First Things RSS Feed - Mary Eberstadt https://www.firstthings.com/author/mary-eberstadt en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:56:02 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/mary-eberstadt 60 Why Catholics Voted for Trump https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/11/why-catholics-voted-for-trump https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/11/why-catholics-voted-for-trump Thu, 14 Nov 2024 06:00:00 -0500 As Democrats and others assess the fallout from last week’s red bombshell, they’re looking at surprises in the exit polls. Here’s one that shouldn’t be missed: The nation’s Catholic voters split 56 to 41 in favor of Donald Trump. 

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]]> The Boys in the Bandwidth https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/11/the-boys-in-the-bandwidth https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/11/the-boys-in-the-bandwidth Fri, 01 Nov 2024 06:00:00 -0400 Red and blue Americans are locked in a hostile custody battle right now. But if they agree on anything, it’s that “the gender gap has never been wider,” as one piece in the New York Times just summarized. For both the Harris and Trump campaigns, that gap shapes the playbook. Electoral binaries like hawks vs. doves, flyover land vs. coasts, are out. The battle between the sexes, and which side leverages it best, will decide what happens next week.

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]]> The Baby Bust Isn’t Just Political, It’s Personal https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/08/the-baby-bust-isnt-just-political-its-personal https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/08/the-baby-bust-isnt-just-political-its-personal Fri, 02 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0400 In a 2021 interview on the Tucker Carlson show, vice-presidential nominee JD Vance said that “we’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats . . . by a bunch of childless cat ladies miserable at their own lives.” The resulting performative wrath over “childless cat ladies” is obscuring a trio of truths: the flight from marriage and kids is real; it is re-making reality in ways that are ever more visible; and it raises once more the question of whether today’s radical atomization is transforming the world for good, or ill. 

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]]> Catholics Against Anti-Semitism https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/10/catholics-against-anti-semitism https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/10/catholics-against-anti-semitism Fri, 27 Oct 2023 17:00:00 -0400 On October 7, the terrorist organization Hamas decided to follow the Nazi playbook once more. As one observer of World War II put it, the Nazis “ripped the lid off Hell.” That’s what Hamas did. It ripped the lid off Hell. The comparison is inescapable. As noted earlier in this gathering, the Catholic moral record during World War II and the Holocaust was mixed. There were outstanding exceptions. But many European Christians, and others, back then and elsewhere in history, wronged our older brothers and sisters in faith. Many did not view the bond that tethers Catholics and Jews as unbreakable, but as one to escape when loopholes like war or personal advantage presented themselves.

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]]> 1968 Is So Over https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/05/1968-is-so-over https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/05/1968-is-so-over Mon, 01 May 2023 00:00:00 -0400 In 1883, speaking not as a novelist but as a bystander describing a terrible scene of carnage, Leo Tolstoy observed of what he documented: “We cannot pretend that we do not know this. We are not ostriches, and we cannot believe that if we do not look, there will not be what we do not wish to see.”

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]]> Men Are at War with God https://www.firstthings.com/article/2022/01/men-are-at-war-with-god https://www.firstthings.com/article/2022/01/men-are-at-war-with-god Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 -0500 Solzhenitsyn famously defined the principal trait of the twentieth century in four words: “Men have forgotten God.” So far, the twenty-first century might be summarized in six: Men are at war with God. Awakened from agnostic slumber by new forms of temptation, chiefly the sexual revolution, humanity is at war with God over a question that reaches back to the beginning of time: Who, exactly, should have power over creation?

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]]> A Tale of Two Pregnancies https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/10/a-tale-of-two-pregnancies https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/10/a-tale-of-two-pregnancies Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 -0400 Most people who believe abortion to be wrong believe it to be wrong intrinsically. By contrast, those who do not believe abortion to be wrong make a utilitarian deduction: A child at the wrong time can be a bad thing. Therefore, ending its life can be a good thing. A right to abortion, they believe, increases human happiness.

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]]> The Fury of the Fatherless https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/12/the-fury-of-the-fatherless https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/12/the-fury-of-the-fatherless Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -0500 The Trump administration’s recent designation of several American cities as “anarchic jurisdictions” may turn out to have been nothing more than a quixotic gambit in the supercharged run-up to November 3. But the fact that it was thinkable in the first place points to a truth beyond electoral politics: The frenzy that has been enacted in city after American city since May 2020 demands more scrutiny than it has yet received.

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]]> Six Rules for Pro-Life Radicals https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/02/six-rules-for-pro-life-radicals https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/02/six-rules-for-pro-life-radicals Thu, 20 Feb 2020 09:55:00 -0500 This essay is adapted from a speech delivered January 25, 2020, at the first annual meeting of The David Project, a new pro-life organization whose members represent every Ivy League campus.

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]]> Goodbye to “So What?” https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/10/goodbye-to-so-what https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/10/goodbye-to-so-what Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 -0400 The case for American nationalism is clear. The United States is the most diverse nation on earth. If we will not have a nation and its constitution, then we will have anarchy. If we will not have a nation and its constitution, we will have Hobbesian war, figuratively or literally.

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