Writing on the Web good not is. Too fast, it move. Too quick, it change. And telegraphed its punches are.Of course, that’s the nature of the beast. Be angry at the sun for setting if these things anger you. Every morning, I read the newspaper editorials linked on Real Clear Politics , the . . . . Continue Reading »
In May 1982, the Russian Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn took time off from his work on The Red Wheel , his magisterial literary-historical account of the origins of the Bolshevik Revolution, to respond to his detractors in the Russian émigré community. He had some able and . . . . Continue Reading »
U2 rock star and humanitarian Bono has come in for some recent criticism. According to Advertising Age (registration required), his (RED) campaign has spent upward of $100 million on advertising to produce a mere $18 million for the Global Fund to support African AIDS programs.A little more than a . . . . Continue Reading »
Talk about "criminalizing political differences" is again rife in the wake of the conviction of Scooter Libby. I very much wish it were not so, but the phrase is all too accurate. Prosecutors bring one set of charges and, when they don’t hold up, then actually prosecute . . . . Continue Reading »
In a recent essay in the Times Literary Supplement , Steven Weinberg suggested that the reason the West has so far outstripped the Islamic world in scientific knowledge is "religious certitude." In the West, the decline of religion has freed science to move forward at an astonishing pace. . . . . Continue Reading »
I got a letter, a signed letter, from Senator Barack Obama the other day¯me and several million other Americans. He’s running for president, you see, and he wants my support in helping him change the political landscape. What concerns people, it seems, is not the "magnitude of our . . . . Continue Reading »
The audience was shocked. Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize¯winning reporter, delivered a Princeton University lecture on the religious right so appalling that even his supporters were embarrassed. One university administrator apologized that Hedges was "so reductionist and offensive," . . . . Continue Reading »
In the next few days (March 19), Harvard theologian Harvey Cox will be celebrating his seventy-eighth birthday. Since I’m pressing right behind him, this seemed like a good time to express my gratitude for many kindnesses of his so many years ago—for so many stimulating conversations and . . . . Continue Reading »
I see that Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali has made it to the bestseller lists. Hirsi Ali, it will be recalled, is the Muslim from Somalia who sought refuge in the Netherlands and took up the cudgels against Jihadism, and indeed against Islam, which she believes is inseparable from Jihadism. As a . . . . Continue Reading »
David Brooks once offered an explanation for an editorial job he held¯one of those jobs where you arrive in the morning to find twenty faxes, fifty phone messages, and a hundred emails already waiting for you. It was, he said, like camping beside a raging river. Every morning you pack up your . . . . Continue Reading »