R. R. Reno

As is often the case, Public Discourse has an interesting article today, this one by Matthew Milliner on the current hand-wringing about the future of humanistic inquiry in American higher education. Milliner, a graduate student in art history at Princeton and a blogger here at First Thoughts, . . . . Continue Reading »

Our avant-garde cherishes memories of an oppressive past. . . . . Continue Reading »

The debate about same-sex marriage brings the modern liberal project to a point of clarity. If marriage can be reshaped to accommodate same-sex couples, then there is nothing that the modern liberal state cannot redefine to serve its own purposes. A few weeks ago, Sherif Girgis, Robert P. George, and Ryan T. Anderson published an important article in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy defending the traditional view of marriage … Continue Reading »

The sun has reached it midday zenith, and I’m still staring at the blank page on my desk. I had promised myself that I would begin writing about Akeksandr Solzhenitsyn’s In The First Circle —a key part of a book project that I’m calling, “The Renewal of the Conservative . . . . Continue Reading »

Some months ago I expressed my skepticism about Dinesh D’Souza’s thesis that the best way to understand Barack Obama involves seeing him as trying to fulfill his father’s anti-colonialist vision. I argued that mainstream American liberalism, especially its hothouse academic forms, . . . . Continue Reading »

I’ve been working on a book off and on for the last year or so. The working title is Renewing the Conservative Imagination . My thesis is that our age is defined by an antinomian conviction. If we will but be free from moral norms, then we will be happy. Put differently, our age is Bohemian. . . . . Continue Reading »

Letters to a Young Calvinist by James K.A. Smith Brazos, 160 pages, $14.99 Inspired by two very different predecessors”Christopher Hitchens, who produced Letters to a Young Contrarian , and George Weigel, author of Letters to a Young Catholic ”Calvin College philosophy professor James . . . . Continue Reading »

The Uses of Pessimism: And the Danger of False Hope by Roger Scruton Oxford, 240 pages, $29.95 “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” It’s a piece of folk wisdom that draws attention to the temptation to tolerate or even intend evil actions for the sake of good results . . . . Continue Reading »

Iran, it seems, is experiencing a textbook case of conflict between the aggressive and absorptive power of the secular state and religious authority. In today’s Financial Times , Najmeh Bozorgmehr reports that Iran’s highest ranking cleric is getting sideways with the officially Islamic . . . . Continue Reading »

It was cold, very cold that New Year’s eve in the Adirondack Mountains, perhaps twenty below. A fine, imperceptible snow was almost hovering like a thin mist as I fumbled with the small backpacking stove, unable to manipulate the little knobs. So I took off my mittens, and the harsh cold of the frozen metal pierced through my thin silk inner gloves, making the tips of my finger almost instantly numb… . Continue Reading »