R. R. Reno

A friend’s wife recently gave birth. He reports that the New York birth certificate asks for the sex of the mother, and the sex of the father. I was taken aback. How could the State of New York be so behind the times? Don’t the bureaucrats in Albany know what the T in LGBT stands for? . . . . Continue Reading »

Since the first of the year I’ve been working to catch up. A friend had sent a useful article by Chrystia Freeland, ” The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent ,” and I finally got around to clicking through and reading it. Freeland has an interesting story to tell about Venice. The city went . . . . Continue Reading »

The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal featured an article advocating the decriminalization of drugs. Economists Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy argue the war on drugs has failed, and social costs of continuing with our current laws are too high. Their solution is to legalize drugs use, and . . . . Continue Reading »

I keep a little black book of notes, thought-sketches, and quotations. It’s my slapdash storage device for ideas. Now and then I reread the pages, and when I do I’m reminded yet again that nine tenths of mental progress comes when we circle back and think old thoughts again. Enduring truths are often fugitive. They need to be made permanent residents in our minds by regular intervals of remembrance… . Continue Reading »

Daniel Henninger has gone down the rabbit hole. In his column for the  Wall Street Journal he inveighs against the countless ways in which the tax code is manipulated by legislators to reward this or that constituency—-or donors and lobbyists, as the case may be. The . . . . Continue Reading »

Last summer, billionaire hedge fund manager and major Republican donor Paul Singer put up $1 million to launch American Unity. His goal was to break down the Republican party’s opposition to gay marriage and thus remove political resistance to the triumph of gay rights. Singer and his billionaire . . . . Continue Reading »

Over the years I’ve come to realize that “relativism” is the wrong way to describe the way in which secular elite culture approaches moral questions. It’s obvious that all things are not permitted, which is why Pope Benedict coined the term “dictatorship of . . . . Continue Reading »

A friend was talking to me recently. He observed that the post-election drama in Washington seems to be about more than taxes and spending. Everybody seems to feel that the stakes are high, and two visions of the future of America are being contested. “It’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Sometimes Christmas can seem a long way off, even when it’s close. So it was for me when I went to a funeral last Saturday at St. Thomas Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue. The music was beautiful”a requiem setting by Gabriel Fauré. And the church was warmly populated. That happens when you die in your fifties, a season of life when the living still outnumber the dead… . Continue Reading »

With year’s end drawing near the editors of the Wall Street Journal ‘s weekend review section asked fifty “friends” to tell us their favorite books of 2012 . We hear from TV personalities, businessmen, writers, politicians, a college president, two baseball managers, three . . . . Continue Reading »