Author: Philip Jenkins (Philip Jenkins)

Normality is a fragile concept, and that observation is nowhere more true than in sexual matters.  In making that point, I am not questioning the existence of absolute moral standards—quite the contrary.  Rather, I am suggesting that, once a society loses its religious moorings, it drifts into startling novelties with a haste even more vertiginous...

Imagine it is the year 2030, and you are talking to some young adults.  To your horror, you find that they have never heard the name Osama bin Laden.  As you begin to rant about the ignorance of the young, you find to your still greater astonishment that none of your older friends have any...

In April 1945, a world of avengers was closing in rapidly on Berlin.  Trapped in the bunker complex, Hitler’s dwindling band of followers faced mounting despair, until the news broke that Franklin Roosevelt had died.  The glorious word of relief ran through the surviving Nazi leadership: “The Empress Elizabeth is dead!”  However baffling that reference...

It’s been a bad year for terrorism in the United States.  Not bad, fortunately, in the number of actual attacks (at least at the time of this writing), but in the continuing debasement of the word terrorism, so that it ceases to be a useful characterization of behavior and becomes merely a propaganda slogan for...

There are many familiar signs that one is growing old, but I would like to propose a new candidate for the list.  You know you have lived a long time when ideas and theories that would once have been regarded as fatuous nonsense suddenly become respectable and mainstream. Earlier this year, the British government finally...

Over the past year, American elites have spent a vast amount of time discussing proposed reforms in healthcare, arguing about the social and financial costs of producing an apparent social good.  In March, Congress approved a law that many observers see as a potential catastrophe, in terms of its devastating effects on our economic future,...

I love Sarah Palin.  That’s not necessarily because of anything she believes or advocates, but because of the pleasure I derive from watching the apoplexy she causes in liberals, especially in a university setting.  Not only is Palin a strong conservative, but she has a regular middle-class background and a passionate religious commitment.  This combination...

Over the past decade, climate change has been a permanent fixture in the headlines, and its implications are frightening.  Depending on whom you believe, the earth might be on the verge of a warming trend that could devastate much of human civilization.  If this is even partially true, we might need to consider radical solutions,...

“Sut mae?  Sut rydych chi?” I’m going to assume that most readers did not understand those phrases, which translate roughly to “How are you?  How are things going?”  And that lack of comprehension is a critical historical fact, because, if a generation of British historians and archaeologists is correct, then you should have no problem...

Hard cases make bad law, and since 2002 the exposure of some ugly criminal cases has stirred legislators in several states to contemplate dreadful legal innovations.  However far removed these crimes may appear from regular mainstream American life, the legal principles involved threaten to wreak havoc in the coming decades. As all the world knows,...

The global decline of fertility rates may well be the single most important trend in the contemporary world, a phenomenon that will transform our societies into something radically different from anything in recent history.  The worldwide birth strike will cause upheaval in the ethnic and social structure of familiar nations and will echo through financial...

Can I ask for some help? I am trying to write a novel—a futuristic political thriller—but at present, the plot is ridiculously implausible.  I would like some advice about making it credible. This is my scenario.  It is 2011.  A hugely popular Barack Obama is cruising toward an inevitable second term.  He is, however, at...

The word transformational surfaced often in the 2008 election season, and for once, the cliché might have had some validity.  America assuredly is entering an era of transformation, even of revolutionary change, but on nothing like the lines that many expect.  The political right stands to benefit enormously, provided its adherents understand the dramatically altered...

According to medical consensus, a psychopath is a person who feels no connection with other people, and who cannot therefore know the slightest remorse, any shame or guilt, no matter how horrendous the sufferings he inflicts.  And that brings me, neatly, to the New York Times, the nation’s newspaper of record, and an exemplar of...

Recently, the state of Texas undertook a police action that amply demonstrates the radical transformation of public attitudes to family, children, and the role of the state over the past half-century.  In April 2008, Texas authorities staged mass raids on a polygamist compound near San Angelo, in which they took custody of several hundred children. ...

In the 1960’s and 70’s, when European countries were admitting large migrant populations from predominantly Muslim regions, Western governments had a powerful vested interest in encouraging the growth of politicized Islam of the straitest sect.  European political attitudes were shaped absolutely by the Cold War confrontation, and the Middle East featured chiefly as a theater...

Two years ago, Europe was in the middle of its cartoon jihad, as thousands of Muslims protested images believed to insult Muhammad.  At the time, despairing observers saw the affair as yet another milestone in Europe’s descent into Eurabia, a graveyard of Christianity and Western civilization.  In hindsight, though, it rather looks as if the...

Every American knows that Egypt is an overwhelmingly Muslim country, by far the most populous Arab Muslim state.  Many Americans, on consideration, might also be aware that, before the arrival of Islam, Egypt was just as solidly Christian, the cultural and spiritual heart of the early Church.  How did one situation give way to the...

In 1899, Winston Churchill expressed his concern about the “militant and proselytizing faith” of Islam.  “Were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science,” he said, “the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”  His contemporary, Lord...

Only a fool would try to foretell the course of U.S. politics a few months in advance, let alone several years in the future.  The fact that Democrats are riding high after their electoral triumph last November does not necessarily mean that they will win the White House in 2008.  But just suppose that January...

The academy is in an even worse plight than you may imagine.  Every so often, surveys reveal just how far America’s professors are out of touch with the political and cultural mainstream.  Not only do they overwhelmingly register with the Democratic Party, but most adhere to the straitest sect within that tradition, those who regard...

Was there a point at which American liberals consciously adopted Jacobinism, or did it just creep up on them gradually?  This question was brought into rather sharp focus earlier this year when the PBS series American Experience presented an expensive two-part documentary entitled “Reconstruction: The Second Civil War.”  The series recounted the story of Reconstruction,...

If you want to see how America’s liberal elites would like to reshape the United States, look at Western Europe.  For decades, they have dreamed of importing European social models, of a Swedish welfare society, and of comprehensive sexual tolerance à la Hollandaise.  But the liberal vision is most perfectly manifested in the form of...

As 2005 drew to a close, the scandal over the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame potentially threatened to overwhelm leading figures in the Bush White House.  Meanwhile, editors and journalists have been struggling to keep a straight face while affecting shock at the central revelation of the case—namely, that major news stories commonly derive...

Watching the horrible images of the recent bomb attacks in London, Americans might be forgiven for feeling a sense of alarm, especially when the terrorism was directly linked to homegrown suicide bombers.  The thought of American extremists adopting similar tactics on our soil is extremely worrying, though few media outlets dared to explore the prospect...

I am nervous about the course I am teaching, this coming fall, about World War II.  As I will explain to the class from the outset, there are a few things I do not know about the topic—namely, when the war began, when it ended, where it happened, who were the key protagonists on each...

Michael Stokes Paulsen, a learned professor at the University of Minnesota, is a connoisseur of legal atrocities.  In a recent article in the Notre Dame Law Review, he tries to award the palm for “The Worst Constitutional Decision of All Time,” while he teaches a course on “Atrocious Cases.”  In the spirit of Dr. Paulsen’s...

Between 1975 and 1991, Lebanon suffered a bloody civil war that had massive repercussions regionally and globally.  Among other things, the hostage crisis in the 1980’s detonated the Iran-Contra crisis that almost destroyed the Reagan presidency.  Today, Lebanon is relatively peaceful, though under a repressive Syrian hegemony, and the whole story may seem of little...

The U.S. Capitol may be the most easily parodied symbol of America.  It is a gift to cartoonists, who can use the dome to symbolize graft, foolishness, hot air, scandal, self-seeking—everything, in fact, that can go wrong with a democratically elected legislature.  In the past few years, though, all that has changed utterly, and not,...

Nations define themselves by what they choose to remember.  The growing complexity of the United States is suggested by the ever-expanding volume of her historical memories, the range of groups and events that are commemorated, often in the name of multiculturalism.  Just look at the changing landscape of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., with...

Did anybody notice when Catholic Christianity ceased to be a religion in the United States?  Not when it stopped being a popular or even a permissible religion, but when it became simply a nonreligion?  I ask this because a recent court decision in California threatens to launch a legal revolution, in a way that would...

Having failed to establish much of a numerical presence in American society, the Episcopal Church, USA, succeeds in attracting attention by the continuing antics of a long parade of outrageous ecclesiastics.  In 2003, attention focused on the ordination of openly homosexual Vicky Imogene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire.  While I am reluctant to add...

Though America’s academics tend to the dyspeptic and hypercritical, on one day this past year, the campus mood was extraordinarily sunny.  This past June, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, declaring unconstitutional a law prohibiting homosexual conduct.  In the eyes of most academics, Lawrence represented an act...

Let me apologize.  A massive technical glitch, involving distortions of the fourth dimension, has prevented me from researching the column I intended to write about ethnic and racial profiling.  The column would have pointed out that many people who complain about profiling fail to define just what the term means.  They confuse blatant examples of...

Hold on, let me make sure my word processor is in full Cliché Mode: “The specter of Senator McCarthy walks again in contemporary America.”  Yes, that seems to be working properly. Particularly over the past couple of years, we’ve heard a great deal about McCarthy and McCarthyism.  The name surfaces whenever a government agency identifies...

Dear Editor: Attached please find the proposal for my latest book, Franklin Roosevelt: The Anti-christ Unmasked.  While I know some people will dismiss my thesis as foolish (or even “crazy”), the wave of recent books published by major presses like yours gives me reason to hope that the truth can at last be told. I...

Over the past decade, I have been involved in public debate over the problem of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, and that experience has taught me a great deal about the way people come to understand—or, rather, misunderstand—social problems.  My point is simple enough.  While some priests have undoubtedly been abusive, and a few have...

I would like to try my hand at detective stories, but I’m having some problems coming up with plausible conclusions.  Let me give you an example: I’m currently writing a book in which it’s obvious from the first page that the butler did it, and, as the book goes on, this conclusion is steadily reinforced...

When future generations write the history of the Roman Catholic Church in North America, the year 2002 will loom large, since the crisis over child abuse by priests and other clergy has had such a devastating effect on the faithful.  Yet these same events also deserve to be remembered as marking a remarkable new low...

It is easy enough to criticize the postmodern approaches that have become orthodoxy in humanities departments over the last couple of decades, but if postmodernism has taught us anything of value, it is that we are prisoners of our language.  The words we use constrain the expression of our thoughts.  Since postmodern academics tend to...