Stefan McDaniel

“They agree on little else, but the heads of Northern Ireland’s four main parties are united in their determination to deny their countrywomen access to free abortion at home.” So says an outraged correspondent for The Economist , reporting on the failure of an initiative to . . . . Continue Reading »

Why does a man who describes the French left as a “great backward-falling corpse” continue to associate himself with it? This is the question Fred Siegel tackles in his review of Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism by Bernard-Henri Levy. Even at its most exasperatingly . . . . Continue Reading »

In addition to being a compelling indictment of the “addiction bureaucracy,” Theodore Dalrymple’s Romancing Opiates is probably the most wryly funny book-length discussion of heroin addiction you’ll read all week. Here’s a characteristic digression: Cold turkey is so . . . . Continue Reading »

Robert Royal reflects here on the limited importance of book-learning: [We should get rid of the idea that] a superficial understanding of sacred things is an advance over longstanding practices that directly confront the evils we find in ourselves and in a fallen world. On the very first page of . . . . Continue Reading »

Last week Public Discourse published the modified text of an address delivered by Archbishop Chaput speaking as a private citizen about the responsibilities of the Catholic voter. It contains a stern rebuke directed at Prof. Doug Kmiec: In his own book [ Can a Catholic Support Him?: Asking the Big . . . . Continue Reading »

These clips, if you haven’t seen them, are really pretty funny . I’m not sure that Obama was as sincerely amused by the wisecracks as he was obliged to seem. But it’s possible that he was—graciousness is a luxury clear front-runners can well afford. . . . . Continue Reading »

Well, here we go again. The markets stumble after fifty years of astonishing prosperity and the wild-eyed Marxist prophets immediately emerge from hiding. Now I’m not going to indulge in vulgar polemics against Marx, whom I consider an epochal genius, but I think The Guardian ends on just the . . . . Continue Reading »

The excellent team of scholars working under the auspices of The Witherspoon Institute has just launched an online publication called Public Discourse: Ethics, Law and the Common Good . Public Discourse is an interesting hybrid of the blog and journal formats. According to the introductory letter . . . . Continue Reading »

“Pugnacious” takes on quite literal meaning when applied to Russia’s prime minister. With his new video, “Let’s Learn Judo with Vladimir Putin,” the ex-KGB operative shows off his wicked awesome martial arts skills. In isolation this seems exhibitionistic enough, . . . . Continue Reading »

The latest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature is a Frenchman with the marvelously French name of Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio . Perhaps his writing is quite as marvelous as his name, but the terms in which the Nobel committee praises him make me suspicious of their criteria. Much . . . . Continue Reading »