There was an interesting exchange on the American Enterprise Institute’s Enterprise blog, sparked by this Charles Murray post about the concept of duty. Murray was writing in response to Mark Sanford’s scandalous behavior, and this prodded Danielle Pletka to ask why we should care . . . . Continue Reading »
Well, that was June. This is July.Read-aloud for the 5- and 6-year-olds: Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, in a volume with all the stories.The 11-year-old: Is currently rereading, for the zillionth time, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, in a cheesy-looking (photos from the films on the . . . . Continue Reading »
And no, not false dignity . Rather, the kind of dignity where, as the founder of this magazine once put it, one “neither refuses to live nor fears to die”: Gravely ill with heart disease, tethered to an oxygen tank, her feet swollen and her appetite gone, Sister Dorothy Quinn, 87, . . . . Continue Reading »
I have been saying for years that the great stem cell debate isn’t really about leftover embryos due to be destroyed anyway. That was just the pretext, an opening gambit intended to desensitize people to the idea that nascent human life can be treated as nothing more than a corn . . . . Continue Reading »
The title of Chapter 4, paragraphs 43 through 52, promises that the text will take up the topic of the environment. But the chapter opens with an attack on the idea of rights as divorced from duties: “An overemphasis on rights leads to a disregard for duties.” Pieces of several arguments . . . . Continue Reading »
Today marks six months since the death of our friend, editor, and founder Richard John Neuhaus, who remains ever close in our thoughts and work at First Things . Take a moment to visit to our memorial page —where you can find notable obituaries, web videos of Fr. Neuhaus, and a . . . . Continue Reading »
If that combination—a more socialist economics and a more traditional culture—is possible, then we need more explanation than Chapter 2 gave us, and, not surprisingly, it is with an explanation that Chapter 3 opens. The intellectual problem that Benedict has set himself is a thorny one: . . . . Continue Reading »
Are social encyclicals binding? Not everything in an encyclical—social or otherwise—is equally binding. Catholic teaching itself distinguishes different levels of authoritativeness for different kinds of teaching and different kinds of Church pronouncements. Some teaching is de fide (of . . . . Continue Reading »
I am listening to the Laura Ingraham radio show and PETA alpha wolf Ingrid Newkirk is the guest. Ingraham asked her if having a leather belt or leather shoes meant that one was engaging in cruelty. Newkirk said, and this is close to a quote, “No! That is not what we claim.” Like . . . . Continue Reading »
Unlike Joseph , I think social conservatism and economic leftism (if “leftism” means willingness to significantly restrict trade) are very easy to reconcile on the level of philosophy and, outside the US (a nation whose rather counterintuitive but seemingly immutable political . . . . Continue Reading »
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