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Moments After America

It is rare for a book release, no matter how timely, to coincide with breaking news. In the case of Mark Steyn’s After America the alignment was downright spooky. As louts, brats and the non-thinkers who wish merely to be part of a “moment” terrorized the citizenry and burned down London neighborhoods, across the pond one could enter a bookstore, lift Steyn’s latest from a shelf and read … Continue Reading »

A Great and Glorious, but Debated, Assumption

Today is not a holy day of obligation for American Catholics, even though today we celebrate the Feast of the Assumption, because feasts that are normally days of obligation are not obligatory when they fall on a Saturday or a Monday, apparently because someone thinks people shouldn’t have to go to church two days in a row, which ignores the fact that obligations are only useful if they are, you know, obligatory, and not sometimes choices or options. Holy days are supposed to disrupt your regularly scheduled programming… . Continue Reading »

Zombies Are Us

Peter J. Leithart recently had a little fun with a New York Times editorial that implies that the rising popularity of zombies shows that Americans are subtly racist. He says that the argument”that zombies hungry for brains represent immigrants hungry for American wealth”is ridiculous, and he’s quite right. But he also says she’s asking a good question: Why zombies? Why now? He still hasn’t heard a persuasive answer… . Continue Reading »

Jesus and the “Ogre”

It’s become one of the most-quoted passages to emerge from the New Atheists, Richard Dawkins’s tirade against the God of Israel: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser… .” Less well-known is Dawkins’s approval of Jesus, who is “from a moral point of view … a huge improvement over the cruel ogre of the Old Testament.” … Continue Reading »

Art and Madness: A Memoir of Lust Without Reason

Standing on my tiptoes, I shifted my view through the bookshelves to the semi-circle of editors sitting at the front of the bookstore. The staff of a prominent journal was having a discussion on the future of publishing at McNally Jackson Bookstore in Soho, and I was one of many who crammed into the tote-bag haven hoping to absorb the aura of the prestigious journal. I moved to New York City to be close to the literary scene… . Continue Reading »

A Journalism Lesson for the New Yorker

Sara Lippincott, who worked in the New Yorker’s famed fact-checking department from 1966 until 1982, once told a class of journalism students that, “Each word in the piece that has even a shred of fact clinging to it is scrutinized, and, if passed, given the checker’s imprimatur, which consists of a tiny pencil tick.” Such excruciating attention to detail is rare nowadays”even at the New Yorker. The publication should have brought Ms. Lippincott in from retirement for Ryan Lizza’s recent article Leap of Faith… . Continue Reading »

Benedict XVI on Europe’s Future

World Youth Day 2011, to be held in Madrid from Aug. 16-21, will be an important moment in Pope Benedict XVI’s campaign to remind Europe of its Christian roots and to call Europe to a nobler understanding of democracy. As the Holy Father demonstrated in an address in Zagreb, Croatia, in early June, the two parts of that campaign”the recovery of Christian roots and the deepening of 21st-century Europe’s idea of democracy”go together… . Continue Reading »

A President at a Loss

A pal of mine, whose political views are to the left of my own, is not very happy with President Obama. He dislikes Obama’s continuation of many of President Bush’s policies and he is disillusioned with Obama’s meager leadership skills, but his criticism is fairly low-key, characterized by a sense of quiet restlessness. Nevertheless, if I dare to criticize the president”on the policies, the passivity, the professorial condescension, the pea-eating lectures or on the general over-ratedness that I and many others counted, in 2008, as weaknesses rendering him unsuited to the Oval Office … Continue Reading »

The Departure of an Order

The Catholic school where I teach has been run by a religious order of brothers for the last forty years. Like many orders, their numbers have been dwindling for some time now, and recently they announced that they would no longer staff the school. As our school approaches life without them, we find ourselves struggling to balance expressions of sorrow and optimism. We’ve dedicated much time over the last year to thanking the brothers and making it known how much they will be missed… . Continue Reading »

A Crisis of Government

The brinksmanship in Washington over the federal debt ceiling caused me to think about our current difficulties. By and large liberals see in the present crisis images of dolorous unemployment lines and want more government spending; conservatives see a bankrupt banana republic and want cuts in spending. Whose vision is clearest? The liberals have history on their side… . Continue Reading »

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