If once having shaken hands is meeting, I have met Philip Rieff. But he has been much more than that in the shaping of my mind. The Triumph of the Therapeutic , published in 1966, is still a brilliant analysis of our cultural habits, it seems to me. Although, if I went back to read it now, I might . . . . Continue Reading »
You gotta love this kind of stuff , Representative Sherrod Brown writing to Senator Mike DeWine last Friday to denounce Samuel Alito’s record on labor¯and plagiarizing the complaint straight from an uncredited blogger. "We couldn’t decide who to respond to: the person who sent . . . . Continue Reading »
It’s election day also in New York City and it is unanimously expected that Michael Bloomberg will receive something like a coronation, which is probably just as well. Bloomberg is a billionaire and there is grumbling about his “buying” his reelection, but the complaint is more or . . . . Continue Reading »
It happened again yesterday. I can’t imagine that any author is not pleased when people come up and say that one of his books “changed my life.” But it is only every great once in a while that the book mentioned is In Defense of People . Published in 1971, it was, I believe, the . . . . Continue Reading »
A reader takes this site to task for not having commentary on proposed budget cuts, the Iranian president’s threat to destroy Israel, U.S. policy toward the thuggery of Chavez in Venezuela, and a dozen other items on the front pages. A clarification is obviously in order. This website is not . . . . Continue Reading »
In the "There’ll Always Be an England" category: Remembrance Day approaches, and a friend points us to this column by Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian : "In Britain, many people wear poppies as we approach Remembrance Day on November 11. The central ceremony is a . . . . Continue Reading »
Tonight is the annual Erasmus Lecture, this year delivered by Dr. Timothy George, a Baptist and dean of Beeson Divinity School. The subject is the men who shaped modern evangelicalism: Carl McIntire, Carl Henry, and W.A. Criswell, with a generous acknowledgment of Billy Graham. The Erasmus Lecture, . . . . Continue Reading »
Paul Greenberg, among my favorite columnists, writes on "The Balm of Time." He went back to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and had lunch with a local politician whom he had sharply criticized when, many years ago, he wrote for the local paper. It seemed not to matter now. On holding grudges, he . . . . Continue Reading »
Mary Eberstadt has been treated shamefully by First Things . Well, maybe that’s a little strong, but she wrote a very important book called Home-Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs, and Other Parent Substitutes , and it has never been featured in First Things ’ . . . . Continue Reading »
Well, now, here’s something. In Holland, the federal orthographers¯and contemplate for a moment what it means to a nation to have official spell-checkers, employed by the government and armed with police powers; maybe they say "Just the vowels, ma’am," or "My name is . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
