I missed this report from before Christmas in the Boston Globe and I wish I missed it altogether. Romney’s son Tagg, one of Romney’s closest campaign advisers, says his father did not really want to become president. “He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my . . . . Continue Reading »
The Passive Voice is used badly when the writer tucks the real item of interest into a prepositional phrase, obscuring the agent of the verb and deflecting the emphasis. Consider these sentences: The slider was hammered by Colavito into the left field bleachers. Colavito hammered the slider . . . . Continue Reading »
A Nation Addicted to Crisis Zachary Karabell, The Atlantic Shakers: The Elegant Errors of a Failed Sect C. R. Wiley, Imaginative Conservative Catholics and the Bourgeois Mind Thomas Storck, Distributist Review Piper Denounces Prosperity Gospel, Playful Worship in Last (Official) Sermon Lillian . . . . Continue Reading »
Here’s an update to last week’s post about a movement to curtail Sunday shopping in Europe. In that post, I speculated that allowing stores to open Sundays might create pressure for observant Christian employees: skip church and report to work, or lose your job. It turns out . . . . Continue Reading »
“If,” as Catholic blogger Marc Barnes wrote , “in the course of human events, a cringe-inducing karaoke of an already over-played pop song is your primary response to the philosophical tradition of the Holy Catholic Church, you’ve negated yourself long, long . . . . Continue Reading »
Among the many things worth studying, one of the most interesting is what I call ‘philosophical folklore’. Folklore, of course, consists of micro-traditions passed down within communities as part of the ordinary ways of life of the people in those communities. We usually think of these . . . . Continue Reading »
Thanks to some comments on an earlier post, I have learned that as many as twenty-eight states require insurance providers to include contraceptive coverage in the packages they offer. Twenty states offer some form of conscientious exemption from the requirement; eight—including . . . . Continue Reading »
This week’s issue of Time says that Roe v. Wade hobbled the pro-abortion movement. It’s a point that will be familiar to readers of our January issue, in which Jon Shields makes a similar argument: Roe v. Wade did far more than create a constitutional right to abortion—it . . . . Continue Reading »
Russell E. Saltzman asks what has Jesus done? What would Jesus do? That’s pretty hard to say, but it doesn’t prevent people from speculating about it. The what-would-Jesus-do fad seems to have faded somewhat, but only after raking in multi-million dollar sales in WWJD bracelets, . . . . Continue Reading »
Reason has a commendably subtle feature essay on the emerging relationship between Vladimir Putin and Russia’s Orthodox Church. The author, Cathy Young, refreshingly concedes that the present situation “is a far cry from theocracy” while still acknowledging the . . . . Continue Reading »
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