Do religious belief and practice affect the happiness of Europeans? In the first part of this two-part article, to answer our question we focused on the European Values Study. In this second part we deal with results from the European Social Survey. For an empirical analysis of the effect of religion on happiness, we use … Read more
The Rev. John Becker, S.J., sat at the front of the classroom, paperback in hand, glasses pushed to the end of his nose. As he spoke, he looked intently from one student to another. “This semester, I am going to teach you how to read King Lear,” he said. “It may be Shakespeare’s most … Read more
Washington gridlock may turn out to be the salvation of the Obama administration. Not only does gridlock allow the president to blame Republicans for not solving the financial crisis that his own runaway spending created, the inability to carry out as much government intervention in the economy as when the Democrats controlled both Houses … Read more
This essay is excerpted from The Bad Catholic’s Guide to Good Living (2005), which remains an excellent Christmas gift (hint, hint). If you think Mexican politics are raucous now, you should have been there in the 16th century. Before the Spanish arrived, the warlike Aztec Empire based in Tenochtitlan held the neighboring nations in … Read more
It was somewhat of a surprise when George died despite his old age, for he had seemed to live through everything—much pestering from our younger dog, Wolfie; consuming way too much chocolate, candy, and paper towels; chewing on a poisonous tick collar; jumping out of a moving (quite fast) pickup truck after another dog; surviving … Read more
It was a week of risk-taking in the 2012 presidential race. Barack Obama, his job approval languishing in the low 40s, delivered a much heralded speech in Osawatomie, Kan., framing the choice between the parties in class-warfare terms. That’s a risky strategy. Democrats haven’t won a presidential election on class warfare since 1948, when … Read more
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has a new TV spot accusing President Obama of waging “war on religion.” It’s a reckless, overstated spot that exploits prejudice against gays while deliberately distorting major issues. But here’s the surprise: Perry has a point. The First Amendment forbids any law “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion. It’s a … Read more
In August 2008, as the world’s leaders gathered in Beijing for the Olympic games, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, hot-headed and erratic, made his gamble for greatness. It began with a stunning artillery barrage on Tskhinvali, capital of tiny South Ossetia, a province that had broken free of Tbilisi when Tbilisi broke free of Russia. … Read more
Fr. George Rutler of Crisis has a pithy way of saying it: “The three greatest blessings to mankind are Christianity, Penicillin, and the British Empire.” For teenage boys, who should already be well drilled in the tenets of Christianity, and might already have imbibed penicillin to deal with the odd ear infection or two, … Read more
The Avro York LV 633 “Ascalon” was an air transport developed in 1942, somewhat bulky in appearance with wings mounted high in the fuselage. It was Churchill’s favorite flight model, with enough space for a conference room. The name “Ascalon” was the traditional name for the lance used by St. George to slay the dragon, … Read more
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire. H.W. Crocker III. Regnery Publishing. $19.95. 327 pp. An American Catholic looks at the British Empire with some skepticism. The Empire brought with it unquestioned benefits, but its roots in the seventeenth-century are entwined with a deep hatred of Rome and the Catholic heritage of the … Read more
I’m always wary of using an Albert Einstein quotation because it seems somehow sort of well, sophomoric. There’s always that poster of the German genius with the googly eyes and goofy hair sticking out his tongue. Nevertheless, Einstein came up with some good ones about God not playing dice, and science being lame without religion … Read more
Someday, when today’s adults are old and gray, their grandchildren will sit down and ask, “What did you do in the class war?” You may not have noticed, but it seems we are in the midst of one. On this point, Republican candidates and officeholders are in agreement. Newt Gingrich accuses President Barack Obama … Read more
Has Barack Obama’s Democratic Party given up on winning the votes of the white working class? Thomas Edsall, the longtime Washington Post reporter now with The Huffington Post, thinks so. Surveying the plans of Democratic strategists, Edsall wrote in The New York Times on Nov. 28 that “all pretense of trying to win a … Read more
Time magazine didn’t mind ruffling feathers in religious America with a cover this summer that asked “Is Hell Dead?” Never mind that America is overwhelmingly Christian. Then Time found only one letter worth plucking out to feature in large, bold type from a man in Dallas: “Hell is easy to define. It would be … Read more
About a month ago this tragic story from China surfaced in the Western media (the UK’s Guardian). It’s a terribly sad story about a mother, Ma Jihong, who died on an operating table in Lijin, Shandong province, when she was forced by state officials to have a late-term abortion. Why were they forcing her to … Read more
On Dec. 8, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt took the rostrum before a joint session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war on Japan. A day earlier, at dawn, carrier-based Japanese aircraft had launched a sneak attack devastating the U.S. battle fleet at Pearl Harbor. Said ex-President Herbert Hoover, Republican statesman of the day, “We … Read more
“Socrates understood … that a reform cannot be achieved by a well-intentioned leader who recruits his followers from the very people whose moral confusion is the cause of the disorder.” — Eric Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle Lately I’ve been wondering if there are any conservatives left in the GOP. The Republican label hangs loosely … Read more
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column titled “Free to Die” (9/15/2011), pointed out that back in 1980, his late fellow Nobel laureate Milton Friedman lent his voice to the nation’s shift to the political right in his famous 10-part TV series, Free To Choose. Nowadays, Krugman says, “‘free to … Read more
As active U.S. military involvement in Iraq draws to a close, what does the moral scorecard on this adventure look like from an American point of view? Granted that a comprehensive weighing of results will only be possible some years from now, at the moment the picture is something like this. In a perverse way, … Read more