Matthew Schmitz

When it comes to Ayn Rand, I agree with David Bentley Hart’s magisterial condemnation from our March 2011 issue: Ayn Rand always provokes a rather extravagant reaction from me, and probably for purely ideological reasons. For instance, I like the Sermon on the Mount. She regarded its . . . . Continue Reading »

Before its demolition in 1993, Kowloon Walled City was the world’s most densely populated settlement. An ungoverned 6.5 acre tract on the edge of Hong Kong, it was home to 33,000 souls—-which comes out to an eye-popping population density of 3,249,000/sq mi. Kowloon Walled . . . . Continue Reading »

America’s Christians and Jews will need a good deal of help from theologians and historians (and perhaps a little less help from polemicists and boosters) if they are to better understand the world’s Muslims, a group that includes, of course, many of their own fellow-citizens. All that . . . . Continue Reading »

Young voters are abandoning social issues and focusing on fiscal ones, the  New York Times informs us in a hopeful voice. They present scant evidence for this contention, ignoring data from the General Social Survey showing that young voters—-who through the 70’s, 80’s, and . . . . Continue Reading »

Last night I nearly completed a long-deferred sorting of Richard John Neuhaus’s CD’s and LP’s. It’s an impressive collection, encompassing a great deal of classical music and some of the folk music written and recorded by his friends in the anti-war movement. There are . . . . Continue Reading »

Recently, Robert P. George offered on these pages a much needed warning against the indiscriminate drone use that that has become characteristic of U.S. foreign policy. Yet what are Christians and others who believe in aboslute moral norms to make of the morality of drone use itself? Writing in the . . . . Continue Reading »

Our own Micah Mattix has a piece in the  Wall Street Journal reviewing Rainier Marie Rilke’s newly translated, Letters on God and Letters to a Young Woman . One notable tidbit Mattix draws out is Rilke’s defense of corrupt clerics over against pious reformers: For Rilke, . . . . Continue Reading »

Robert Oscar Lopez , a bisexual, Latino, lesbian-raised intellectual goes after critics of Mark Regnerus’s gay parenting study: The problem with Sherkat’s disqualification of Regnerus’s work is a manifold chicken-and-egg conundrum. Though Sherkat uses the term “LGBT” in . . . . Continue Reading »

Leon Wieseltier raises a cry of protest against the adulation of Bruce Springsteen that has recently engulfed the commentariat: Springsteen worship is a cry against the clock. But rock n roll has played also another role in American life, which is to prove that Herbert Marcuse was right. There will . . . . Continue Reading »

I agree with my colleague Matthew Cantirino  below , who, it should be noted, does not mean to defend the policies Kurtz criticizes. Further, I wonder if Kurtz, an opponent of regulation, would join in calls to abolish free parking and otherwise  relax zoning codes . Suburban sprawl is . . . . Continue Reading »