Joseph Bottum

Joseph Bottum, a young medievalist, made his debut in First Things with an account of faith in a postmodern age. From the February 1994 issue. I We are living at a time near the end of the world. Not that our age is apocalyptic: apocalypse means an uncovering, a revelation, and revelation is what . . . . Continue Reading »

It is astonishing, really, that First Things exists at all. The first set of editors”Richard John Neuhuas and James Nuechterlein”were in their fifties when, in 1989, the Rockford Institute locked their offices and threw them out on the street (for the New York Times ’ account of . . . . Continue Reading »

Meghan McArdle reports on the Seaworld press conference this afternoon about the killer whale that killed a trainer earlier this week: When asked by a reporter about the fact that this same whale has apparently killed three other people, he repeatedly makes the irrelevant point that it only killed . . . . Continue Reading »

Does anybody else remember the old 1970s Garanimal commercials for children’s clothing? Mix! Match! Save! I think we need to revive the term—because I don’t know anything else to describe the press release that just showed up in my inbox, somehow dodging the spam filters that are . . . . Continue Reading »

In the Wall Street Journal, Michel Gurfinkiel reviews the new book by Frederick Brown, For the Soul of France”an account of nineteenth-century France, in all its glory and all its disaster. As Gurfinkiel remarks, from 1830 to 1905 … Continue Reading »

This theoretical victory stuff is always a fun game , Joe. Actually, if you want to do it up right, you could get a majority—the twenty-six smallest states, fifty-two senators—with just 11,010,526 voters, or 3.62 percent of the population. That’s based on the CIA Factbook ‘s . . . . Continue Reading »

And so it starts. Among those in First Things ’ offices, our senior editor David Goldman goes on The Kudlow Report to do the heavy lifting on economics, and things like guessing which way the Euro is going to break are way beyond my remit. Still, there are no good solutions to the Greek . . . . Continue Reading »

While reading an interesting analysis of the (poor) chances of health-care reform from Jay Cost this morning, I came across this note: While I don’t think right versus wrong properly enter into considerations of reconciliation, I have noticed one particularly ridiculous moral argument in . . . . Continue Reading »

I went down to NYU law school today to visit my friend Joseph Weiler —you are all coming to the Eramus Lecture he’s delivering on March 7th, aren’t you? Anyway, while I was there I saw posters for a lecture this afternoon by Eugene Volokh on the structure of slippery-slope . . . . Continue Reading »

Speaking of the effects of philosophy , I don’t suppose it’s possible not to note The Onion today: The U.S. economy ceased to function this week after unexpected existential remarks by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke . . . . “Though raising interest rates is unlikely at the . . . . Continue Reading »