R.R. Reno is editor of First Things.

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Ritual Denunciations

For a good example of the mainstream liberal Jihad mentality, take a look as Scott McLemee’s effusion of bile on the occasion of Leon Kass’ recent Jefferson Lecture of the National Endowment of the Humanities. The basic argument goes something like this. Kass served in the Bush . . . . Continue Reading »

29 May 2009

French Women Surge Ahead

A friend wrote to chastise me for failing to include fresh statistics that show a marked increase in the French fertility rate. Apparently women who did not have children in the twenties are now having babies, and this is pushing up rates that looked dire a decade ago. Check out this news report . . . . Continue Reading »

26 Jan 2009

Still More Roots Music

Geez, you write a piece on pointed musical assertions of cultural identity, and folks seem to take notice. Another friend wrote and directed me to a song by the Afrikaner folk and rock singer, Bok van Blerk. This one (not surprisingly) has generated controversy in South Africa, where liberal whites . . . . Continue Reading »

26 Nov 2008

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