R.R. Reno is editor of First Things.

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More Roots

After reading my post on Show of Hands, Paul Allen, who teaches theology at Concordia University in Montreal, wrote and passed along a link to a Quebec group that sings an edgy protest song — a protest against cultural suicide, that is. Check it out. . . . . Continue Reading »

25 Nov 2008

Irony and Its limits

I recently came across a nice turn of phrase by Jules Renard, a wry French memoir writer from the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth: “Irony does not dry up the grass. It just burns off the weeds.” Yes, I think that’s quite right, but only if the irony . . . . Continue Reading »

19 Oct 2008

Markets Are Never Always the Right Solution

Robert T. Miller’s observations in Friday’s Daily Article about the need for intervention in times of market panic remind us of an important truth. The fact that markets are usually the most effective and efficient mechanisms for creating incentives for wealth creation, as well as for . . . . Continue Reading »

28 Sep 2008

The Right-Wing Conspiracy

I’ve often wondered about the strangely verbose and self-important irrelevance of contemporary universities. Think about it. In 1968 the universities were at the center of political and social ferment. Students were in the streets. Professors such as C. Wright Mills, Norman O. Brown, and . . . . Continue Reading »

31 Jan 2008

Pope cancels university speech

In recent days students and faculty activists has kicked up a lot of dust at the venerable Sapienzia University in Rome which was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII. Benedict had been invited to give an address to the university. The protestors, well, protested. Stated reason: accusations that . . . . Continue Reading »

16 Jan 2008

More on Harvard

A careful reader wrote to complain. My recent web essay on General Education at Harvard cited the following from the Final Report: “The aim of liberal education is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient . . . . Continue Reading »

10 Jan 2008

Obama

Well, the Clinton express seems to have suffered a delay in Iowa. Barack Obama is an interesting political phenomenon. His inter-racial identity makes him a symbolic blank screen onto which Americans can project their perennial post-cultural fantasies. The early Republic was filled with claims that . . . . Continue Reading »

4 Jan 2008

Universities and the Left

The recent unpleasantness at Princeton brought to mind Villanova professor Robert Maranto’s musing about the ideological tilt of academia, ” As A Republican, I’m on the Fringe .” It’s a familiar story. There are far more liberals and Marxists in the professoriate than . . . . Continue Reading »

17 Dec 2007

Nostalgia

I’ve recently been re-reading Emerson, and I find myself longing for the return of a more sincere hypocrisy. . . . . Continue Reading »

13 Dec 2007

More On Pascal’s Rule

Robert Miller rightly points out that science is consequential. It matters whether or not my doctor understands the nature of sickness and has at his disposal some strategies for cure. But Pascal’s Rule does not say that science is inconsequential. His Rule only points out that questions that . . . . Continue Reading »

12 Dec 2007