Last week, a deranged malefactor was arrested at Occupy Wall Street for threatening to launch Molotov cocktails at Macy’s. It might have been a Macy’s Thanksgiving to forget. A much friendlier Occupy Wall Street offering comes from my Religious Left friend, Jim Wallis: It’s time to invite the Occupy Movement to church! And Thanksgiving … Read more
As we all learned in grammar school, we’re coming up on the day when we show our gratitude for all the blessings God has showered upon our country. If we had good teachers, we learned to think of more than just the natural resources and easily conquered lands, and more than a blandly defined “democracy.” … Read more
What if the whole purpose of the Constitution was to limit the government? What if Congress’ enumerated powers in the Constitution no longer limited Congress, but were actually used as justification to extend Congress’ authority over every realm of human life? What if the president, meant to be an equal to Congress, has become … Read more
People are sometimes confused by my accent. “Are you English?” they ask. Not with a name like mine! No indeed. I am a Yank through and through. I was brought up in Pennsylvania and went to college in South Carolina, but the English accent thing is because I overdosed on C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot … Read more
When I graduated from college in 1976, I got a job in Washington with the National Taxpayers Union, which was working to get a constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget. Someone graduating today could sign up there and pursue the same goal. The balanced-budget amendment has never gone away and never come … Read more
How will you spend your Thanksgiving Day this year? Sleep in because you have extra days off? Settle down to watch football? Pull up a chair at four o’clock to eat a huge feast? Make plans for Black Friday, plotting with the multitudes to storm the stores and “shop-until-you-drop?” Why not consider another tradition? The … Read more
The first reaction of visitors to my lovely parish church is generally one of bewilderment, as they anoint themselves with air after reaching out for a holy water font inside the door and coming up empty. No statues, either. No stations of the cross. No confessionals or Rosary group either, for that matter. The first … Read more
Thomas Edison invented the incandescent bulb, the phonograph, the DC motor and other items in everyday use and became wealthy by doing so. Thomas Watson founded IBM and became rich through his company’s contribution to the computation revolution. Lloyd Conover, while in the employ of Pfizer, created the antibiotic tetracycline. Though Edison, Watson, Conover … Read more
Alice in Wonderland was written by a professor who also wrote a book on symbolic logic. So it is not surprising that Alice encountered not only strange behavior in Wonderland, but also strange and illogical reasoning — of a sort too often found in the real world, and which a logician would be very … Read more
This article originally appeared in the April 2000 issue of Crisis Magazine. The “dialogue of love” between Rome and the Orthodox Churches that offered so much promise after nine centuries of ecclesial estrangement seems to be running out of breath as we enter the third Christian millennium. A dramatic breakthrough is needed to restore the … Read more
This past September, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, President of the USCCB, sent President Obama a letter that was long overdue. “I write with a growing sense of urgency about recent actions taken by your Administration that both escalate the threat to marriage and imperil the religious freedom of those who promote and defend marriage,” the archbishop … Read more
Supercommittee members Sen. Pat Toomey and Rep. Jeb Hensarling are taking flak from some conservatives for proposing a deal including increases in “revenues,” and a Washington Post reporter had some fun insinuating that they were backing a tax-rate increase. As this is written, no one knows what the supercommittee will do (or not do), … Read more
A barrage of news headlines on the Solyndra scandal continue to remind us that President Obama made green jobs one of his administration’s priorities. Those headlines also reveal this initiative to have been a costly mistake. The bankruptcy of Solyndra, the solar-panel manufacturer that has collapsed despite receiving half a billion dollars from the federal … Read more
He’s a responsible, well-spoken adult with a good record in office, a soothing style, bipartisan appeal and ample knowledge of the world beyond our shores. But Jon Huntsman, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, somehow imagines he can overcome those handicaps. He’s running at 2 percent in the polls, but working in his … Read more
In advance of Tinseltown’s parade of Christmas insensitivities — they’ve already unloaded the marijuana movie A Very Harold and Kumar 3-D Christmas — let us stipulate that it’s not just seasonal. The manufacturers of pop culture thrive on offending every traditional value. Start with Pamela Anderson, the ridiculously surgically enhanced former Playboy Playmate, home-movie … Read more
As Foreign Minister, and Viceroy of India before that, Lord Edward Halifax was the preferred choice of the Conservative Party and the King to succeed Chamberlain as Prime Minister, but he knew he was no match for Churchill and did not press his case. In this he showed an altruism which was commonly admired, notwithstanding … Read more
Republican voters’ esteem for Newt Gingrich has been rising fast. At this rate it might someday equal, though not surpass, his regard for himself. Gingrich is not a person with an ego. He’s an ego with a person. Just listen to his explanation of why it took him a while to catch on with voters: … Read more
“It’s the economy, stupid,” some dude named Carville once said. He was referring to what was the correct prescription for winning a presidential election — and it’s been gospel ever since. He’s probably right. Except when it comes to actually being president, it’s something else altogether. “It’s the foreign policy, stupid” — because day one … Read more
You know this story. Congress cannot get its act together, again. It is facing a government shutdown by this Saturday, again. It has retreated to secrecy, again. It seems redundant and ridiculous to say “here we go again,” and yet that’s what’s happening. Congress, which is charged and authorized by the Constitution to write the … Read more
The election of Barack Obama, we were told, would bring new respect and friendship for America in the world. No longer would we be led by a Texas cowboy ignorant of and indifferent to world opinion. Instead, we would have a visionary leader sympathetic to the governments and peoples of the world. But Obama’s best … Read more