Current Affairs
-
Self-Anointed Solomons Always ready to detect any alarming trend, I must say that one of the more alarming was in evidence this past week, in the form of the Supreme Court’s decision finding it impermissible to impose capital punishment for crimes committed when the perpetrator was under the age of eighteen. I have no quarrel…
-
Inhumanism and the End of Ethics I once said to my boss, by way of making an excuse for a long and rambling email I had just sent her, that sometimes I don’t really know what I think until I’ve written it down. Sometimes the act of writing takes me a step beyond that, to…
-
Folly Chasing Death One last note on the general lack of repentance on the part of the cultural revolutionaries of the late ‘60s, after which I plan to leave the subject alone for a while: I haven’t yet mentioned the evangelization for drug use that was as prominent in its time as the sexual revolution.…
-
Change, Liberal and Conservative As if to continue and confirm the premise of my comments last week on the terrible consequences of the sexual revolution, I came across this article, The Frivolity of Evil, by Theodore Dalrymple, a name which will be recognized by anyone who reads the conservative press but is perhaps not much…
-
The Confidence of Fools A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil; but the fool rageth, and is confident. —Proverbs 14:16 Writing last week about the persistent sympathy for Communism expressed, by people who ought to know better, for the political program of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” I found myself thinking of a column I wrote…
-
Sunday Night Journal — January 9, 2005 NOTE: EXPLICIT CONSERVATIVE CONTENT — I include this warning for the sake of certain friends and relatives unhappy with some of my conservative views. Pop music fans may have noticed a recent bit of fanfare about Rolling Stone’s list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, as determined…
-
Unfair, Unbalanced, Unrepentant I did not intend to emphasize politics in this journal, and, more specifically, I did not intend to write about politics again this week. But I find myself unable to stop thinking about the current presidential campaign. What follows has been bothering me for months; maybe I’ll be able to leave it…
-
The Litmus Test Test My old friend Daniel Nichols, with whom I worked on Caelum et Terra is one of those relatively rare people who is genuinely conservative on social issues but tends to lean left on other matters. Though he’s vehemently opposed to the Iraq war (not necessarily a leftward position, of course), he…
-
Another Root Canal, Please, Doctor When Ronald Reagan died a couple of weeks ago many of his prominent political opponents made an impressive effort to speak well of him. As one who disliked Bill Clinton as much as some disliked Reagan, I wondered how I would do in the event of Clinton’s death—could I speak…
-
*-wingers I started noticing a few years ago that liberals and other opponents of conservatism seemed not to be using the word “conservative” as their preferred epithet for the enemy in the way they once had done. Instead, they seemed to be using the term “right-wing.” The most famous use of the term was Hillary…
Light On Dark Water 