When you’re a linguist, you get used to being asked how many languages you speak. But a few years ago I was asked for the first time, by a student at Phillips Exeter Academy, what my favorite words are. “Grace and serendipity,” I blurted out—not a graceful response, but a . . . . Continue Reading »
Joseph Fadelle was born in Iraq in the 1960s. During his mandatory service in the Iraqi army, he was assigned a Christian roommate. Initially distraught to be rooming with an infidel, he came to understand that God had given him the mission of converting this man to Islam. In challenging the man’s . . . . Continue Reading »
Bill Gates and Work Sam Kriss’s takedown of Bill Gates, and of money generally, is a provocative and thoughtful piece (“The Truth About Bill Gates,” November 2022), but more than once while reading it I felt sorry for Kriss. His understanding of work has a depressing every-man-for-himself . . . . Continue Reading »
In the summer of 2020, HBO removed Gone with the Wind (1939) from its streaming service. The move came in response to an op-ed by John Ridley, screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave (2013), which charged that the film “glorifies the antebellum south,” “romanticizes the . . . . Continue Reading »
If you are even a little familiar with Anglicanism, you are likely aware that it can be a bit of a mess. The recent death of John Shelby Spong, that tireless enemy of Christ’s Church, should serve as more than a reminder of the fact. You might also know that there is much hope, both here in . . . . Continue Reading »
June 23 marked the fiftieth anniversary of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. A product of the Civil Rights era and the women’s liberation movement, Title IX bans discrimination on the basis of sex in educational institutions that receive federal funding. But however benign the . . . . Continue Reading »
Distilled is part of a cottage industry in the publishing sphere that looks at the world through, well, beer goggles. Tom Standage’s 2006 A History of the World in Six Glassescorrelates the invention of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola with key moments in the history of . . . . Continue Reading »
I’m becoming an N. S. Lyons fan. “A Prophecy of Evil: Tolkien, Lewis, and Technocratic Nihilism” is the latest installment in The Upheaval, the mysterious author’s Substack. (He writes under a pseudonym.) This extended essay provides an arresting account of the deepening crisis in the . . . . Continue Reading »
Conservatives in the West see in the People’s Republic of China a daunting nemesis: an oppressive tech dystopia ruled by a Leninist party that negates conservatism’s attachment to civil society, Christianity, and individual liberties. You might expect the intellectual mainstream in mainland . . . . Continue Reading »
My brother Peter was a wondrous boy, the youngest, brightest, and bounciest of three kids: IQ 165, boundless curiosity, confidence, and mental energy, bold in the best sense, and less than optimally protective of life and limb, fearing neither God nor man. A school exercise he wrote when he was five . . . . Continue Reading »
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