Over the last several months, an enormous amount has been said about how the United States is falling behind the rest of the world in science: endless newspaper editorials, chin-pulling on television talk-shows, widely publicized demands for legislative action. After the scandals of faked science . . . . Continue Reading »
Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion, has been in alcohol rehab since February 1. There is this in his letter to his diocese: Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I am writing to you from an alcohol treatment center where on February 1, with the . . . . Continue Reading »
As one has too many occasions to note, history has many ironies in the fire. In the context of those Danish cartoons and the violent reaction of some Muslims, a reader takes the occasion to quote back to me what I wrote in “Our American Babylon” in the December 2005 issue of F IRST T . . . . Continue Reading »
Yesterday in this space my colleague Joseph Bottum reflected on the large number of scholarly books in recent years that underscore the powerful and pervasive role of religion in the American founding. He acknowledges that all this is for the good, and then he asks, “But where does that leave . . . . Continue Reading »
Yesterday, I mentioned the links we’ve added on the left of the screen, one of which encourages applications to the Tertio Millennio seminar in Poland this summer. Michael Novak e-mailed this morning to mention another central European seminar this summer, the Slovak Seminar on the Free . . . . Continue Reading »
Over on the left side of this webpage, you’ll see two new items worth clicking on, if you’re young and wondering what to do. The top one invites applications for junior fellowships at F IRST T HINGS beginning in the late summer of 2006. These are one-year internships for young writers . . . . Continue Reading »
On the New York Times op-ed page and in his regular box at Slate , William Saletan has been urging supporters of Roe ‘s abortion license to make clear that they are also friends of life and abhor abortion, as necessary as he thinks it may sometimes be. Katha Pollitt of The Nation , on the far . . . . Continue Reading »
Elizabeth Bumiller, in the February 6 issue of the New York Times , reports on a speech made by President Bush. We are told that he “declared once again that his foreign policy was in part based on an ‘Almighty’ whose gift to the world was freedom.” It is the indefinite . . . . Continue Reading »
There are many things that need to be said about the Muslim reaction to those cartoons in the Danish newspaper, and yesterday in this space Joseph Bottum said some of them very well. They need to be said because the most frontal challenge imaginable has been put to the West. It is a challenge that . . . . Continue Reading »
The easy charge is hypocrisy. In response to the Danish cartoon riots, the Boston Globe editorialized that "As with the current consensus against publishing racist or violence-inciting material, newspapers ought to refrain from publishing offensive caricatures of Mohammed in the name of the . . . . Continue Reading »