First Thoughts

Marilynne's Law

A limit on guns all should support. Continue Reading »

First Links—9.8.15

Catholics Who Disagree with the Vatican think the Church Will Change
Leah Libresco, FiveThirtyEight

‘Hypocrite,' the All-Purpose Political Insult
Barton Swaim, The Wall Street Journal

Variant Readings
Gabriel Said Reynolds, Times Literary Supplement

Kim Davis: Political Prisoner? Culture-War Martyr?
Rod Dreher, The American Conservative

Taylor Swift: A Socratic Dialogue
Jared Smith, McSweeney's

Why Ms. Madison Had to Create Female Customers

Ashley Madison learned that men and women are indeed different. This fact is backed up by an impressive array of science on sex difference coming to press over the last fifteen years.

Won't Somebody Please Think of the Lawyers?

I’ll leave it to others more knowledgeable than I to assess the changes Pope Francis announced this morning with respect to the procedure for granting annulments. To an outsider, the changes certainly seem sweeping. Francis has eliminated the requirement that two tribunals agree to grant an . . . . Continue Reading »

The Ethical Cleansing of the Medical Profession

The threat to conscience rights in medicine is more advanced than many realize. A concerted effort is required to regain lost ground. Continue Reading »

First Links — 9.4.2015

Inside a Cloistered Monastery: Joy and Love
David Gonzales, New York Times

The Centenary of the Silmarillion: Celebrating Two Tolkiens
Bradley J. Birzer, Imaginative Conservative

On the Pleasures of Not Reading
Dan Piepenbring, Paris Review

The Politics of Star Trek
Timothy Sandefur, Claremont Institute

Workplaces Make Terrible Monasteries
Leah Libresco, Patheos

Kim Davis: The Guts of a Convert

Kim Davis may not have a legal leg to stand on (see here, and here). But I think some Christians are moving too quickly to critique her situation on a purely legal basis. We are Christians first, before we are Americans. So before we start talking about whether this is a good religious liberty . . . . Continue Reading »

What We've Been Reading—9.4.15

I just finished Malcolm Muggeridge's Chronicles of Wasted Time, an autobiographical tour de force. Muggeridge was born into a democratic socialist family and married the niece of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Leftist royalty in early twentieth-century England.

First Links — 9.3.15

Donald Trump, Traitor to his Class
Ross Douthat, New York Times

Oldest Fragment of Koran May Pre-Date Prophet Mohammed
Abraham Rabinovich, Washington Free Beacon

Crime and Punishment
Sean Curnyn, The Cinch Review

‘Saving Place' at the Museum of the City of New York
Benjamin Riley, The New Criterion

Every Tax Policy Proposal from the 2016 Presidential Candidates, in One Chart
Scott Greenberg, Tax Foundation

Time to Take Marriage Seriously?

Churches need to show, not simply claim, that they take marriage and fidelity seriously. Continue Reading »