R.R. Reno is editor of First Things.

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Our Need for Authority

Yesterday I wrote my Thursday column about the ways in which authority contributes to both natural and supernatural human flourishing. A friend wrote me to protest that, while he certainly agreed about the positive role of authority in political life, my examples of those who wrongly imagine we can . . . . Continue Reading »

14 Jan 2011

More on Marriage

Drawing on The National Marriage Project’s 2010 Report, ” When Marriage Disappears: The New Middle America ,” I’ve mused a little about divorce and the larger relations between changed social mores and increased inequalities in America, suggesting that the sexual revolution . . . . Continue Reading »

14 Jan 2011

Divorce and Statistics

A recently released report prepared by The National Marriage Project under the direction of W. Bradford Wilcox is full of very interesting data about sex, marriage, and family life in contemporary America, some of which we’ll be ventilating in a forthcoming issue of First Things . One . . . . Continue Reading »

14 Jan 2011

An Aphorism

Against our critical age and its masters of suspicion: It is more precious to love than to know. . . . . Continue Reading »

12 Jan 2011

Murder and Political Rhetoric

There’s been a great deal of commentary about the attempted assassination of Congresswaman Gabrielle Giffords and the deadly rampage that followed, with some eager to pin blame on pugnacious conservative rhetoric, and others denying the link. At The New Republic David Rieff offers a sharply . . . . Continue Reading »

11 Jan 2011

More on Solzhenitsyn

Last week I reflected on the genius of Solzhenitsyn’s great novel, In the First Circle . Some readers weighed in on other aspects of Solzhenitsyn’s thought, especially his famous Harvard Address, given in 1978, four years after arriving in the United States as an exile from Russia. The . . . . Continue Reading »

10 Jan 2011

Graduate Study and Careers

As is often the case, Public Discourse has an interesting article today, this one by Matthew Milliner on the current hand-wringing about the future of humanistic inquiry in American higher education. Milliner, a graduate student in art history at Princeton and a blogger here at First Thoughts, . . . . Continue Reading »

7 Jan 2011

An Aphorism

Our avant-garde cherishes memories of an oppressive past. . . . . Continue Reading »

6 Jan 2011

Moral Awakening

The sun has reached it midday zenith, and I’m still staring at the blank page on my desk. I had promised myself that I would begin writing about Akeksandr Solzhenitsyn’s In The First Circle —a key part of a book project that I’m calling, “The Renewal of the Conservative . . . . Continue Reading »

5 Jan 2011

D’Souza on Obama

Some months ago I expressed my skepticism about Dinesh D’Souza’s thesis that the best way to understand Barack Obama involves seeing him as trying to fulfill his father’s anti-colonialist vision. I argued that mainstream American liberalism, especially its hothouse academic forms, . . . . Continue Reading »

4 Jan 2011