Culture
We frequently hear phrases like “the government should do something about that.” Do any of us really know what that phrase truly means? Moreover, do any of us really think the government is capable of doing something constructive about the numerous challenges across a society? (If so, why do most government programs fail to meet…
Shortly after 2:00 p.m. today, I’ll be discussing Israel’s recent euthanasia law with Howie Barte on WHJJ, 920 on the AM radio dial.
Andrew points out that Guy Dufault’s so-called apology to Governor Carcieri wasn’t really an apology. As the Governor himself said, “[Dufault] only apologized for inadvertently allowing his plans to smear me and my family to become public.” Yesterday also brought us Philadelphia Eagle wide receiver Terrell Owens’ “apology statement:” I fight for what I think…
Blogs are a marker of a new elite. More accurately, they represent one area in which the ways society works around elite structures must be reconceived. That’s the central theme with which I approached the annual professional development seminar of the Legislative Information and Communications Staff Section (LINCS) of the National Conference of State Legislatures…
David Wilcox and Nance Pettit’s new CD, Out Beyond Ideas, puts to music mystic poetry from multiple religious traditions. My review, of sorts, suggests that they’ve uncovered and enhanced commonalities that underlie human societies, and that conservatives should look past the too-obvious backstory of the project to commonalities that ought to underlie our own.
My latest FactIs column, “When Plan B Becomes Plan A,” suggests that something is awry when a drug that requires a prescription for low concentrations is on track for over-the-counter status in higher concentrations. Of course, Plan B is a “birth control” pill; such does sex — and the consequences thereof — skew Western minds.
This posting continues a conversation begun with the previous posting entitled Religious Without Being Morally Serious Vs. Morally Serious Without Being Religious. Rather than the canard of there being some remnant trying to establish a theocracy in America, I would suggest there is a different dynamic going on. The culture war led by the secular…
It’s saddening to admit that I finished reading Minette Marrin’s “Confronted with our own decadence,” in the London Times, with a mordant smirk. I recall, just about four years ago, having the very thought with which she ends: Despite all this, I do, now for the first time, feel a faint glimmer of optimism. One…
“Breaking the Glass Taboo,” my latest column for TheFactIs.org, responds to Providence Journal editorialist M.J. Anderson’s nostalgia for the days of the Baby Boomers’ youth and to recent research finding that removing men from the home can be part of a recipe for creating “exceptional” boys. I didn’t go into this in my column, but…
My latest column for TheFactIs.org — “Reasoning with the Id” — responds to a recent piece by Lee Harris. To summarize too drastically, Harris seeks to find a place for tradition in a world of reason. Me, I think is more accurate to stress that rationality already exists in a world of tradition.