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The Same-Sex Slippery Slope

James Poulos offers an insightful twist on the slippery-slope argument re: same-sex marriage in this webcast at Postmodern Conservative : It’s not that considering same-sex marriage is causing us to slip as a culture to a depreciated state of marriage; it’s the other way around. . . . . Continue Reading »

“The Human Dignity Conspiracy”

. . . is a new article written by our own Peter Lawler lucidly summarizing the reflections on dignity issued in a recent report by the President’s Council on Bioethics.  The very notion of dignity is philosophically suspect today partly because it’s . . . . Continue Reading »

The Way Church Should Be

The Baptist minister at Real Live Preacher went to an Orthodox church during his sabbatical for an ecclesiastical safari. It surprised him more than expected: Pews? We don’t need no stinking pews! Providing seats for worshipers is SO 14th century. Gorgeous Byzantine art, commissioned from a . . . . Continue Reading »

Detroit, Skopje and Belgrade

Kenneth Anderson has a followup at the Volokh Conspiracy blog on the corrupt manipulation of creditor rights by the Obama administration. Indiana pension funds have brought their case for creditor rights to the Second Court of Appeals. “The ‘strong-arming’ that caused them not to . . . . Continue Reading »

The Fatal — Or Is it Fateful? — Conceit

Since the mid-’80s, a long progression of doomsayers have warned that our declining market share in the patents-and-Ph.D.s business augurs dark times for American innovation. The specific threats have changed. It was the Japanese who would destroy us in the ’80s; now it’s China and . . . . Continue Reading »

Re: Is Billy Collins Killing Poetry?

Joe asks if the popularity of Billy Collins’ audio recordings is good for poetry . I am no poet-in-residence at First Things , but I would like to answer a revised version of Joe’s question: Is Billy Collins’ popularity itself good for poetry? My answer: “Yes.” Leaving . . . . Continue Reading »

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