The issue of a constitutional amendment to prohibit desecration of the American flag is currently on political hold, but it remains potentially very much alive. We need, therefore, to continue to think about it, even to think about it in ways we might not have considered before. It would be useful . . . . Continue Reading »
Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Changeby celeste michelle condituniversity of illinois press, 236 pages, $24.95 Students of Western thought have long understood the correlation between public discourse, conviction, and practice. Even as far back as the fifth century B.C:. Democritus . . . . Continue Reading »
The University of Notre Dame To: My Colleagues in the Department of TheologyFrom: James F. White On December 13, 1982, the Department made an important step in approving a motion calling upon us to avoid sex-exclusive and sex-discriminatory language. I write you because as time progresses, I find . . . . Continue Reading »
As I was splitting a pair of queens to double my sawbuck bet, someone said “He’s here,” and here he was—four bodyguards to part the waves, a blonde bimbo on each arm with whom to swim. I swiveled in my chair to greet him, held out my hand—brushed back by one of his goons. . . . . Continue Reading »
Who has been handing out these permission slips?” asks a writer of our acquaintance. He wants to know who determined that it is alright again to tell racist jokes in polite society, or to publish columns suggesting, none too gingerly, that Jews have excessive influence in American life. Who . . . . Continue Reading »
One of the least understood aspects of the drug problem is the degree to which it is in the end a moral and spiritual problem. I continue to be amazed at how often people I speak to in treatment centers refer to drugs as the great lie, the great deception, indeed as a product of the Great Deceiver. . . . . Continue Reading »
In confronting the race question in America today, we are faced with a paradox. On the one hand, our generation has lived through a political and cultural revolution that has no parallel. Discriminatory laws enforcing racial segregation have been declared unconstitutional and abolished, while the . . . . Continue Reading »
Perhaps no English poem was more frequently cited during France’s 1989 Bicentennial year than William Wordsworth’s Prelude, in Book XI of which one finds “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very Heaven!” Anyone unfamiliar with the poet’s biography might reasonably . . . . Continue Reading »
The suggestion has been made on occasion in these pages that Americans are engaged in a Kulturkampf, a contest over the role of common American moral intuitions in contributing to fundamental understandings of what kind of society we wish to be. There are few signs of any such struggle, however, in . . . . Continue Reading »
I intend these remarks primarily for a specific group of people: those persons of good will who say they are personally opposed to abortion but are prochoice. Though we hold opposed views, my hope is that we can still engage profitably in a rational discussion of the abortion issue, once we come to . . . . Continue Reading »
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