We can cut the deficit in half if Congress “is willing to make tough choices,” says President George W. Bush. We are doomed. Not that President Bush intends to make tough choices: His policy is borrow and borrow, spend and spend. When Bush took the oath of office, the Congressional Budget Office projected a cumulative...
The personal saving rate in the United States is alarmingly low. The average person saved about nine percent of his disposable (after-tax) personal income in the mid-1980’s, about five percent in the mid-90’s, but only about two percent so far this decade. These very low rates of saving restrict investment, which, in turn, considerably retards...
For over a decade, the Roman Catholic Church has been in deep crisis over the issue of sexual abuse by Her clergy. That some priests had molested or raped children was indisputable, but just how many had offended? The numbers are more than a simple matter of statistical curiosity. While everyone agrees that “one case...
On April 15, U.S. taxpayers will pay the last installment on their duty to government for 2003. The bill for federal, state, and local government totaled a staggering $3.3 trillion, of which one out of every seven dollars was in the form of “buy now, pay later” deficits, principally the federal one. Federal spending accounted...
More than three years have passed since then-treasury secretary nominee Paul A. O’Neill made one of the first of his now-famous public exposés. To the smug applause of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee and muffled chortling, he boldly exclaimed during confirmation testimony that he was not planning simply to reform the corporate income tax; he...
Homosexuality is either genetically or environmentally determined. Environmental influences are either intrauterine or postnatal. Behold the universe of possibilities! Sexual orientation probably results from the interaction of environment and genetic predisposition, but science, so far, explains only a little. Voluntarily choosing homosexuality cannot be discounted, although the more deeply embedded in genetics or early experience...
When my daughter, Katie, was in the fifth grade, her grammar school conducted a week-long series of tests inspired by the White House to promote physical fitness for schoolchildren. Children who completed the tests with passing marks—the standards for passing were not high—received a certificate from the President. The kids ran, jumped, and stretched, and...
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s 4-3 ruling, in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, that the Massachusetts constitution—if not the federal Constitution—requires the state to allow same-sex marriages has thrown nearly everyone into a good old-fashioned tizzy. The Massachusetts court somehow discovered that it was “arbitrary” and “capricious” and therefore legally impermissible to limit the...
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 get away for a new life, for she had mysteriously changed in her affections ....
A closed-door meeting of nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s) was held on January 16, 2003, in Washington, D.C., to consider how to “reform” “the global financial architecture” in order “to stabilize the world economy, reduce poverty and inequality, uphold fundamental rights, and protect the environment.” This is socialist double-talk for imposing a global tax on America. The real...
One tangible effect of all of our recent wars has been a marked proliferation of U.S. military bases around the world. Since the end of the Cold War, the number of countries that host American bases has increased by almost one third, to over 60. Whether this proliferation has been a serendipitous result of unavoidable...
George Soros was born in Budapest in 1930 but, today, spends most of his time in New York City. Not much is known about his early years. He is the only eminent “holocaust survivor” who has been accused of collaboration with the Nazis. In 1947, he managed to sneak through the Iron Curtain, and, the...
“I hope a stamp from this place works for America.” So reads a postcard that my mother, as a girl of 20, sent her parents from the Vatican in 1950. I remember teasing her about her doubts when, as an undergraduate, I unearthed the postcard in my grandmother’s attic three decades later. When I cockily suggested...
Few would challenge the observation that the level of anti-American sentiments has been rising in Europe in recent months and has reached an historic high during the war against Iraq. At the same time, the attitudes among Arabs toward the E.U. states—with the exception of Great Britain—and, in particular, toward France have been more favorable. ...
In commenting on the reaction to Rush Limbaugh’s drug addiction, fellow radio talk-show host Michael Savage used the biblical quotation, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” When antidrug warrior Limbaugh was exposed as a subject of a criminal drug investigation, however, it was inevitable that the self-described “epitome of morality and...
“For if property is secure, it may be the means to an end, whereas if it is insecure it will be the end itself.” —Paul Elmer More Property, Merriam Webster’s tells us, is “something owned or possessed” and specifically a piece of real estate; or “the exclusive right to possess, enjoy, and dispose of a...
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, struck me as unwarranted. He had, after all, great literary success, a large and creditable family,...
In classical times, the city was a sacred place, bounded by a wall, in which civilization occurred, and to live outside the city was to be uncivilized. To be the founder of a city was to be god-like, so that there are at least six Alexandrias, the work of Alexander the Great; several Antiochs, named...
American national security is a fundamental responsibility of the U.S. government. Throughout the history of the United States, from the founding of the republic to the 21st century, Americans have debated the best way to meet this responsibility. For much of that history, the sound advice of President Washington to “steer clear of permanent alliances”...
California conservatives know that the unexpectedly convincing victory of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the October 7 recall race cannot possibly result in any serious changes in the governance of this increasingly nutty state, yet most people I talk to are quietly pleased at the turn of events. This is not naiveté but the result of...
At the end of Hollywood’s remake of The Scarlet Letter, Demi Moore, playing Hester, rides out of town with Dimmesdale to start their new life together as happy adulterers in the Carolinas. They must have been planning to take the Indian version of the Interstate Highway System to get there, because Salem in the 17th...
On February 7, the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Public Integrity revealed that it had obtained a draft of proposed legislation, officially entitled “The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003” but referred to unofficially, as it made the rounds of Capitol Hill, as “PATRIOT II.” CPI made a scanned copy of the act available on its...
Contrary to the claims of a number of mid-20th-century historians of the Tudor age, the Tudors and their servants did not invent the modern state. The honor of, or blame for, that achievement properly belongs to the late 17th-century, the age of William III and the period following the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, when a...
“By their fruits, ye shall know them,” our Lord once warned. Too often, however, when it comes to the promise of power or the allure of success, Christians are easily swayed to align themselves with those who cry, “Lord, Lord,” yet are, in Jesus’ words, the “workers of iniquity.” “Do men gather grapes of thorns,...
“E’ la morte di una civilizazione.” (“It’s the death of a civilization.”) These were the words of the Vatican official who told me the following sad story at the beginning of September. It seems that, after the heat wave of August, hundreds of the cadavers of the lonely urban old folks of France were being...
Australia has something under 20 million people living on a continent as large as the continental United States. It is known as a place where an overseas visitor might, in some regions at least, find a frontier atmosphere. There has been good historical reason for that. Australia has an Outback, unique wildlife, and a legendary spirit...
If you are a woman and you worry about your safety, you are not alone. A recent Gallup poll reported that six of ten women in America are afraid to walk in their own neighborhoods or go out alone at night. For these women, the feeling of an ever-present threat of violence effectively denies them...
I do not believe in unilateral disarmament: not for the nation; not for our citizens. Neither did the Founding Fathers. They were students of history, especially of classical antiquity. They knew the history of the Greek city-states and Rome as well as they knew the history of the American colonies. This led them to conclude that...
While it allows many controls, the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees to every responsible, law-abiding adult the right to own firearms. To the political philosophers who influenced our Founding Fathers, arms possession by good people was crucial to a healthy society. Thomas Paine foreshadowed current gun-lobby slogans (e.g., “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws...
The great American universities are, on the whole, the best in the world, and any European who comes to teach in them is sure to be impressed by the liveliness and enthusiasm of many American students. However, there are drawbacks that are bound to be noticed quickly by someone whose academic subject is the literature...
No one really owns the copyright to the word classical. Even in the realm of education, many are pursuing distinct objectives, and all with a legitimate claim to that word. From neoclassicists to Thomists to classical Protestants, the word readily fits. So, in discussing the state of classical and Christian education, I need to take...
Sophocles’ Antigone is a drama about a young woman who defies orders because she believes them to be wrong. Her uncle Creon, the ruler of Thebes, had proclaimed that no one was to give the rites of burial to Antigone’s brother Polynices, because he besieged his own homeland. However, Greek religious custom unambiguously requires that...
The opening sentence of Herodotus’ Histories, which recount the wars fought between Greece and Persia in the early fifth century B.C., unrolls like a long musical phrase rising to its Homeric crescendo and then dying away into momentary quiet: Herodotus of Halicarnassus here publishes the results of his research, in order that the actions performed...
Are the Dixie Chicks traitors? Lead singer Natalie Maines boldly announced at a concert in London, just before the beginning of our recent armed incursion into Iraq, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” The firestorm that ensued involved coordinated radio boycotts of the Chicks’ music...
“Remember Pearl Harbor” was a phrase familiar to everyone I knew growing up. In a sneak attack, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor! This was a dastardly, despicable act. A sneak attack! The politically correct today like to say “surprise attack,” but that is something done in time of war. The Japanese attacked without a declaration...
In a small café in Belgrade nearly 20 years ago, I had a drink with a young man named Michael. He was an architect and, like many people I met there, was no friend of the Soviet regime, which was the subject of our conversation. I had just visited the Soviet Union, passing through Belgrade...
Augustin Cochin, born in 1876, died prematurely—as did so many other French intellectuals of his generation—killed at the front in 1916. He did have enough time, however, to carry out between 1909 and 1914 a series of in-depth studies, the fruit of his archival research on the sequence of preparatory elections for the Estates-General in...
The question of sovereignty reappeared at the end of the Middle Ages, when many began to ask not only what is the best possible form of government, or what should be the purpose of the authority held by political power, but what is the political bond that unites a people to its government? That is...
Taken as a whole, the French Revolution, like any other historical event, may be understood in many ways. Excluding material or circumstantial causes, I see it as a sort of drama, each act of which is performed by characters—sometimes the same, sometimes different—who all, driven by some idea, strive to achieve a certain goal that...
Edmund Burke records that two thirds of the Anglican clergy initially supported the French Revolution. He wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France to show that the Revolution was not merely an understandable effort at reform but an entirely unique intellectual and spiritual pathology. A language for this disorder of the soul did not exist...
People often ask me, “What is wrong with our priests?” or “Why don’t our bishops say more about abortion? They seem to have no trouble whatsoever speaking out quite freely when it comes to war or capital punishment.” On the surface, this is disturbing. I find it even more disturbing, however, that I, a layman,...
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 Birth Control, I typed “Charles, Provan, Bible, Birth Control” into the mother of all search...
On one bright, cold January day in the early 80’s I stood with a group of college students from North Carolina after the annual March for Life in Washington as we were received by Sen. Jesse Helms. He greeted us kindly and then regaled us with a few stories with that combination of gentility and...
The impact of judicial review has been profound and often detrimental to the rule of law in America. Judicial review is the power of the courts to void federal, state, and local laws and ordinances that they have determined to be incompatible with the U.S. Constitution. Certainly, national and state legislatures have passed laws that...
Human liberty has two distinguishable but inseparable dimensions: the liberty of the individual to act according to his own reason and the corporate liberty of a moral community to pursue a vision of the good lived out in institutions and traditions that bind generations. These two dimensions are necessarily in tension. The individual’s autonomy can...
One way of telling the story of American culture and politics in the second half of the 20th century is to present it as a revolt against the group of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males who dominated the country from the time of William Bradford to that of Dwight David Eisenhower. This narrative helps to explain...
No metaphor in American letters has had a greater influence on law and policy than Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation between Church and State.” Many Americans accept it as a pithy description of the constitutionally prescribed Church-State arrangement, and it has become the locus classicus of the notion that the First Amendment separated religion and...
There are probably as many theories of nationalism as there are nationalisms. Quite apart from the often extremely complex typologies used to classify nationalism, there are two principal definitions worth noting. In the first sense, nationalism is defined as a more or less voluntary aspiration of a people to establish itself as a nation, whether...
One of many reasons conservatives are so often at a disadvantage in political discussions is that we do not see why there should be any discussion, since we do not recognize a problem open to discussion at all. Take, for instance, assimilation. If you do not believe the United States should be accepting immigrants in...
We were on the practice field preparing for a team that ran the option. Our scout team was running the upcoming opponent’s offense. To our surprise, the scouts executed the option perfectly, which left our outside linebacker frozen halfway between the quarterback, cutting off the block of a tight end, and a trailing halfback arcing...