State of the Culture
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If you've been reading the Sunday Night Journal since its early days (2004(!)), you may remember that from time to time I mentioned "the dogs": walking the dogs, feeding the dogs, being amused or annoyed by the dogs. I also mentioned cats. At the time we had two dogs and three cats. Since then the ranks
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It's pretty obvious that there is some significant number of people on the left who simply don't believe in freedom of speech anymore. There have been a number of incidents lately that make the point. There were the attack on Charles Murray, the conflict at Duke Divinity School, the simultaneously hilarious and disturbing fight at
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When First Things appeared in the 1990s (I think), I read it occasionally but never subscribed. That was mainly because a fairly large portion of the articles were too specialized and academic for me.It seemed, for instance, that there were a lot of long commentaries on contemporary intellectual figures whom I had not (and have not)
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One of the books I've been reading as background for the book I'm writing is Theodore Roszak's The Making of a Counter-culture. Roszak may have been the one who coined that term. If he didn't, he certainly contributed to its widespread use. The book came out in 1969 and I recall reading it at the
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My specifically Lenten reading this year is Frank Sheed's Theology for Beginners. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that, because I know several people who read this blog have advanced degrees in theology or have just in general read a great deal more of it than I have. I've picked up bits and pieces over the
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The excitement of the week in Christian circles seems to be Rod Dreher's new book, The Benedict Option. If you haven't heard about it, its subtitle is A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, and the Benedict of the title is St. Benedict. Here's a bit from the publisher's blurb that gives you a pretty good
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I finally made it through Paradise. I hate to put it that way, but that's more or less how it felt. Back in May of last year I was reading Dante and was most of the way through Purgatory when I needed to switch translations (there was a blog post about that). I decided on Anthony Esolen's.
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For most of my adult life, until I was getting near fifty or so, I spent a lot of time thinking about What Was Wrong with Society and what Society ought to be like. I tended to assume that Society was fundamentally messed up and therefore must be fundamentally changed. When I was twenty this change
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So now Trump really is the president. I was astonished and appalled when he got the nomination, and thought it only guaranteed that Hillary would win. I was more astonished when he won the election, and was only pleased by the result because it meant that Hillary would not be president. Since then, I've heard or
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The sign says "Not my choice, but now my president." I posted this picture in 2008 with this explanation: There’s a guy up the road in Spanish Fort, a veteran who’s very active in veterans’ affairs, who had a series of “Veterans for McCain” signs on this building (which I think he owns) during the
Light On Dark Water 