Joseph Bottum

Richard Rorty has died , passing away on Friday, June 8. A uniquely American mix of philosopher, pragmatist, and provocateur, Richard Rorty was the grandson of Walter Rauschenbusch , the theologian who had been a key figure in the Social Gospel movement. And over the years of his professional . . . . Continue Reading »

Scooter Libby was sentenced on Tuesday to thirty months in jail and a $250,000 fine. And I can’t much stand the bloodsports of American politics anymore.At the time of his conviction, I wrote a small essay about my friendship with Scooter¯others knew him better, but we had a genuine . . . . Continue Reading »

The communicationof the dead is tongued with firebeyond the language of the living.—T.S. Eliot San Francisco is a city without graves. In 1900, the board of supervisors passed an ordinance prohibiting burials within the city limits. In 1912, the board announced its further intention to eliminate . . . . Continue Reading »

It’s pledge week here at PBS. Er, I mean, First Things . I wish I did mean PBS, since then we could count on large corporate donors¯ Mobil! Exxon! Mutual of Omaha! Bob’s Big Boy! ¯to take up the slack. Unfortunately, we depend on the kindness of friends to help us continue . . . . Continue Reading »

Well, well, well. The June/July issue of First Things has arrived, and in the annals of human endeavor it ranks somewhere around¯um, I don’t actually know. The publication of Emile Zola’s J’Accuse! maybe? Or the printing of Civilian Personnel Law Manual: Title 2, Leave, 1996 . . . . Continue Reading »

What shall we do for a bogeyman, now that our grand old monster is dead?Jerry Falwell has passed away, his death leading news reports yesterday . And nearly all the obituaries this morning remind us that he really was, most of the time, a symbol rather a man. Or not a symbol, exactly, but a . . . . Continue Reading »

G.K. Chesterton’s Fr. Brown stories are proof that only the British style of detective fiction can reach to religion¯or so, at least, a friend recently claimed. W.H. Auden’s great essay on the Christian origins of the mystery story came into the argument somewhere, as I recall, . . . . Continue Reading »

We will, I imagine, be talking about the Supreme Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart for a long time: sorting out the implications, reading the tea leaves, following the press coverage. Earlier today Michael Uhlmann did a nice job , here on the First Things website, of placing the . . . . Continue Reading »

Another month, another issue of First Things . Just a typical production of the magazine¯this and that, jammed together randomly in the vain hope that some lucky synergy will make it all work. I’m fairly sure none of it is worth your time.Well, except maybe for R.R. Reno’s essay, . . . . Continue Reading »

One rarely needs to argue in favor of free will. "Sir, we know our will is free, and there’s an end on it," as Samuel Johnson once snarled. The notion that human beings might not possess at least some ability to choose their actions is treated, among philosophers, primarily as a toy . . . . Continue Reading »