Peter Lawler

Pot thoughts might refer to David Brooks’ getting all “making men moral” when thinking about legalizing marijuana.  Or he is getting all proudly Epicurean?  My big thoughts  on David and weed here, which aren’t anything you haven’t heard . . . . Continue Reading »

A few big thoughts on Hanna Rosin’s trendy . . . . Continue Reading »

So I was really, really moved by Carl’s defense of the Sixties, at their best, as part of America’s distinctively Christian counterculture.  I remember hearing these words a lot in bars and such in the very late Sixties:Love is but a song we sing,fear a way we die.You can make the . . . . Continue Reading »

So Pseudoplotinus (aka not THAT Michael Davis) deftly sums up the long and intricately detailed film American Hustle:  “Just saw American Hustle. Great, entertaining movie but ultimately not serious about the ethical realities of its story. In the end we’re supposed to sympathize . . . . Continue Reading »

So I did everything I could to make our pope’s teaching a challenge to BIG THINK readers.  It goes without saying that what I said goes without saying he should have said too.  The church should function as a relational, personal counterweight to both individualism and . . . . Continue Reading »

I ask this of YOU because I can never remember what was best.  I got a couple of requests to list the best books of 2013.  I failed to think of anything all that good.  On movies, I’m sticking with MUD.  More soon, but give me some PROMPTS.It was a FESTIVUS MIRACLE . . . . Continue Reading »

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big Christmas thoughts and the Blind Boys on Colbert . . . . Continue Reading »

So I was pretty moved by Ross Douthat’s observation that the first meaning of Christmas is something like the holiness of ordinary lives.  It would bizarrely anachronistic to say Jesus was born into a “white trash” family.  But the meaning of being born in a . . . . Continue Reading »

So I commented on Duck Dynasty below in a feverish fog and apparently in inexcusable ignorance.  Mr. Robertson’s comments included not only his views on homosexuality and sexual ethics but what seem to be incredibly stereotypically unenlightened white Southern views on the Civil . . . . Continue Reading »