The Democrats made some waves last week with their proposed “Paycheck Fairness” legislation, purportedly designed to ensure that men and women get equal pay for equal work. It was heartening to see this rhetoric mostly fall flat. When the Democrats tried to raise some emotion with the infamous “77 cents” statistic, even mainstream publications called … Read more
Joe Hargrave’s response in Crisis to my article “Presidential Power: A Rescuer, Not a Nemesis” was thoughtful, but contained certain problematical assertions. The first was his suggestion that my call for a new American Cincinnatus—an utterly virtuous, capable, and self-limiting leader who will exercise sweeping executive power in our critical current situation—is an “appeal to … Read more
After decades of well-documented dissent on many Catholic college campuses over Church teachings on abortion, contraception, and same sex marriage, a new front in the Catholic culture wars has opened on Catholic K-12 campuses as increasing numbers of gay and lesbian teachers and administrators at these schools are lobbying for the right to marry their … Read more
As any number of observers have pointed out, multiculturalism is the Trojan Horse by which militant Islam entered the West. The spread of the more extreme manifestations of Islam only became possible when the West capitulated to the doctrine that assimilation to Western values was no longer desirable and criticism of Islamic practices no longer … Read more
In a US News and World Report essay that has been widely denounced as incoherent, poorly researched, and bigoted, Jamie Stiehm recently reproached Justice Sonia Sotomayor for her “clear religious bias” in dropping “the ball on American women and girls” as she “undermined the new Affordable Care Act’s sensible policy on contraception.” The Justice did … Read more
Lent is a time of personal transformation, so it is a time of inwardness. It nonetheless has an outward-turning aspect. Man is social, and God is other than ourselves, so in addition to fasting to help us put our attachments in their place, Lent encourages prayer and almsgiving to increase our love of God and … Read more
According to Reporters Without Borders, the U.S. has dropped to 46th place in press freedom. The lowered ranking was based on the conviction of the WikiLeaks informant, the effort to punish NSA leaker Edward Snowden, and the Justice Department’s monitoring of reporters. Unmentioned by the report, however, is an equally serious cause for concern. Most … Read more
Many people who have followed the Justina Pelletier case—largely ignored by the mainstream media, by the way—have thought that there has to be more to it, or that it’s an outrageous out-of-the-ordinary affair. This is the case where the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families forcibly took custody from her parents over a year ago … Read more
In a recent column, I argued that Catholics should willingly lend political support to the Republican Party. The focus of that piece was on the contention that there is no particular principle on which the Republican Party and the Church are clearly and intractably at odds. For many serious Catholics, I suspect that that argument … Read more
Some leftwing activists say I run a hate group. They imply we are no better than the KKK or skin-head groups that want to blow up buildings and kill minorities. They want all Americans to be frightened of us. We should be kept off television and radio and stigmatized in all that we do and … Read more
So, the Obama Administration has decided not to deport the Romeike family after all. You may recall that the Romeikes are the Christian family from Germany that sought to homeschool their children in their homeland. The German government sent the equivalent of a SWAT team to “save” the Romeike children from the horrors of Christian … Read more
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday from opposing legal counsel on the HHS contraception mandate cases. The media consensus appears to be that the justices were hard on the mandate and appear likely to issue a narrow ruling exempting “closely-held” corporations, which both of the plaintiffs are, while leaving open the question of … Read more
I can recall a time when I disliked being referred to as “a Republican.” Although I have consistently voted Republican throughout my adult life, I preferred to stress to friends and relatives that I was a Catholic and a philosopher, but that I had no special loyalty to any political party. Evidently this attitude is … Read more
I am sometimes criticized for focusing too much on the Islamic threat to the West and not paying enough attention to the more immediate threat from the political left. One of the reasons I concentrate on the former is that the threat from the left is more obvious and is widely covered by numerous columnists … Read more
Each electoral cycle, nearly six out of every ten American Catholics cast the ghastly vote of the libertine. As such, one can only assume that the ideas and “lifestyles” emblazoned by these six out of ten votes follow faithfully (tongue firmly lodged in cheek!) upon such libertinism. Regarding the shameful demographic ordeal, the orthodox American … Read more
If you’ve never been to the annual New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade, better put it on your calendar for next year. That is, if there is a next year. Time could be running out on the world’s biggest celebration of all things Irish. Why? Because the parade’s organizers have for two decades steadfastly … Read more
There has been no coup, no abdication, no revolution. It is an event that has gone largely unnoticed. The media have hardly spoken about it. Yet it is a reality. The monarchy in Belgium is done with, over, kaput. The king of Belgium has turned himself out of his royal throne by signing a law … Read more
Yesterday, Crisis published a piece by Stephen M. Krason in which he argues that “the strong exertion of presidential power may be the best way after Obama to restore liberty and begin to mend the social fabric whose erosion has accelerated during his administration.” This appears to be part of an ongoing tendency, recently and … Read more
Conservative voices are railing against excessive presidential power in this Obama era of government by executive order to advance a destructive leftist political agenda. Their criticism is “spot-on,” but they need to consider that the strong exertion of presidential power may be the best way after Obama to restore liberty and begin to mend the … Read more
Among the many debates triggered throughout America by Obamacare, one concerns whether access to healthcare may be described as a “right.” Assuming such a right exists, a related issue is what this means for public policy. For Catholics, the answer to the first question seems clear. In a 2012 message to a conference for healthcare … Read more