Last month I noted that Catholics need settings in which they can lead a Catholic life among Catholics. For most of us, loving God and living as Christians take schooling and support, which we aren’t going to get from the world at large. That may be one reason the Apostle Paul’s letters focus more on … Read more
American political institutions give us all part of the responsibility for how we are governed. Catholics need to carry out that responsibility in accordance with their best understanding of man, society, and American political life. The Catholic understanding of man and society is reasonably well worked out, but the nature of American political life is … Read more
The left-leaning magazine The Nation has published a list of what it deems America’s all-time, most influential progressives. The list, which you can review for yourself, is very revealing. For starters, it’s fascinating that The Nation leads with Eugene Debs at number 1. Debs was a socialist. It was 100 years ago this year, in … Read more
America anxiously awaits the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare. At the core of the decision is a simple question: Is the “individual mandate” in Obamacare constitutional? And thus, is Obamacare constitutional? Several times during the debate and deliberation, my mind harkened back to the words of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Remarking on … Read more
My colleague, Paul Kengor, wrote a brilliant article this week saying that Team Obama will try to cast the presidential election either in terms of class warfare—if Romney is the Republican nominee—or a battle over social issues, if Santorum gets the nod. If it’s Romney, the president’s team will have home field advantage. If it’s … Read more
When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney casually estimated that his effective tax rate is around 15 percent, progressives immediately pounced on the issue. To this ideological minority with its Ahab-like obsession on class warfare, a rich American paying an effective tax rate of “only” 15 percent is, a priori, a scandal of the first order. … Read more
The following review originally appeared in the March 2000 edition of Crisis Magazine. The Reform of the Papacy: The Costly Call to Christian Unity John R. Quinn, The Crossroad Publishing Company, 189 pages, $18.00. The new year brought ugly news from Beijing. Chilling what had begun to look like a thaw in Vatican-China relations, the … Read more
Disappointment has been a common reaction from “progressive” sources inside and outside Germany in response to Pope Benedict’s September visit to his homeland. These disappointed progressives say they hoped Benedict would speak a good word for changes that they want in the Church, and he didn’t. Here, then, was an opportunity lost. “A number of … Read more
With another presidential election looming, it won’t be long before many self-described progressive Catholics start issuing countless statements about numerous policy issues. Though many such Catholics sit rather loosely with Catholic teaching on questions like life and marriage, their “relaxed” position on such issues is belied by their stridency on, for instance, economic matters. Woe … Read more
Two books that should top any reading list for progressives who believe in “winning the future” by waging war against its current inhabitants are H. G. Wells’ classic The Time Machine and Nassim Nicholas Taleb’sThe Black Swan. The former’s narrative has entered the culture, especially through a film version that appeared in 1960, starring Rod … Read more
The Spectator just had this shitpile: “We’re going to have a public option,” Reid said. “It’s just a question of when.” Reid’s general comments reflected the same overall message to progressives that President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered earlier today. It essentially boils down to: We’ve done a lot of stuff, but we … Read more
This year marks the centenary of G. K. Chesterton’s What’s Wrong with the World. The book continues to inspire and surprise with its prophetic insights on issues from economics and property, to its bracing defense of the “wildness of domesticity.” And what is wrong with the world for Chesterton? “What is wrong with the … Read more
This is just too good to miss: A Zogby International survey measuring basic economic knowledge across the ideological spectrum found that conservatives and libertarians rated quite well. Progressives and liberals? Not so much. Researcher and economics professor Daniel Klein explains: Zogby researcher Zeljka Buturovic and I considered the 4,835 respondents’ (all American adults) answers to … Read more
Lots of buzz today about President Obama’s pick to replace Justice Stevens on the Supreme Court — Elena Kagan. Conservatives are understandably nervous about her record on abortion; Steve Ertelt at Life News quotes Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony list, saying: “In the past Kagan has been a strong supporter of the … Read more
Listening to the radio the other day, I heard a professor from one of America’s more distinguished institutions of higher learning explain what is motivating the “angry mobs” who have been raucously denouncing President Obama’s health-care plans: racism. When asked for evidence, the professor offered this: Some of the angry people made it plain that … Read more