In 2008 the Supreme Court of Connecticut decided that the provision of civil unions for same-sex couples violated the state constitution guaranteeing equality. Marriage, the majority opinion argued, is an institution with a long history. Unlike the recent legal invention of civil unions, it has a . . . . Continue Reading »
During its first century, environmentalism succeeded brilliantly. But beginning in the late 1960s, a subversive misanthropy began to gestate within environmentalism. Over the years, this anti-human contaminant leached into the environmental mainstream, to the point that it has become a prominent feature of the most prominent environmental cause of our time. Continue Reading »
On February 9, I had the pleasure of finally seeing one of my favorite bands for the first time—a progressive rock supergroup called Transatlantic. Because all of my friends are too respectable for such things, I made my journey to the concert alone. For a progressive rock supergroup, however, Transatlantic has an excellent pedigree: The band was founded in 1999 as a side project of four progressive rock musicians from America and Europe (hence the name Transatlantic): Neal Morse, then of Spock’s Beard; Mike Portnoy, then the drummer for Dream Theater; Roine Stolt, the lead guitarist of The Flower Kings; and Pete Trewevas, the bassist from Marillion. Continue Reading »
It is a bipartisan moment to be cherished. Rick Santorum called the President a snob for wanting everyone in America to go to college, and now Obama has come around to Santorum’s side. As the President said to a General Electric plant in Wisconsin this year: “I promise you, folks can . . . . Continue Reading »
Stephen Meredith’s “Looking for God in All the Wrong Places” in the February 2014 issue of First Things accuses Intelligent Design theory (ID) of being a variant of occasionalism, which he defines as the denial “that efficient causality occurs outside God.” . . . . Continue Reading »
Barack Obama’s Roanoke speech is most famous for his “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that, somebody else made that happen” remark, but, as Yuval Levin astutely mentioned at the time, it was not the most interesting or sinister part of the president’s . . . . Continue Reading »
The second season of Netflix’s House of Cards introduces a new aide for Vice President Frank Underwood, who seems to have a puppyish enthusiasm for intrigue. Seth Grayson, trying to prove his sneaky bona fides, applies for a job as press secretary by digging up damaging information on the . . . . Continue Reading »
When the Holy See signed the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, a friend knowledgeable in legal matters said, with considerable vehemence, that the Convention was a snare and a delusion that would eventually come back to bite the Vatican. The bite came earlier this month, in a . . . . Continue Reading »
The Industrial Revolution, as we know it, could have occurred five centuries earlier. While Europeans were living short, subsistence-level lives, the rest of the world was witnessing an explosion in technology and trade coming out of Ming China. Continue Reading »
When G.K. Chesterton died in 1936, his achievements were recognized the world over. Msgr. Ronald Knox called him “a prophet in an age of false prophets.” The New York Times described him as “the most exuberant personality in English literature.” George Bernard Shaw said he was “a man of colossal genius,” and Pope Pius XI hailed him as “a gifted defender of the Catholic Faith.” Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
