“The best aspect of Christmas is the aspect usually decried by the mystics: the fact that Christmas has been commercialized . The gift-buying . . . stimulates an enormous outpouring of ingenuity in the creation of products devoted to a single purpose: to give men pleasure. And . . . . Continue Reading »
The Bowles-Simpson reform plan is receiving renewed attention from the left and right, but one aspect of it has received insufficient scrutiny: As part of an effort to “broaden the base” of taxation, Bowles-Simpson removes the tax deduction for charitable gifts and replaces it with a . . . . Continue Reading »
John Willson, professor emeritus of history at Hillsdale College, reflects at the Imaginative Conservative on “the chief cruelty of our profession: assigning our students to paradise, purgatory, or the inferno with the stroke of a pen.” He reminds us : Grades as we know them are a . . . . Continue Reading »
Tonight on (I expect) many PBS stations you can see a documentary called ” First Freedom: The Fight for Religious Liberty .” (It’s on from 8:00 to 9:30 p.m. on Philadelphia’s WHYY; check local listings.) I am not endorsing the program, since I want to see it first, but I am . . . . Continue Reading »
Ireland’s cabinet offered a proposal today that would legalize abortion in cases where the mother’s life is at risk, including from suicide. Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny says they system will not lead to “abortion on demand” : “[Suicide] is an issue that is . . . . Continue Reading »
Elizabeth Scalia on doing better with the hard questions : In fact, Benedict XVI—who goes by the handle @Pontifex on Twitter—had answered a “hard” question, because the life of faith turns all questions into “hard” ones. The answers become hard, too, mostly because on . . . . Continue Reading »
Which would be more depressing: eating at McDonald’s on Christmas Day, or working at McDonald’s on Christmas Day? If I were a Marxist, I’d say the latter. If I were a libertarian defender of the Lochner decision, such as the author of this pretty-good and definitely . . . . Continue Reading »
– after Geoffrey Hill Passing a new subdivision, late fall: already the arms race of tall spruce, elegant luminaria, as winner-take-all light displays tart up the days’ values. The nearby landfill will prove a windfall for three or more wise lords of revenue. . . . . Continue Reading »
We in English have an odd and useful tool: a possessive that can be appended to an entire phrase, rather than to just one word. Look at the following: Il figlio del re d’Inghilterra (Italian) Le fils du roi d’Angleterre (French) Der Sohn des Koeniges von . . . . Continue Reading »
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