So you haven’t yet arranged the dinner music for tonight? Well, never fear, postmodern conservative is here. Nothing says romance more than the crickle-crackle of an old 78, preferably from the swing era. 1.) If Dreams Come True , Ella Fitzgerald w/ the Chick Webb Orchestra. The younger Ella, . . . . Continue Reading »
Something else for Valentine’s Day. Whit Stillman, close observer of the contemporary courtship rituals, has put out the trailer for his new film Damsels in Distress: First Things has published two notable articles on Stillman: One is an interview with the director from when he was making . . . . Continue Reading »
The UK rations health care. In the UK, people who want life-sustaining or extending treatment can be refused under rationing guidelines or physician refusal. This is the system into which the British Medical Association wants Parliament to enact a “presumed consent” to organ . . . . Continue Reading »
St. Valentine’s Day gets a bad rap, and very unfairly, I think. I’d like to take a moment to counter some of the most common objections. 1. The hipster objection. The first knock on Valentine’s Day is that it has become too commercialized: branded, rebranded, overstocked, undersold, and put . . . . Continue Reading »
Elizabeth Scalia on how Obama has stranded the Catholic Left : “Catholic Left” and “Catholic Right” are inadequate and irksome labels that too often sully all of us with the “ick” of politics even when our churchy disagreements are not rooted in politics at all, . . . . Continue Reading »
If that title sounds like a fishy e-mail subject line, you might be in the wrong business. Mark Bauerlein over at the Chronicle of Higher Education blog posts some highlights from the just-released 2011 American Freshman Survey, and that’s essentially the thrust of the document: . . . . Continue Reading »
Every defense of the HHS mandate, including the administration’s, inevitably has recourse to the statistic apparently proving that ninety-eight percent of Catholic women use contraceptive birth control anyway. As is true with most statistical analysis, a little digging into the study’s . . . . Continue Reading »
In the pages of the liberal Jewish Daily Forward , Noam Neusner says that President Obama’s claim that religiously motivated schools and services are not truly religious runs counter to tikkun olam , the Jewish obligation to do good to others: The Obama Administration has held – . . . . Continue Reading »
Martha Bayles is the author of the best book on pop music I know, Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music . For its final chapter, she borrows the title of a William Bell song, You Don’t Miss Your Water ‘til the Well Runs Dry , so as to refer to the . . . . Continue Reading »
HERE , as summarized by Ari Schulman. The theologian-novelist gave a polemical response to to MacIntyre at a recent conference. And Ari not only offers a tight and astute summary of her remarks. If you scroll down, you can also find his summary of AFTER VIRTUE. Here’s one highlight among . . . . Continue Reading »
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