Good and Evil in Zimbabwe

Millions went to the polls last Wednesday in the small Southern African nation of Zimbabwe in a general election that pits the incumbent, Robert Mugabe, against a divided opposition. Mugabe has held power since 1980, and, at 89, he shows no signs of yielding it. As David Coltart, member of the opposition and Minister of Education, Sport, and Culture, urged his supporters last Tuesday night… . Continue Reading »

Impure Thinkers

When the Dutch prince William of Orange took the English throne in 1688, he sparked a poetry war. Originally a supporter of William, the journalist John Tutchin became disenchanted and in “The Foreigners” attacked the Dutch as a people “void of Honesty and Grace, / A Boorish, rude, and an inhumane Race” and chided his countrymen for giving to such “excrement” a “Portion in the Promis’d Land, / Which immemorially has been decreed / To be the Birth-right of the Jewish [that is, English] Seed.” Daniel Defoe, a Whig supporter of the Revolution, responded with a poem of his own … Continue Reading »

Reform FOIA

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests are a new front in the struggle for religious liberty. The requests, by which citizens can obtain copies of public documents, have already been invoked by the Diocese of Pittsburgh to request “information … about how federal officials decided what contraceptive procedures and medications should be covered under the mandate.” Groups such as Cause of Action and the National Organization for Marriage have also filed FOIA requests concerning IRS targeting… . Continue Reading »

Educational Compulsions

A Utah state senator, Aaron Osmond (10th District, Jordan), has proposed eliminating compulsory public school education. He is a member of the senate’s education appropriations committee. Critics suggest”among other things”that he is out to reduce the billions of taxpayer dollars required for public education. (He is also a nephew of Marie and Donnie Osmond, but that is unrelated to his political life in service to furthering Utah education endeavors.) In any case, we should look at his idea. Sen. Osmond complains that compulsory education… Continue Reading »

Solzhenitsyn and the Russian Renaissance

In the early spring of 1953, a sickly Russian novelist, “covered with ice, out of the dark and the cold,” staggered forth from the Soviet Gulag, the constellation of Communist prison camps that stretched from Siberia to South Asia. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, ill with cancer, had once been a proponent of the system that condemned him to forced labor. Now he saw his nation’s “deep suffering,” like his own, as redemptive… . Continue Reading »

Population Planners’ Bad Math

Abortion advocates and population planners eagerly promote the idea that preventing births saves money. To the contrary and as was already demonstrated in a recent First Things article, the birth of anyone, poor or not, will yield substantial economic benefit. Specifically, in Texas the $11,000 Medicaid-birth cost will on average return $430,000, or thirty-nine times the investment… Continue Reading »

No Squishy Love

In his 1934 book, The Kingdom of God in America, H. Richard Niebuhr depicted the creed of liberal Protestant theology, which was called “modernism” in those days, in these famous words: “A God without wrath brought man without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” Niebuhr was no fundamentalist… Continue Reading »

In the World But Not of It

The Catholic Church betrays Christ’s call to love; “Its leadership works though domination, control, and punishment.” So wrote Fr. Bert Thielen, S.J., in a long letter explaining his decision to renounce the priesthood and return to the lay state of life. His letter saddened me. It was Bert who received me into the Catholic Church… Continue Reading»