Some twenty-three years ago, Ambassador Max Kampelman”former nuclear arms reduction negotiator with the Soviet Union and Counselor to the Department of State”decided that I needed a bit of diplomatic experience and invited me to be a public member of the U.S. delegation he would lead to the Copenhagen meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, in the summer of 1990… . Continue Reading »
Two issues back, I spoke ill of a modern form of natural law theory that unsuccessfully attempts to translate an ancient tradition of moral reasoning into the incompatible language of secular reason. Because of an obscurity I allowed to slip into the fourth paragraph, several readers imagined that I was speaking in propria persona from that point on, rather than on behalf of a disenchanted modern rambling among the weed-thronged ruins; and some were dismayed… . Continue Reading »
In 1986, Paul Simon took a look at the headlines full of pain and promise”stories about a boy in a bubble, bombs in baby carriages, ubiquitous cameras, and the ever-constant streams of information that engulf us”and wrote “Boy in the Bubble.” His lyrics, coupled with Zulu-pop-infused instrumentals recorded in South Africa, conveyed a jaunty optimism … Continue Reading »
The tedium of repeated déj vu in this sad little volume did at least send me back to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. It is as if a publisher came to Candida Moss, a professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Notre Dame, with a proposal for a quick buck, relying on the political twitter of the times: “You’re an expert: Reframe Gibbon’s notorious chapter on the Romans and the Christians with some contemporary scholarship and cultural fillips, and we can put out a nifty pamphlet that’ll sell.” … Continue Reading »
We are not suffering from significant threats to economic freedom and capitalism. Instead, our political challenges mostly flow from the triumph of capitalism. And American conservatism is in trouble because it can’t acknowledge much less respond to this fact. These are two admittedly sweeping claims, and Robert Miller thinks I’m mistaken about both… . Continue Reading »
In an episode from the first season of HBO’s series Girls, Hannah Horvath”played by the show’s creator and chief writer, Lena Dunham”is having sex with her occasional lover Adam when Adam does something odd. The description I am about to give will strike some as exceedingly graphic, but in fact I will exclude the more disturbing details… . Continue Reading »
Last week in this space R. R. Reno set out to challenge the foundational beliefs of economic conservatives. They must, he said, come to grasp what the postmodern left already sees: that current economic and regulatory conditions are such that market forces and the creative destruction inherent in capitalist economies will produce significant economic inequality as well as serious hardships … Continue Reading »
We are becoming a society in which “choice” and self-defined identities trump once-common values and traditional beliefs. But contrary to the rhetoric of its defenders, this shift is not a simple advance for freedom. The privileging of “choice” above all else in fact requires re-engineering the human person and society as a whole, and this will inevitably involve a great deal of coercion… . Continue Reading »
Thirty-four. That is the percentage of 2012 voters who, according to exit polls, believed Mitt Romney’s policies would primarily benefit the middle class. Fifty-three percent responded that Romney’s policies would primarily favor the wealthy. Things, though, are in danger of getting worse for Republicans. … Continue Reading »
There are only a few lingering pink and red “marriage equality” profile pictures in my Facebook newsfeed. The magnitude of that campaign, however, was enormous. Approximately 2.7 million more Facebook users updated their profile pictures on Tuesday, March 26, than on the previous Tuesday… . Continue Reading »
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