James Nuechterlein

My April calendar reminds me that my oldest child celebrates her birthday this month. Which in turn reminds me of the mysteries and puzzlements of child-rearing. Which in its turn reminds me, once again, why I am a cultural conservative. . . . . Continue Reading »

Traditionalists find themselves ill at ease”to put it mildly”in today’s postmodernist intellectual world, a world whose “animating spirit,” as Gertrude Himmelfarb puts it, “is a radical relativism and skepticism that rejects any idea of truth, knowledge, or . . . . Continue Reading »

Last year I saw two truly vile movies, Pulp Fiction and Kids. The first turned my stomach. The second filled me with shame for having sat through it: leaving the theater, I felt unclean. Those movie experiences reminded me of the depths to which popular culture has sunk, a reminder . . . . Continue Reading »

The thing I miss most about academic life”summers aside”is its constant promise of new beginnings. Each semester offers a fresh start and the beguiling hope: surely this time I will get it right. My lectures got bogged down in detail; this time they will never lose sight of the big . . . . Continue Reading »

The first thing to be said about the O. J. Simpson trial is that he was obviously guilty. Given the overwhelming evidence, one is inclined to wonder how the jurors managed, other than through a willed suspension of rational deliberation, to find reasonable doubt-though it can be said in the . . . . Continue Reading »

We all know, from an early age, that we are going to die. But that abstract knowledge truly becomes our own only much later. Sometimes it comes as a gradually developing awareness, sometimes more suddenly. It came late for me—during my fortieth year. I had known for some time of my father’s . . . . Continue Reading »

John Stuart Mill famously dismissed conservatives as “the stupid party.” He was writing in England during the nineteenth century, but his judgment would hold as well for much of the American experience in this century. Not literally, of course. The conservative deficiency had to do less with IQ . . . . Continue Reading »

First Things normally takes quiet pride in its disregard of the merely topical. We write and edit, if not for the ages, at least with a view more long run than that provided by yesterday’s or tomorrow’s headlines. It is true that in The Public Square and occasionally elsewhere we take account . . . . Continue Reading »

When the Editor-in-Chief of this journal invited me to come East to work with him and his colleagues some six and a half years ago, it was in almost every way an offer I could not refuse. It meant doing work I wanted to do in the company of people I wanted to work with. I had not previously thought . . . . Continue Reading »

There’s a lot of talk about the 1950s these days, but most of it seems not quite right. Defenders and critics of the decade alike invoke it in support of their agendas for the nineties. Republicans recall the decade’s virtues to buttress the case for their conservative program while liberal . . . . Continue Reading »