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Broken Family, Broken Country

My Father Left Me Ireland:  An American Son’s Search For Home by michael brendan dougherty sentinel, 223 pages, $24 Irish artists face a problem unknown to artists in, let us say, uninterrupted nations. It is possible for things, places, people to be “too Irish”—the gist of a note I . . . . Continue Reading »

Love, and Be Silent

Regretting Motherhood:  A Study by orna donath north atlantic, 272 pages, $15.95 In March, a self-help author tweeted that whereas he once intended to have many children, now, after putting in a few years on his first, he had decided that one was enough, and more than enough, and if he had it . . . . Continue Reading »

I’ll Have Consequences

Not too many years ago, I knew a little boy who was prone to temper tantrums that included yelling, kicking, and hitting. He wasn’t entirely to blame for this, having had a rough start in life. Nevertheless, that sort of behavior couldn’t just be excused, and, of course, if uncorrected it would . . . . Continue Reading »

Common Good Conservatism

Countless commentators have observed that the public square is polarized. Political speech has become barbed. The once sober mainstream media are often shrill. It’s a sure sign of the times that people on both left and right feel under assault. Religious Americans worry that, if given a chance, . . . . Continue Reading »

Reclaiming the Household

The decline of the family has roots in the demise of the household. While the two realities are intimately connected, they are not identical. The household is a social form, a domestic community; the family, too, is a social unit, but it shades into the purely biological fact of consanguinity. . . . . Continue Reading »

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