What went wrong with Alice Walker’s new book, her first novel in six years? By the Light of My Father’s Smile (Random House) should have been well-received by our literary elite. For one thing, it celebrates liberated female sexuality, especially lesbian sexuality. And it is multiracial to . . . . Continue Reading »
When the Pope visited the United States last fall, the media indulged in a predictably frenzied examination of the general state of “crisis” in the American Catholic Church. Oddly, though, few reporters devoted space to what only a few years previously would have been described as the . . . . Continue Reading »
Freudian Fraud: The Malignant Effect of Freud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture by E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. HarperCollins, 362 pages, $25 This book has its flaws, especially with regard to Freudian thought, but its contributions to our understanding of how Freudian concepts were used to . . . . Continue Reading »
Civilization, it has been observed, depends upon obedience to the unenforceable. Similarly, it depends upon the observance of the unexamined. The Lutheran ethicist Gilbert Meilaender once wrote a brilliant essay titled “The Examined Life Is Not Worth Living” (in The Theory and Practice of . . . . Continue Reading »
Eighty-one years ago, G. K. Chesterton wrote a book entitled What’s Wrong with the World. His answer to that question was that, while there is general agreement as to what is wrong with the world, the real problem is that we cannot agree on what would be right. This absence of public . . . . Continue Reading »
Almost every entry in the index to this book is a prime-time show. Among the very many: “Amos ‘n Andy,” “Barnaby Jones,” “The Cosby Show,” “Dallas,” “Empire,” “Falcon Crest,” “Gunsmoke,” “Hill Street Blues,” “I Love Lucy,” “Kate and Allie,” “Marcus Welby, . . . . Continue Reading »
It may just have been a throwaway line, a presumed witticism, to which he gave little thought; in which case he is convicted merely of intellectual sloppiness. But it may also have been seriously meant, a revelation of his considered judgment; in which case he offers us a window into the blindness . . . . Continue Reading »
There are numerous obstacles to making the connections between religion and public life. For some moderns, a quasi-religious commitment to secularism produces an overt hostility to religion in all its manifestations. For many others, religion is self-evidently a purely private phenomenon. In that . . . . Continue Reading »
Readers whose minds have not been numbed by all the media-generated sensations since then may be able to recall that back in the first part of November the nation was reportedly held in thrall by Magic Johnson’s announcement that he had the AIDS virus. More than one television anchor solemnly . . . . Continue Reading »
Leon R. Kass examines the nature and purpose of human . . . . Continue Reading »
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