Catch Me on the FIRST THINGS Blog

I have been asked to contribute some thoughts on the First Things blog. For those who don’t know FT, it is perhaps the country’s most prominent religious journal. It is headed by the imcomparable Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and edited by my good friend Joseph Bottum.

My work is entirely secular, which means that I don’t deal in religious analysis or advocacy. But FT also explores ethical issues of general interest and import. Thus, my post (you may have to scroll down) takes off on the pope’s provocative warning against the “dictatorship of relativism,” pointing to some of the threats posed by modern relativism to human exceptionalism, which, as readers know, is the through line here at Secondhand Smoke.