Depending on whom you ask, it’s either the holy grail of physics¯the prophesied Theory of Everything¯or a Theory of Nothing, a monumental waste of time and money. What it can’t be is half right.String theory, as the only viable candidate for a unified field theory, promises to . . . . Continue Reading »
Over at the Mirror of Justice website, law professor Eduardo Peñalver keeps reasserting his arguments for why Catholics and other pro-lifers can and should support Democrats¯even those who uphold abortion. But Professor Peñalver’s arguments do not improve with age or . . . . Continue Reading »
Characteristic of postmodernist art is transgression, the idea that the artist ought to produce works that violate traditional moral and aesthetic norms. The theory is that such norms are ultimately baseless, and thus violating them will liberate us from their tyranny and (the theory suddenly gets . . . . Continue Reading »
We’ve been having this little back and forth on whether Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, is a wimp on abortion. Herewith a viewpoint worthy of consideration sent by Prof. Tim Perry, who teaches theology at Providence College: Stephen Harper is, in my view, a political realist on . . . . Continue Reading »
A while back, I had some favorable things to say about Stephen Harper , the Conservative prime minister of Canada. This elicited howls of protest: “How could you! Harper is pro-abortion!” As it happens, Harper has challenged the Canadian political class on a number of . . . . Continue Reading »
In this Sunday’s New York Times , Paul Berman has a thoughtful review of two books , one about I.F. Stone and another that is a collection of Stone’s journalism. "Izzy" Stone, who died in 1989, is still a hero of the left¯an icon, as it is said. I.F. Stone’s Weekly . . . . Continue Reading »
I see the Tablet , a British Catholic magazine, has this article by Ian Markham (registration required) of Hartford Theological Seminary in which he claims that I have said there are 100 million radical Muslims (best described, as I explain in a forthcoming issue of First Things , as Jihadists) bent . . . . Continue Reading »
Democrats need to get religion, or so say political analysts in the wake of the 2004 election cycle. And little by little we’ve seen Democratic politicians, one after another, begin to proffer moral and religious foundations for their particular public policies. Chris Bell, Democratic . . . . Continue Reading »
Eduardo Moisés Peñalver, who teaches at Cornell, argues in Commonweal that the genuinely Catholic vote this fall should go to the Democratic party. In fact, for Peñalver, it’s not even a close call, for he thinks that the Bush administration knowingly led the United States . . . . Continue Reading »
On the same day my husband applied for Social Security benefits, we watched the purple-faced Bill Clinton defending his record as terrorist hunter-in-chief in the infamous Fox-TV interview with Chris Wallace . All the obfuscations the former president brought to bear also brought to mind the . . . . Continue Reading »