Support First Things by turning your adblocker off or by making a  donation. Thanks!

Liars, All

In my morning’s lazy read of my morning paper, The Wall Street Journal *, I note that today’s most popular read of that newspaper is Why We Lie.  Since Saturday, 4,100 people have shared this article, which is by Dan Ariely, explaining his book “The (Honest) Truth About . . . . Continue Reading »

A Small-Town Defense of Facebook

Ross Douthat greets the Facebook IPO with schadenfreude: Of all the major hubs of Internet-era excitement, Mark Zuckerberg’s social networking site has always struck me as one of the most noxious, dependent for its success on the darker aspects of online life: the zeal for constant . . . . Continue Reading »

First Links — 5.29.12

Converting to Paganism Marc Barnes, Bad Catholic The Proper Name of the Holy Spirit Taylor Marshall, Canterbury Tales Witness at Sixty Joseph Wood, The Catholic Thing Porn, Video Games, and the Demise of Guys Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan, CNN Deciphering Obamish Keith Riler, The . . . . Continue Reading »

Donne Undone

What has happened to literary journalism that  something like this  gets published in a national paper? John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14—a poem on Christ’s violent attack on the self’s evil heart that brings about salvation—tells us, Roz Kaveney writes, . . . . Continue Reading »

Culture Evinces Human Exceptionalism

I believe that humans are distinguished from all other known life by differences that are moral in naure, not merely biological.  For example, while our bipedalism has certainly helped us become who we are, it is not what makes us exceptional. After all, penguins are bipedal too.But our moral . . . . Continue Reading »

Punishing 1 Side Means Speech Not Free

There is an astonishing intolerance of pro life speech among those who rule in the power structure.  I think of Paster Walter Hoye, arrested in Oakland for merely passing out anti abortion material and conversing with women about not terminating their pregnancies.  But at least we (still) . . . . Continue Reading »

The Attack of the Kidney Harvesters

The perceived entitlement of the West sickens.  We now believe our lives are so important that with biological colonialism, some of us are willing to work with criminal gangs to grab the kidneys of the vulnerable destitute.  There is a shameful report out of the UN illustrating just how . . . . Continue Reading »

A Little Bit about Memorial Day

I have heard it said that if you do not have family, close family, serving in the military, then your attitude toward government, and especially U.S. involvement in war and military conflict, will be quite different from those of us in that position.  On Memorial Day, theoretically, we come . . . . Continue Reading »

Tags

Loading...

Filter First Thoughts Posts