Across the nation the school year is starting, and on university campuses 18-year-olds are moving into their dormitories and starting their freshmen orientation. Many are apprehensive. Their parents are probably more so. Among the questions on the minds of their parents especially: are the intellects of the Ivory Tower going to undermine their children’s faith? … Read more
Taking offense certifies the modern man as one who cares. If we take offense on behalf of another, we can number ourselves among the sensitive and loving. If we take offense personally, we can brandish a stop sign declaring to all that the offense must cease. In either case, the offending words must stop and … Read more
U.S. government officials were caught off guard by the recent rapid rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria and its plan to establish a sharia-ruled caliphate state. Either they weren’t getting enough intelligence from their agents in the field, or else they lacked the framework for processing the information. Since the American Embassy in Baghdad … Read more
“Do not try to teach a pig how to sing.” That was a piece of advice given to me when I was a young man, by a witty and cavalier drag queen, someone who never had the benefit of reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The closest thing to intellectualism in our lives, circa 1991, was … Read more
Dr. Strangelove is one of the funniest films ever made. Produced in 1964 at the height of the Cold War, the story concerns a rogue right-wing Air Force general who orders a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union and the frantic efforts by the president and his advisers to recall the bombers before it’s too … Read more
In the summer of 2012, Michele Bachmann and four other House members sent a letter to the Inspector-Generals of key government agencies asking them to open an investigation into possible Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government. The letter to the Department of State specifically raised concerns over Huma Abedin, then-Deputy Chief of Staff and … Read more
In a recent case in North Carolina, a sweet faced and intellectually accomplished nun came to a Catholic high school to address the students about human sexuality. We don’t have the text of sister’s talk, but from the outrage expressed she not only criticized homosexual actions, but was down on divorce and sexual sin. The … Read more
The number of subjects we cannot talk about in public discourse are rapidly multiplying. The older notion of “free speech” as a search for the truth through reasonable argument is being replaced. We no longer want to hear speech if it “offends” someone’s feelings or self-defined identity. We would rather “just get along” than to … 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
The Sum of All Fears is a 2002 thriller based on the Tom Clancy novel of the same name. In the book, Islamic terrorists detonate a nuclear bomb in Denver at the Super Bowl. In the movie, the terrorists are transformed into white supremacist neo-Nazis. The recently released film Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit depicts a … Read more
More than twenty-five years ago, in The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom pointed out that college students in the United States had become very “nice.” Students in general did not want to offend anyone and there was a constant concern to protect one another’s feelings. Bloom meant this as a half-hearted, even backhanded … Read more
Diversity is a modern shibboleth. It has long become the secular creed of the United States, and in no area is it celebrated as religiously as in academia, mostly as a substitute for true religion. It has now finally invaded universities that by name are still Catholic. Under the pretext of diversity, proponents engage in … Read more
The Montagues and Capulets placed great store in their brand names, even to the point of stabbing one another, but the Capulet girl was a wistful voice: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.” Move from Verona across a few centuries to the … Read more
To follow the news today is to get the impression that public life, in the sense of rational discussion oriented toward some reasonable understanding of the common good, has come to an end. Everyone notices the partisanship, the bad faith, the indifference to truth, and the substitution of entertainment for hard news. Catholics in particular … Read more
I’ve always hesitated to comment on the state of our military culture. I’ve never served and, for a variety of reasons, seriously doubt I ever will be (or ever would have been) called upon to enter combat. But over the years I’ve come to know a number of military families reasonably well, and to respect … Read more
It was Victoria Day in Canada and the Toronto Blue Jays were hosting the Rays of Tampa Bay. The word “hosting,” however, hardly applied to the treatment that one Yunel Escobar, the Rays shortstop, received, who was lustfully booed each time he came to the plate. When he homered in the 9th inning, he was … Read more
The liberationist philosophy underpinning Obama’s co-ed, gay-friendly military holds, on the one hand, that sexuality is inherently fixed and thus beyond the control of individuals, and on the other that sexuality is subject to re-shaping “through changes in culture.” The social engineers of the military promised that age-old problems between men and women thrown together … Read more