Joseph Bottum

The current issue of the Weekly Standard carries an essay about the curious role Catholicism is playing in American public discourse these days. I thought I was relatively downbeat about the overall condition of Catholicism¯the nomination of Samuel Alito to be the fifth Catholic on the Supreme . . . . Continue Reading »

Well, at least Edward O. Wilson is trying. In an op-ed Sunday morning in USA Today , Harvard’s famed entomologist called for a ceasefire in the evolution wars: "American civilization was born of both religion and the science-based Enlightenment. Science will go on expanding its way, and . . . . Continue Reading »

This weekend, the Wall Street Journal ran an interesting story about Joshua Hochschild, an assistant professor of medieval philosophy, who was recently fired from the evangelical Wheaton College for his conversion to Catholicism. It’s well known among journalists that one of the most strictly . . . . Continue Reading »

Milton Himmelfarb passed away this week in his eighty-eighth year. A contributor to F IRST T HINGS and many other magazines, particularly Commentary , he was a longtime veteran of the American Jewish Committee. An editor of Jewish yearbooks, author of The Jews of Modernity (1973), a Reagan . . . . Continue Reading »

I’m not sure we’re giving Jeffrey Hart his due. The book chapter he published in the Wall Street Journal , in which he advised conservatives to surrender to the irreversible fact of Roe v. Wade , has received a number of powerful corrections on the blog of the New Criterion , together . . . . Continue Reading »

Can I register a complaint here about the increasing use of “theocon” to describe all politically conservative religious people? Andrew Sullivan has been pushing the word for some while now: Richard John Neuhaus is officially the ” theocon-in-chief ,” which I reckon trumps . . . . Continue Reading »

As I remember, the 1960 movie version of Inherit the Wind ended with Spencer Tracy (as the Clarence Darrow figure) packing together in his briefcase the Bible and a copy of Origin of Species . From the moment H.L. Mencken made himself the star of American journalism—by covering the circus . . . . Continue Reading »

One Christmas topic I’ve never written about is Christmas movies—mostly because I just don’t know very much about them. Here, however, are a few films I’ve rented this week and hope to watch between Christmas and New Year’s. I may have made a mistake or two in the . . . . Continue Reading »

Somewhere along a career misspent in journalism, I seem to have gotten assigned the Christmas beat. I’ve written about Christmas food, Christmas music, Christmas books, Christmas poetry, Christmas church services, Christmas toys, Christmas . . . Christmas . . . Christmas . . . Most of them . . . . Continue Reading »

There was a woman screaming on Park Avenue yesterday morning, flecks of furious saliva spraying from her twisted 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 brick: It’s not my fault and a run . . . . Continue Reading »