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John Keegan, the eminent

John Keegan, the eminent historian of warfare, writes that the trial of Saddam Hussein poses difficult questions of law and morality. Saddam may be responsible, as seems to be the case, for as many as a million deaths. He ordered mass killings of Iraqis, and hundreds of thousands were killed in the . . . . Continue Reading »

The famously cool George Will…

The famously cool George Will goes unhinged in his Sunday tirade against the nomination of Harriet Miers. Among his wild and sweated swings against all who disagree with him, there is this: “Miers’s advocates tried the incense defense: Miers is pious. But that is irrelevant to her . . . . Continue Reading »

Recriminations abound…

Recriminations abound. At Immaculate Conception down on First Avenue and 14th Street, where I say Mass regularly, I was this morning required to adjudicate a near-violent dispute between a young black man and an elderly Irish regular at daily Mass. Did or did not George Steinbrenner betray the . . . . Continue Reading »

“True enough, but…

“True enough, but he made the trains run on time.” We are all familiar with that defense of the dictatorial buffoonery of Benito Mussolini, who hardly belongs to the A Team of twentieth-century monsters such as Hitler and Stalin. As many scholars have since noted, he, in fact, did not . . . . Continue Reading »

“The Lion of Muenster,”…

“The Lion of Muenster,” Clemens August von Galen, was beatified at St. Peter’s on Sunday. Departing from the practice of John Paul the Great, Pope Benedict did not preside at the beatification ceremony but showed up at the end to hail the “heroic courage” of Cardinal . . . . Continue Reading »

In the current issue of the…

In the current issue of the Weekly Standard , Joseph Epstein has a scintillating analysis of the celebrity cult to which much of our society is in thrall. The article put me in mind of a lecture many years ago by Paul Tillich, a towering figure of the time, at the University of Chicago. In an . . . . Continue Reading »

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