Joseph Bottum

Another in our series of Christmas Reruns ¯ writings on the season from our authors through the years. Ever since First Things began in 1990, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus has been commenting on Christmas in his column, "The Public Square." If political America has much of a Christmas . . . . Continue Reading »

A second in our series of Christmas Reruns ¯writings on the season from our authors through the years. Here’s something of my own from First Things , a squib that appeared last year on our website, one of many I’ve done over the years to herald in the season: Comfort and Joy . . . . Continue Reading »

Pius XII is back in the news, this time in reports that the man who would later become Pope John XXIII criticized Pius for inaction during the Holocaust. The various news reports, mostly from the Associated Press, are based on an article in the Israeli journal Haaretz , which noted: Prof. Dina . . . . Continue Reading »

The first of our Christmas Reruns ¯writings on the season from our authors through the years.It’s hardly worth the effort to point out how difficult good sestinas are to write. The poet Dana Gioia has a cruel, funny sestina about how all poetry students, assigned to write one, choose to . . . . Continue Reading »

There was a woman screaming on Park Avenue, flecks of saliva spraying from her mouth as she raged into her cell phone, “It’s not my fault.” Over and over, like the high-pitched squeal of a power saw cutting bricks: It’s not my fault and a run of foul names, It’s not my fault and another . . . . Continue Reading »

Of things to blog about, the world never ceases to supply a sufficiency¯and more than a sufficiency, which means that the folder of possible blog topics often overflows before one can get to it all. In fact, every once in a while, you simply to have to grab a bucket and start baling, before . . . . Continue Reading »

In case you missed it in print, the October First Things is now available online in its entirety at no charge (click here for the table of contents). Inside are correspondence on Gilbert Meilaender’s review of Crunchy Cons , "The Diplomacy of Religious Freedom," and lawsuits brought . . . . Continue Reading »

At least I caught up on my reading. The seventy-fifth-anniversary issue of Fortune was particularly interesting. I didn’t really mind that it was dated September 2005. Where, except in a doctor’s waiting room, can you easily find popular magazines more than a year old? The Christmas 2004 . . . . Continue Reading »

I’m not so sure, Ross, that you’re right about the way you frame the issue of the war and the election. Of course, in your response to me , you may be righter than I was . But I don’t see that I was saying anything much different from, for example, E.J. Dionne, who wrote in his . . . . Continue Reading »

Since September 11, 2001¯or at least since the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, and probably since the invasion of Afghanistan¯there has been a fundamental imbalance in the way the left and the right have perceived the use of the American military in the war against the Jihadists.Of course, . . . . Continue Reading »