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The Spectator of London is the oldest weekly of the Anglophone world, a jewel of a magazine as distinguished and respected as it is beautifully written. It was first published in 1828, just as modern Greece became a nation, and in a recent speech the sainted editor (as I refer to him) remarked that the [...]
Daniel J. Flynn reviews A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown. He says Julia Scheeres’s work, which examines the events leading to the mass death in the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, is fairly solid on a factual basis, but takes the wrong lessons from the incident. The cult was born [...]
Filed under: Culture, Foreign policy, War
In the December issue of First Things, editor R.R. Reno discusses his recent visit to the 9/11 Memorial. Though he went in part to see the panels that commemorate friends who died there, he is uncomfortable with the memorial’s emphasis on individual — rather than corporate — mourning. Reno finds that in eschewing any kind of collective [...]
Kelley Vlahos warns that the U.S. is dangerously close to a point of no return with regard to eroding Fourth Amendment protections, as the Supreme Court determines whether warrantless GPS tracking is permissible. Where will there the line be drawn on the surveillance state? Why go so far as ‘a chip?’ Why not suggest that [...]
Filed under: Culture, Decentralism, Politics
Appearing the other night on the Catholic network EWTN, I was asked by Raymond Arroyo what should be done about Muslim students at Catholic University demanding that the school provide them with prayer rooms, from which crucifixes and all other Catholic symbols that they found offensive had been removed. After a nanosecond I replied, “Kick [...]
Lewis McCrary comments on the planned Dwight D. Eisenhower memorial, and suggests that though Washington D.C. has inclined towards increasingly elaborate tour-bus-friendly mega-memorials, there are more modest and meaningful ways to celebrate the figures who shaped our nation. Rock group R.E.M. hung up their hats this past summer, but that moment came far too late, A.G. [...]
Fighting over new additions to the capital’s collection of memorials is to be expected these days, with the recently opened $120 million MLK memorial criticized for what seemed to some a totalitarian style; no less than Maya Angelou said it was unable to convey to the humility that defined the man. But that granite has [...]
A conservative’s task in society is “to preserve a particular people, living in a particular place during a particular time.” Jack Hunter, in a review of this writer’s new book, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? thus summarizes Russell Kirk’s view of the duty of the conservative to his country. Kirk, the traditionalist, [...]
I own two iMacs and a Macbook Pro, and will admit that the late Steve Jobs was a genius; but I see no reason to assume that his political views were particularly wise. According to the forthcoming biography written by Walter Isaacson and obtained by the Huffington Post, Jobs told the President last year that [...]
Filed under: Culture, Politics, Technology
In Federalist 2, John Jay looks out at a nation of a common blood, faith, language, history, customs and culture. “Providence,” he writes, “has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion … very similar [...]
Filed under: Culture, Ideas, Immigration