In her short stories Flannery O’Connor presents many religious people who attend church and consider themselves moral and principled, but their religion does not inspire their daily life and govern their human relationships. While they strive to make favorable impressions and distinguish themselves by their manners and morals, their congeniality and propriety do not amount … Read more
Is the social revolution approaching its Thermidor, the point at which its progress stops or reverses? It’s difficult to be optimistic, but recent developments raise the possibility. Until very recently, effective opposition to globalism, open borders, and lifestyle liberalism—that is, for traditional local ties over global markets, regulatory bureaucracies, and recent understandings of human rights—had … Read more
Out of the blue in the summer of 2014, I received an email from Steve Bannon asking if I ever published anyplace other than Crisis and would I be interested in writing for Breitbart. I knew Bannon’s name from a weekly conservative coalition that still meets in Washington DC. Bannon occasionally called in but never appeared … Read more
In an obscure article entitled “Catholics and Liberals: Decline of Détente,” in America magazine in 1974, the eminent Catholic scholar and historian James Hitchcock discussed a profound change that had occurred in American liberalism and argued that its new thinking put it increasingly at odds with Catholicism. Hitchcock was one of a number of writers … Read more
All great literature is well written, but not all that is well written is great literature. In other words, there are many books which are good but not great—and many of these are worth reading for several reasons. Chief among these is that reading is enriching even when it is entertaining, and recreational reading should … Read more
“If a pope were only ever applauded, he would have to ask himself whether or not he was doing things right.” ∼ Benedict XVI, Last Testament, 2016. “The bishops (at Vatican II) wanted to renew the faith, to deepen it. However, other forces were working with increasing strength, particularly journalists, who interpreted many things in a … Read more
In “That perfection of the Intellect,” wrote the lucid John Henry Newman in The Idea of a University, and its beau ideal, to be imparted to individuals in their respective measures, is the clear, calm, accurate vision and comprehension of all things, as far as the finite mind can embrace them, each in its place, and with … Read more
Publishing scion Al Regnery told a story last night about how the hoi polloi out on the campaign hustings appreciated the fact that Donald Trump always dressed to the nines. Always perfectly turned out, business suit, dress shirt, shined shoes, perfectly knotted four-in-hand tie, the working man appreciated Trump’s authenticity. One man said, “This is … Read more
As the Great Wall of Chinese communism begins to show signs of crumbling into a long overdue dilapidation, a billion people will be readier than they have ever been to hear the Good News of Christ. At the same time they will meet the immense force of the anti-evangelist, the advertiser, the marketer of western … Read more
While the words “Divine Comedy” naturally recall Dante’s classic poem in which the poet descends to the underworld of the Inferno, ascends Mount Purgatory, and rises to the heavenly Paradise, the phrase also applies to Shakespeare’s tragi-comedies (The Tempest, Cymbeline, Pericles, and The Winter’s Tale) that begin with a sudden fall from high to low … Read more
One of the many reasons I am grateful Crisis is not a blog and that, with the exception of a few months at First Things, I have never blogged, is that columnists have editors who have many functions, chief among them as a kind of safety valve of the id. Editors catch mistakes certainly, but … Read more
“The point of transhumanism is to achieve what Marx promised at history’s end not through political revolution, but through technological manipulation.” ∼ Peter Augustine Lawler, American Heresies and Higher Education (2016) From the perspective of a professor at a small, but excellent private Christian college in North Georgia, Peter Augustine Lawler somehow manages to see the … Read more
Everyone agrees that public discussion has become divorced from reality. On the hard left people talk about capitalist propaganda, while the soft left, including most respectable journalists, complains about conspiracy theories, truthiness, fake news, and the post-truth era. At the same time, conservatives protest media omissions, distortions, falsehoods, and narratives, while the far right grabs … Read more
In the recent presidential campaign we observed the strongly critical reaction of business and economic commentators, surely representing the views of many corporate leaders, to President-elect Donald Trump’s tough talk on trade and especially his zeroing in on China. In the last couple of years, we have witnessed the willingness of many big companies to … Read more
One Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it … Read more
This week the brave African delegations to the UN fought a rear-guard action to stop a new UN office that will seek out and punish any country or institution that does not bend to the will of the dominant LGBT ethos. This months-long fight began at the Human Rights Council in Geneva and it was … Read more
Two “diversity consultants” recently visited my college to instruct the administrators about, among other things, the harm of assuming what is now called “heteronormativity.” “Have you not read,” says the Lord to the Pharisees who had wanted to catch him saying something erroneous about divorce, “that in the beginning God made them male and female? … Read more
Anyone coming upon Dietrich von Hildebrand’s Liturgy and Personality (Hildebrand Press), who thinks it will be a manual on how to imbue the liturgy with one’s personality, or how not to do so, is in for a surprise, unsettling and salutary. The work is in the first instance metaphysical: we cannot discuss the relationship between … Read more
I noted recently that educated and well-placed people today tend toward a stripped-down view of man and society that redefines family, religious, and communal ties as private preferences, thereby erasing their public importance. The effect is to promote exclusive reliance on the social authority of bureaucratic and commercial arrangements. The existence and sentimentalization of non-binding private … Read more
As Donald Trump begins to staff his administration, his appointees should understand how deeply the ideologically-driven LGBTs have burrowed into permanent jobs in the permanent bureaucracy and how dangerous they are. The new political appointees should also understand how this group and their allies have driven those who may disagree with their agenda either underground … Read more