial loss in revenue." What? For one thing, it looks like it is government getting rich, not the economy. And does gummint issue bonds (take money out of the economy) as it reduces taxes (putting money back into the economy)?Perhaps if gummint sells the bonds to foreigners. His approach looks promising but needs a lot of work.