Postmodernity, Faith, and the Arts

The latest issue of The City features an article by First Thoughts contributor Matthew Milliner: ” The Tale of Two Art Worlds .” Milliner recounts the trajectory of postmodern art criticism, which over recent decades has adopted a progressive political outlook that . . . . Continue Reading »

Not So Great a Nation After All

Last month First Things columnist David Hart raised some eyebrows with his tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the nominee for “Greatest Nation on Earth” might just be Bhutan . While that country may have clean rivers and a dearth of strip malls, it’s sorely lacking religious liberties . . . . Continue Reading »

What the Elites Think of You

“Back when Dan Quayle was criticizing sitcom heroine Murphy Brown for promoting single-parenthood in a way that could negatively affect society,” writes Elizabeth Scalia in today’s “On the Square” article, The Credentialed Gentry and the Unpersuaded Yahoos , “he . . . . Continue Reading »

The Problem of Polygenism

Msgr. Charles Pope continues his instructive series with a post on the problem of polygenism : There is also another matter which the Theory of Evolution gives rise to that a Catholic must be aware of and realize that he or she cannot give it uncritical acceptance. This is the usual premise in . . . . Continue Reading »

Aqua Buddha

By now, you have probably seen, or at least heard of , this ad: I have no idea what Rand Paul did when he was an undergraduate at Baylor University, but I doubt that he ever seriously worshipped false idols.  (Full disclosure: when I was young and cynical, and as yet unacquainted with that . . . . Continue Reading »

Obamacare: Hurting Workers Already

Obamacare seeks to help the (relatively) few (in the millions) at the expense of the many (in the hundreds of millions).  This is too bad because I believe we could and should have helped the relatively few without taking it out of the hide of the many—but that would have required the . . . . Continue Reading »

The Jester’s Reply: A Fable

Once upon a time in a Kingdom by the wine-dark sea, there lived a very silly king. Like most kings of his day, his kingdom was very small, but he had better people than he deserved. The castle was famous for its intricate design and the care the servants took with it. The King was also blessed with . . . . Continue Reading »

The Authority of Tradition

In ” Marriage and the Law of Tradition ,” a new posting on Public Discourse, R. J. Snell recounts the reasons St. Thomas gives authority to tradition. St. Thomas viewed the laws of society (a notion that encompassed written laws as well as social norms) as subject to rational scrutiny. . . . . Continue Reading »

How Not to Understand Obama

When I first heard about Dinesh D’Souza’s theory that President Obama can best be understood through the framework of Kenyan anticolonialism I thought it was a joke. It seemed like it’d make a clever, table-turning satire of pseudo-academic pretensions. But the D’souza turned . . . . Continue Reading »

Pushing Suicide to End the Pain of Grief

We’ve discussed this before—promoting suicide as a prophylactic against the pain of expected future grief.  For example, the Canadian assisted suicide advocate Ruth Von Fuchs specifically supported a woman who wanted to commit suicide with her terminally ill husband at the Swiss . . . . Continue Reading »