I don’t think many would dispute that Philip Rieff was one of the most perceptive and creative intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century. His justly famous 1959 Freud: The Mind of the Moralist has never gone out of print, and rightly so, because it remains the definitive . . . . Continue Reading »
Sooner or later, every teacher hears the same old joke about the philosophy student and his dad. The dad asks, “Son, what are you going to do with that goofy degree?” And the son says, “I’m going to open a philosophy shop and make big money selling ideas.” I smile every time I hear it, . . . . Continue Reading »
On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first black man to play major-league baseball, as the Dodgers beat the Boston Braves 5-3 over in Brooklyn. The sixtieth anniversary of that event was a little over a week ago, when fitting commemorations were held in ballparks across the continent.We . . . . Continue Reading »
I’m not convinced that this week’s Supreme Court decision on partial-birth abortion is as good as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says it is , but I certainly hope she is right. She says it is alarming; it reflects manifest hostility to the unlimited abortion license imposed by Roe ; it . . . . Continue Reading »
We will, I imagine, be talking about the Supreme Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart for a long time: sorting out the implications, reading the tea leaves, following the press coverage. Earlier today Michael Uhlmann did a nice job , here on the First Things website, of placing the . . . . Continue Reading »
Concerning yesterday’s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart , a few preliminary observations based on a very quick reading:The Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence remains a singular embarrassment. That fact is well known by, and infuriating to, Roe ‘s sophisticated supporters and . . . . Continue Reading »
Another month, another issue of First Things . Just a typical production of the magazine¯this and that, jammed together randomly in the vain hope that some lucky synergy will make it all work. I’m fairly sure none of it is worth your time.Well, except maybe for R.R. Reno’s essay, . . . . Continue Reading »
Should doctors or others be permitted to euthanize babies born with disabilities or assist the suicides of suffering people who want to die? During the first forty years of the twentieth century, fueled by the eugenics movement, the question was very much on the table. Then the Holocaust, in which . . . . Continue Reading »
The spectacle of Don Imus prostrating himself before the Rev. Al Sharpton, as if he were the Holy Roman Emperor on bent knee to the pope, should have pleased me. A few years back, Imus hazed me on his program for weeks after I objected during an interview to a segment he’d just aired . . . . Continue Reading »
Wow. We didn’t know. The “Hallelujah Chorus” is a paean celebrating Titus’ sack of Jerusalem and the Christian’s God’s bloody vengeance upon the Jews. That was the New York Times’ Easter Sunday gift to its readers , courtesy of Swarthmore professor Michael . . . . Continue Reading »
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