Mine was a circuitous route from philosophy to politics, and there are few recent events that better illustrate the difference between my origin and ultimate destination than the tragic event in Tucson last week. Already, the pundits are talking about the “post-Tucson climate” of politics going forward, one where “rancor” and “vitriol” should have no … Read more
Last week, New American reported on a recent study by the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) that shows there are now over two million children being home-schooled in the United States. Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, points out that thirty years ago, there were only about 20,000. Since there … Read more
This piece by Joe Carter at First Things prompted me to think about hillbillies. It cites some studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which found “that atheists and agnostics report anger toward God either in the past or anger focused on a hypothetical image of what they imagine God must be like.” … Read more
I have often cited Evelyn Waugh’s solution to living in socialist Britain. Life was possible there, he decided, only on the condition that he think of himself as a tourist. Was this ruse or realism? In a deep sense we are all tourists here, even when trodding the green, green grass of home. Travel is … Read more
No matter how far and how superlatively the folks at Pixar push the computerization envelope, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get over my obsession with hand-drawn animation. I can’t quite quantify/describe the difference, but I sure can “feel” it. Ryan Woodward’s “Thought of You” is the latest example over which I have … Read more
The Japanese are in the mist of a serious population decline, with one estimate claiming the citizenry shrank by 75,000 in 2009, an increase of almost 150% from the year prior. As the Japan Times noted in a 2010 editorial: The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research estimates that Japan’s population will dip … Read more
The New York Times‘ “Vows” section is usually the lightest part of the paper. The charming love stories, photos of beautiful gowns, and glimpses into happy celebrations never fail to lift the reader’s spirits. So it was with some surprise that I noticed one wedding announcement last month brought outrage in the comments section and … Read more
I don’t know if you’ve seen this story out of Queensland, Australia, but it’s about a 13-year-old hero named Jordan Rice. With flood waters about to wash them away, Jordan was stuck in a car with his mother and 10-year-old brother: Warren McErlean, a passerby who tried desperately to save the family when their white … Read more
Happy Friday! A few links to get the day started: It’s official: John Paul II will be beatified on May 1 this year, Divine Mercy Sunday. After an incident where the child of a lesbian couple was asked to withdraw from his Catholic school, the Archdiocese of Boston has issued a “no discrimination” policy in … Read more
On New Year’s Day, three Church of England bishops were received into the Catholic Church. John Broadhurst, Keith Newton, and Andrew Burnham were joined by two retired bishops, David Silk and Edwin Barnes. All five had been ministering to those Anglican clergy and people who had stood apart from the liberal innovations in the Anglican … Read more
The tension between art and faith in the work of a novelist who happens to be a Catholic is nothing new. But there is something deeply compelling about the working out of this tension in the stories of a Japanese novelist who was also a Catholic. Shusaku Endo, the much-decorated Japanese writer who died in … Read more
A Catholic diocese in Australia is trying something new in its school classrooms: meditation time for students. Something tells me that Zoe’s “Tiger Mom” wouldn’t approve: If children are over-stimulated we rob them of something precious: being allowed to “just be” where children discover their own inner sense of who they are. Hijacked by a … Read more
The miracle of a French nun’s recovery from Parkinsons through the intercession of Pope John Paul II has been confirmed by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Now it must be approved by a commission of bishops and cardinals before a date is set for beatification. But Catherine Pepinster at the Guardian wonders … Read more
From Tom Woods, Jr.’s introduction to ISI’s new book of essays, Back on the Road to Serfdom: The Resurgence of Statism: When we argue that the winds are blowing in the direction of an ever-larger role of the state in American life, we must be careful not to imply that prior to 2007-8 a broad … Read more
The U.S. Treasury announced on its website that, at year end, the national debt topped $14 trillion for the first time. This was an increase from $13 trillion on June 1, 2010, and $12 trillion at year end 2009. When the recession officially began in December 2007, U.S. debt to Gross Domestic Product was about … Read more
One of the things that has always fascinated me about “fly-on-the-wall-style” documentaries and their creators is the constant push and pull between their efforts to “just observe” and the unavoidable (and undeniable) impact a camera has on nearly every human being that has ever been the subject of a documentary film. (Exhibit A: the Maysles … Read more
The year 2011 was born with the mark of Cain. Last week, Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan‘s largest state, Punjab, was gunned down by his own bodyguard, as the rest of his handpicked guards looked on. His killer, a Muslim fanatic, was greeted with showers of rose petals thrown by lawyers, and the victim’s … Read more
Halfway through this Wall Street Journal article, I thought the author, Amy Chua, might be writing tongue-in-cheek. But the Yale Law professor and author isn’t joking. Titled “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” Chua compares the parenting styles of what she loosely calls “Chinese” mothers with that of “Western” mothers, arguing that the former produces the … Read more
Some discouraging news: After more than 20 years of a slow but steady decline in both the rate and number of abortions performed in the U.S., the Guttmacher Institute is reporting a slight increase in its latest survey. The increase was just 1%, to 19.6 abortions per 1,000 women of child-bearing age in 2008, from … Read more
Back in the 1980s, I was involved with a group that produced a booklet looking at the future of the Church in Britain. We were assured — and repeated, without really thinking about it very deeply — that the downward trend of baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and ordinations to the priesthood meant that there would be … Read more