On Tuesday evening, I had the honor of attending the State of the Union address as the guest of Congressman Mike Kelly (PA-03). Here are my impressions in abbreviated form. The address seemed more like a rewrite of previous speeches than an original work. Sure, there were new anecdotes and fresh twists on old policy … Read more
Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive World History by Robert Royal, Crossroad Publishing Company, 2000, 430 pages, $20.00 This review originally appeared in the October 2000 edition of Crisis Magazine. In his encyclical Tertio Millenio Adveniente, preparing for the Jubilee Year 2000, Pope John Paul II stated: “At the end of … Read more
This is the last of Fr. Rutler’s columns on World War II. In future weeks, look forward to excerpts from his classic A Crisis of Saints, and short pastor’s reflections from his weekly bulletin at Our Saviour’s Church in the Holy City. June of 1943 marked a new high point in the war between … Read more
U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, Obama’s man in Moscow, who just took up his post, has received a rude reception. And understandably so. In 1992, McFaul was the representative in Russia of the National Democratic Institute, a U.S. government-funded agency whose mission is to promote democracy abroad. The NDI has been tied to color-coded or … Read more
Following the passage of the same-sex marriage bill in Queensland despite probable public opposition to it, and the widespread publicity given to the change in the Australian Labor Party policy on marriage, the task of arguing against same sex marriage is more urgent in Australia and other countries of the world than ever before. A … Read more
This may be the golden age of presumptuous ignorance. The most recent demonstrations of that are the Occupy Wall Street mobs. It is doubtful how many of these semi-literate sloganizers could tell the difference between a stock and a bond. Yet there they are, mouthing off about Wall Street on television, cheered on by … Read more
Remember when Don Imus saw his cushy CBS Radio and MSNBC career go up in smoke in 2007 when he tried very early one morning to make one of his fake misanthropic jokes about the Rutgers women’s basketball team being “nappy-headed hoes”? Black activists demanded his firing. Advertisers fled. The corporate suits, appalled and … Read more
According to Aristotle, the nature of investigation and the proofs we assert depend upon the object. That is, we do not look for mathematical demonstration when the object of our study is not a mathematical object. It is even a reduction to dissolve a simple inanimate thing, like a quartz crystal, into a mathematical model, … Read more
This article originally appeared in the March 1996 edition of Crisis Magazine. Science is mankind’s great success story since the Renaissance. Only the most obdurate Luddite can regret the computer chip, the Hubble telescope, and the heart bypass. But these material triumphs have come at a philosophical cost. The scientific method has been so successful … Read more
The rapid development and expansion of digital technology is unprecedented, and its full impact on peoples all across the globe has yet to be fully understood. That’s in part, of course, because the expansion is ongoing, and its limits are unknown. The barest facts confronting the historian are astonishing. Facebook, for example, launched in 2004, … Read more
Did President Barack Obama’s appointment of Richard Cordray to be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without a Senate confirmation vote violate the Constitution? The answer is plainly yes. Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution says the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall … Read more
Last week marked the 39th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that permitted abortions. Prior to that case, abortion was regulated by each state, and most of them prohibited it unless two physicians could certify that the baby growing in the mother’s womb would likely result in the death of … Read more
You know politicians are serious when they move from campaigning to governing. Something like that may be happening on the Republican campaign trail — but, unfortunately, not at the Obama White House. Campaigning clearly carried the day for Newt Gingrich in South Carolina, where he beat Mitt Romney by a 40 percent to 28 … Read more
Barack Obama, the law professor who railed against the Bush administration’s disdain for privacy, has been to civil liberties what the Hindenburg was to air travel: an unexpected debacle. Time after time, he has chosen to uphold government power at the expense of individual protections. Warrantless wiretapping in national security cases? For it. Detaining … Read more
Larry Sand’s article “No Wonder Johnny (Still) Can’t Read” — written for The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, based in Raleigh, N.C. — blames schools of education for the decline in America’s education. Education professors drum into students that they should not “drill and kill” or be the “sage on the … Read more
Hungary made front page in the newspapers of the world only a few times during its post-World War II history: in 1956 when its anti-Communist uprising was shattered by Soviet tanks, in 1971 when Cardinal Mindszenty was allowed to leave the country by Communist authorities, and in 1989 when Hungary contributed to the collapse of … Read more
The Hebrew Bible is not for the squeamish. And its harshest maledictions are called down upon those who practiced the abomination of child-sacrifice. Thus the Psalmist: They sacrificed their sons and daughters to the demons/they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and … Read more
Among America’s amazing pantheon of founders, Patrick Henry stands out for his stirring speeches and fervent commitment to liberty, virtue, and small government. The Virginia planter, lawyer, and politician strongly denounced Great Britain’s political and economic control of the American colonies and played a leading role in the movement for independence. More controversially, Henry’s love … Read more
The Brian Williams MSNBC debate in Florida was not only dreadfully boring — I never thought I could ever long for commercials — it was pathetic. Freed of the fear of triggering an avalanche of applause against loaded questions, Williams and his co-moderators couldn’t bring themselves to utter one single question asking the Republican … Read more
One South Carolina Republican woman said she craved to see a “bulldog” at the top of the GOP ticket. That would describe Newton Leroy Gingrich all right. The next follow-up question went un-posed: Do you want a bulldog heading up the executive branch of government, and if you do, to what end? — so … Read more