On Monday, September 12, my friend and mentor died at the age of 82 from lung cancer after a decade of up-and-down health problems borne without complaint—a man whom I have loved more than any other man but my own father, starting from the time of our first meeting after I matriculated at Wabash College...
As of June 1, residents of the Land of Lincoln are free to enter into civil unions, which allow same-sex couples to enjoy the benefits, protections, and responsibilities under Illinois law that are granted to spouses. According to the richly appointed homosexual-rights movement that lavished funds and exerted pressure upon the politicians who passed the...
Unless he is an exorcist or a pedophile, the chances of a priest being the main character in a Hollywood movie are sinfully scant. Giving star treatment to a real-life priest who would become a saint, however—and presenting him truthfully—seems as improbable as Dan Brown donning sackcloth and, as penance for miscasting Opus Dei as...
Returning from a Slavic land on a Slavic airline after serving a mission aiding the Catholic Church in Slavic Eastern Europe, I craved a little freedom from Slavdom. So I eschewed the late Slavic pope’s tradition and refrained from kissing the earth after touching down at O’Hare. Instead, I enjoyed a quiet cigarette outside arrivals,...
Bolshevism evolved into religion, some kind of materialistic pagan religion, which worships Lenin and his like as demigods, while considering lies, deceit, violence, the oppression of the poor, the demoralizing of children, humiliation of women, destruction of the family . . . and the reduction of all the nation to extreme poverty as the principles...
Consider the word gay. Blunt, yet with a bright ring, this synonym for robust mirth graced our common tongue through the centuries, from Chaucerian verse to the ballads of Cole Porter. The music died in the late 1960’s, however, when newly “liberated” homosexuals adopted the word to describe their supposedly happy lifestyles. Through repetition and...
The U.S.S. Liberty was suddenly and deliberately attacked on June 8, 1967—a date that should live in infamy—by naval and air forces of the state of Israel. Although the lone vessel, conducting surveillance in international waters, identified herself as an American craft—as if the 12-foot-tall and soon-to-be-shot-up Old Glory were not enough—she withstood a sustained...
Journalist Andrew Sullivan was discovered in 2001 anonymously soliciting partners on homosexual websites. Thus, it might seem odd that Sullivan, who is HIV-positive, now champions marriage. He has not mainstreamed orthodoxy into his lifestyle, however, but is crusading for “gay marriage,” an absurdity that is no laughing matter. Sullivan’s mission is not impossible. While 37...
Conservatives rightly honor George Washington, but why should any conservative so much as like Washington, D.C.? The answer seems as perplexing as the desire of a tourist to buy an “I Love D.C.” T-shirt from one of the Third World vendors on Capitol Hill. Tell me, Mr. Smith of Heartland, U.S.A., does wearing red-white-and-blue schlock...
Kobe Bryant, according to heavyweight sociologist Mike Tyson, is a victim of circumstance. “It could happen to anybody,” Tyson explained. The ex-champ referred not to filing for bankruptcy, going Muslim, or biting off a piece of an opponent’s ear, but to getting charged with rape—something apparently as random and undiscriminating as getting struck by lightning. ...
The New York Times is still perpetuating the myth of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, despite the weight of scholarly evidence. (See, for example, Egon Tausch’s exhaustive Chronicles article, “Tom and Sally and Joe and Fawn,”?Views, March 1999.) The myth, first touted by a postmaster manqué who turned to yellow journalism after Jefferson denied him...
Superbowl XXXVI, proclaimed by the National Football League to be a tribute to September 11 (themed “Heroes, Hope, and Homeland”) underscored the fact that there is something inauthentic about a spectacle that allows sports-bar patrons to experience masculinity vicariously by watching well-padded millionaires smash into one another for control of a leather ball. The Fox...