If you are looking for a reason to vote for Ralph Nader, the way both parties are handling the “gay marriage” issue should give you lots of data. John Kerry, when asked his opinion of “gay marriage,” looks like a …
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Category: News
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Cultural Suicide
Tonight, dear friends, is the eve of the Feast of Albertus Magnus. “Who he?” would be the response of most people who have gone to school since the end of World War II. Names like Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, …
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Cultural Suicide—May 2004
PERSPECTIVE
Cultural Suicide
by Thomas Fleming
Multiculturalism and Western self-loathing.
VIEWS
America in Europe, Europe in America
by Claude Polin
A shared disease.
Europe and America
by Srdja Trifkovic
Identity of decrepitude.
Dreams of Old Places
by Anthony Bukoski
A …
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Helping U.S. Manufacturing
The U.S. economy has shown strong signs of a turn-around. The President’s tax cuts have helped Americans turn an important corner. Many parts of our economy have regained their strength and have surged ahead with new vitality.
However, too many …
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Sodomy and the ELCA
“Gay marriage” may be on the political back burner for the moment, as Karl Rove is busy crafting phrases that will appease Christian-conservative Bush backers this fall while appealing to homosexual swing-voters with promises of “civil unions” (a.k.a. legalized “gay …
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JUST SAY NO!—April 2004
PERSPECTIVE
Tax Slavery
by Thomas Fleming
For a conquered people.
VIEWS
Revolting Taxation
by David Hartman
How federal taxation usurped federalism.
Tax-and-Spend Politics, Bush-style
by Doug Bandow
Outgunning the Democrats.
NEWS
High Marginal Tax Rates on Saving Hurt Us All…
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“Economic Law” versus Catholic Social Teaching, Part III
Part II) on Tom Woods’ article “The Trouble With Catholic Social Teaching” have generated much discussion, on this site and elsewhere—a healthy sign, it seems to me, that many conservative and traditionalist Catholics are trying to grapple with the …
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Straight Eye for the Queer Guy—March 2004
PERSPECTIVE
“Walk Like a Man, Talk Like a Man”
by Thomas Fleming
From Frodo to Elijah Wood.
VIEWS
Boys Will Be Boys
by Roger D. McGrath
(If given half a chance.)
“Gay Marriage”
by Hugh Barbour, O.Praem.
From Genesis to …
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“Walk Like a Man, Talk Like a Man”
My father believed in progress almost to the end of his life, when changing his mind would scarcely have made any difference. Like most liberals, he regarded traditional institutions as so many barriers to man’s continued improvement, and yet, like …
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(Con)fusion on the Right
For the last year or so, neoconservatism has been the subject of an astonishing number of discussions, examinations, and denunciations by the far and “mainstream” left as well as by the right, soft and not so soft. The reason for
…
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“Gay Marriage”
From Genesis to Revelation, by Way of the New Yorker
At the beginning of 1999 . . . my wife Cathleen Schine, announced that she no longer wanted to be married to me. She had to leave, she had to
…
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Mel and His Critics
Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ opens in theaters on Ash Wednesday (February 25). It is too early to tell whether Gibson has achieved his aim of creating an artistically compelling account of the last 12 hours of Christ’s …
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Beyond Nipplegate
Another Superbowl has come and gone, and this one was a real bodice ripper. While the game was one of the closest contests in the 38-year history of the quest for the Vince Lombardi Trophy, most of the press coverage …
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Carl F.H. Henry, R.I.P.
The greatest intellectual leader of the evangelical movement of the 20th century quietly passed away in his sleep at a retirement home in Watertown, Wisconsin, on December 7, at the age of 90. A scholar with the heart of an …
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Charity Begins at Church
December can be a difficult month for American Christians, forced to look on passively as their sacred holy days are turned into a generic “holiday season.” The First Sunday in Advent has been replaced by “Black Friday,” the day on …
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Enthusiastic Democracy
Less than a month after President Bush unbosomed his latest reflections on political philosophy before the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, one of the latest victims of his administration’s crusade to foster the “global democratic revolution” in Iraq was …
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Masters of the Universe—February 2004
PERSPECTIVE
Charity Begins at Church
by Thomas Fleming
Christian welfare.
VIEWS
George Soros, Postmodern Villain
by Srdja Trifkovic
NGO’s, behold your god.
The Church and NGO’s
by Hugh Barbour, O.Praem.
“Shall I crucify your king?”
NEWS
What Empire?
by Sean …
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The Cabal Strikes Back
Ever since the exposure in the mainstream media last year of the neoconservatives as a fifth column that engineered the present boondoggle in Iraq, dragged the United States into a foreign war for the transparent benefit of Israel, and concocted
…
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Defining Left and Right—January 2004
PERSPECTIVE
The Conservative Search for Order
by Thomas Fleming
The triumph of the ancien régime.
VIEWS
The Education of George Bush
by Chilton Williamson, Jr.
Not by George Bush.
Consumption Taxes, Property Rights
by Scott P. Richert
Notes toward …
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The Conservative Search for Order
The terms liberal and conservative (nearly always paired in that descending order) are now so confused as to be almost entirely useless. Originally, liberal was used to denote the ideology that aimed at the liberation of human individuals from the …
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The Education of George Bush
I used to wonder at the deep melancholia to which Evelyn Waugh was subject in the last years of his life. “Papa,” his eldest daughter Meg would plead with him, “why are you so unhappy?” Waugh’s misery, verging on despair,
…
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Hating Babies, Hating God
When I sat down to write this article, Google reminded me that, when it comes to the issue of contraception, the stakes are very high. To check the date of publication of Dr. Charles Provan’s important work The Bible and
…
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The Consent of the Governed Revisited
Americans have lost the habit of constitutional government. Judges hand down commands derived from their own personal revelation, in the teeth of law and majority rule, and are tamely obeyed by millions. A President, recently sworn to uphold the Constitution
…
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Remember From Whence Thou Art Fallen
“Forget about Europe!” shriek the neo-isolationists. “Only Britain and Israel matter. We saved the French twice in one century, and they still think they have a right to follow their own foreign policy.” Americans used to have somewhat longer memories.
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Divided Loyalties—April 2003
PERSPECTIVE
Remember From When Thou Art Fallen
by Thomas Fleming
Lessons from Old Europe.
VIEWS
“You Have To Commit!”
by Roger D. McGrath
The problem of dual citizenship.
A Nation of (Proletarian) Immigrants
by Chilton Williamson, Jr.
Mexicans, here and …
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Same Old Song and Dance
President George W. Bush painted a pleasingly simple black-and-white picture of the world in his State of the Union Address on January 28. It was a choreographed political speech with several statements of strong intent rather than a factual assessment
…
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Apocalypse Now
“If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”
American evangelicals, according to former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “are the Israelis’ best friend in the whole world.” In return, they dubbed him “the Ronald Reagan of Israel.”
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Night Thoughts for the Middle-Aged
About Schmidt
Produced and distributed by New Line Cinema
Directed by Alexander Payne
Screenplay by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor from Louis Begley’s novel
The Quiet American
Produced by William Harberg and Stefen Ahrenberg
Directed by Phillip Noyce and Robert
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The Grinch Who Stole Kwanza
The political plum on last year’s Christmas pudding, so to speak, was l’affaire Lott, which, erupting at the birthday party for retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond in early December and continuing until Trent Lott’s less-than-voluntary resignation as Senate majority leader three
…
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By Their Clichés, You Shall Know Them
At least since September 11, the buzz-phrase for every investigation has been “connect the dots.” Republicans were highly imaginative in connecting the dots between Afghanistan and Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, while Democrats preferred connecting the dots
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Small Is Beautiful
The City of Rockford is broke. That does not mean, of course, that it is insolvent or bankrupt; after all, it is rather hard for any government with the power to tax to end up in that position (though
…
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Target: Iraq—February 2003
Perspective
Imperialism From the Cradle to the Grave
by Thomas Fleming
Mesopotamia, the graveyard of empire.
Views
Our Yesterday and Your Today
by Michael Stenton
A tale of two empires.
The Justification for War
by Srdja Trifkovic
It’s the oil …
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Taking the Kwannukah Out of Christmas
A Christ-free Christmas, which has been the goal of the American ruling elite since before World War II, has finally, at the dawn of the new millennium, been reached. At corporate “holiday parties,” references to Christmas are declared “in poor …
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Athens and Jerusalem—April 1996
Vol. 20, No. 4—April 1996
PERSPECTIVE
Athens and Jerusalem
by Thomas Fleming
Where neopagans go wrong.
VIEWS
With the Nietzscheans of Naumburg
by Curtis Cate
Mediocrity and the West.
Ancient Greek Religion
by Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones
How it differed from …