(Display Name not set)May 2006 Archives

Clark Stooksbury notices that the excitable lads over at Contra-Crunchy are engaging in creative conspiracy-mongering over why the title for the paperback edition of "Crunchy Cons" is going to be a lot shorter. Clark sensibly suggests an alternative explanation: "How about this -- the original subtitle was simply way too long?"

That, I'm afraid, is the correct answer. The original subtitle was there in part as a marketing decision; few people would have known what a "crunchy conservative" was, but putting words like "organic," "Evangelical," "gun-loving," "homeschooling," etc. on the cover telegraphed important information to the casual browser. We can afford to make it a lot shorter on the paperback version (which will now be subtitled, "The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots," and will have a new chapter too).

Caleb Stegall appreciates this passage from John Lukacs:

[T]he main question of the twenty-first century, the main problem, perhaps especially for Americans: the necessity to rethink the entire meaning of “progress.” … Our “conservatives” care not for the conservation of the country, and of the American land. Yet: more than tax policy, more than education policy, more than national security policy, more even than the painful abortion issue, this is where the main division is beginning to occur. So it is in my township. It is the division between people who want to develop, to build up, to pour more concrete and cement on the land, and those who wish to protect the landscape (and the cityscape) where they live. (Landscape, not wilderness. The propagation of wilderness, the exaltation of “nature” against all human presence, is the fatal shortcoming of many American environmentalists.) Beneath that division I sometimes detect the division between a true love of one’s country and the rhetorical love of symbols such as the flag, in the name of a mythical people; between the ideals of American domesticity and those of a near-nomadic life; between privacy and publicity; between the ideals of stability and those of endless “growth.”

The "near-nomadic life" is something we've all come to accept as an inevitable part of life in the modern economy. Again, going back to a theme in our California discussion, is this nomadism a liberation, or a prison? When I was in California visiting with P., we talked about how our fathers could barely conceive of leaving their hometowns behind ... and yet both of us couldn't wait to do so. It was liberation for us to be free to follow our own dreams of career, of personal fulfillment, and so forth. And yet, what have we (that is, we Americans) lost in the process? Is it possible to regain it? Are we prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to regain it? Or is that even possible? That is, has the economy been built on a nomadic culture, such that many Americans have no choice but to be a nomad if they want to stay gainfully employed?

Who is the real conservative: the person who figures out a way to dig in and stay, or the person who leaves in search of opportunity (financial or otherwise)? And whether they vote Democratic or Republican, does that ultimately matter?

I talked to a colleague this morning, also a non-Texan by birth, who said that most of his friends aren't Dallas natives, and that very few of them have an abiding interest in what goes on in this city beyond their own narrow circles. He was talking about this as a modern condition for more and more of us. We aren't encouraged to think about the wider community, or to set down roots, because either we look forward to the next job that will cause us to uproot ourselves, or we work in a sector of the economy that will probably force us to uproot ourselves and move on as the economy shifts.

This colleague, who is non-religious, pointed to how in the northern Dallas suburbs, all these rootless folks are gravitating to their churches for a sense of community. Which is normal, and natural. And, if you think about it, Benedictine. But it doesn't bode well for the future of communities and communitarianism, at least in the way we've understood them till now.

Here's that NYTimes Magazine piece from last year about how megachurches are providing a sense of community -- the only sense of community -- for all the transplants moving to the new exurbs. Key quotes:

This is not the megachurch of the 1980's, where baby boomers turned up once a week to passively take in a 45-minute service -- ''religion as accessory,'' as Tom Beaudoin, an assistant professor of religion at Santa Clara University, has described the phenomenon. In a sense, the new breed of megachurches has more in common with the frontier churches of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which served as gathering places for pioneers who had gone West in search of opportunity. In sprawling, decentralized exurbs like Surprise, where housing developments rarely include porches, parks, stoops or any of the other features that have historically brought neighbors together, megachurches provide a locus for community. In many places, they operate almost like surrogate governments, offering residents day care, athletic facilities, counseling, even schools. Taking the comparison one step further, there's even a tax, albeit a voluntary one: members are encouraged to tithe, or donate 10 percent of their income to the church. At Radiant, McFarland says, about one-quarter of the members do.

It's hard to imagine a more effective method of religious outreach, which is, after all, the goal of evangelical churches like Radiant. As McFarland told me: ''I'm just trying to get people in the door.'' To that end, Radiant has designed its new 55,000-square-foot church to look more like an overgrown ski lodge than a place of worship. ''For people who haven't been to church, or went once and got burned, the anxiety level is really high,'' McFarland says. '' 'Is it going to be freaky? Is it going to be like what I see on Christian TV?' So we've tried to bring down those visual cues that scare people off.''

In fact, everything about Radiant has been designed to lure people away from other potential weekend destinations. The foyer includes five 50-inch plasma-screen televisions, a bookstore and a cafe with a Starbucks-trained staff making espresso drinks. (For those who are in a rush, there's a drive-through latte stand outside the main building.) Krispy Kreme doughnuts are served at every service. (Radiant's annual Krispy Kreme budget is $16,000). For kids there are Xboxes (10 for fifth and sixth graders alone). ''That's what they're into,'' McFarland says. ''You can either fight it or say they're a tool for God.'' The dress code is lax: most worshipers wear jeans, sweats or shorts, depending on the season. (''At my old church, we thought we were casual because we wore mock turtlenecks under our blazers,'' Radiant's youth pastor told me.) Even the baptism pool is seductive: Radiant keeps the water at 101 degrees. ''We've had people say, 'No, leave me under,' '' McFarland says. ''It's like taking a dip in a spa.''

Now, let me be clear: this sort of place makes me crazy. I believe it turns religion into a consumer product, a sideshow, you name it. A baptismal pool like a spa? Vomit. I wouldn't want to go to this place.

But I cannot dismiss it, because churches like this are responding to something people are hungry for: real community. You can't have real community without a shared moral vision, which is what these folks, whatever their flaws, do seem to have. I am wondering if this is what Alasdair Macintyre had in mind when he said that our fragmenting American society, where the moral center is no longer holding, would produce people who would pioneer new forms of community? It must be.

Is this a bad thing? If so, how could it be made a better thing?

The Democrats aren't sure what to do next. Some say the party should hang back and let the Republicans hang themselves -- in other words, run simply on "Had enough?" Others say the party should press forward with a bold agenda, to give the voters something to vote for instead of relying on them voting against the GOP.

Me, I'd like to see them take some bold steps instead of this tactical nickel-and-diming. But I gotta say, when the public faces of your party are Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean and Hillary Rodham Clinton, you've got a long way to go to sell any agenda.

In the latest California thread below, Paddy O hits on something important in defining the California (and probably the Western) sensibility, versus the Eastern and Southern one:

Even as you feel anxiety about having nothing permanent I, as a Californian, feel that to be an adventure.

Americans have a unity, but we in different regions are still very different. The Western man is not the Southern man even if we watch the same television shows and pray to the same God.

Well said. I mentioned to a colleague of mine yesterday (she's a Kansan) how I had the feeling in California that "anything could happen." She said, "Why is that a bad thing?" Which is, I guess, Paddy O's point. Californians, broadly speaking, like the fact that they can be anything they want to be in that lovely, free country. For somebody like me, that "lightness of being" is almost unbearable. A friend of mine, the Canadian writer Douglas Coupland, explained to me about 15 years ago that the people who built his native Vancouver were Canadians who ran away from an Eastern establishment that they considered oppressive. He used his own parents as an example of this, and until then, I had never quite thought of it that way with regard to our own West Coast, and its culture.

A reader in Dallas wrote to say that I got Joan Didion all wrong, that she wasn't saying California is unlike the rest of us, but that it is more like us than we are ourselves. What he meant -- and this is a point I agree with -- is that Californians are the ultimate Americans, if you conceive of Americans as people who left behind the weight and constraints of the Old World to create a world in their own image. I didn't mean to give the impression that I thought otherwise in my discussion of Didion. I do believe, as the reader says, that California is the ultimate result of the American experiment, which is why trends that start there manage to roll so easily through the rest of the country: we are culturally prepared for it by virtue of the fact that we are Americans, and all the descendants of restless people.

William Saletan says we ought to quit killing the meat we eat, and instead grow our London broils in test tubes. Reader Jason, who brought this to my attention, writes, "This guy, with ideas like this and his marriage 'solutions'...

Here's a pretty great graphic presentation from the Times-Picayune showing how the flooding of New Orleans unfolded....

Today I received a wonderful e-mail from an old friend who'd read "Crunchy Cons" and sent word that he'd very much enjoyed it. The friend is Father Winthrop Brainerd, the very fine Catholic priest who instructed me in the faith...

I've been telling various conservative friends about how strange I found my reaction to northern California: that it was extraordinarily beautiful and welcoming and easygoing, but that I felt unnerved by it, as if there were something ... unhinged about...

In England, they've been killing babies in their mother's wombs for the crime of having minor, easily correctible birth defects. If the mother should have the right to abort her child up until the point of birth, as she does...

Ah, so, back from the temporal sunshine of a spotless vacation, and once again into the real-world breach. What the heck is going on in the Catholic Diocese of Orange? This is a place where the idea of "mortal sin"...

I know I'm late to the story, but the reaction of the Republican-led Congress to the FBI's raid on Rep. William Jefferson's office is flat-out berserk. This Congress has rolled over like a neutered golden lab in the face of...

I so admire my friend P., an immigrant who is living out his dream of starting and running his own business in Silicon Valley. America was built on the vision and drive of men like him. We talked at length...

Well, that was great. Got back last night from our vacation to northern California. Texas never felt so flat nor so hot. The odd thing, at least to me, is that northern California is just about perfect as far as...

Speaking of staying in touch with reality, it is impossible to be in that part of the country, especially in Silicon Valley, without noticing how incredibly prosperous it is. It really does lend the place a sense of unreality --...

As I often tell friends, I have every expectation of gaining heaven sooner than I otherwise might have, because I live through the Purgatory of summer in Dallas. Did you know it hit 100 degrees two days this past April?...

On the agenda today: 1) Go to the Muir Woods; 2) Go to a winery in Sonoma where they promise to show kids how wineries work; 3) visit a cheese-making shop for same; 4) stop at a Russian Orthodox cathedral...

The trajectory of Evangelicals in America for the past 150 years has been a movement from the center to the periphery, says Hunter. So much of the religious politics of the 20th century, from Scopes to the present, has been...

OK, so the conference just ended, and Your Working Boy is out of here, headed back to Dallas. I'll be in the Bay Area for the rest of the week, so blogging will be light (okay, lightish), but colorful, I'm...

Over at Reactionary Radicals, Clark Stooksbury, who reviewed "Crunchy Cons", mentions Walker Percy's setting novels in his fictional "Feliciana Parish." Percy's Feliciana was in real life West Feliciana Parish, which is my home parish. Beautiful place, just beautiful, and full...

The last session begins with two sociologists on opposite sides of the culture war question -- that is, the question "Is there a culture war?" Alan Wolfe says no, there's not; James Davison Hunter says yes there is. Hunter is...

In his response, Alan Wolfe says that Hunter doesn't give as much attention as he ought to surveys, to how ordinary people think about the world and their culture. In his book "One Nation, After All," Wolfe argued that the...

The culture war is fueled by radically different concepts of authority. I asked about the Alasdair MacIntyre view that you cannot have a cohesive society without a commonly shared morality. Given the radical individualism of American society, are we headed...

Hunter says that because Evangelicalism is more and more defined by emotional experience, a nascent Evangelical political progressivism is easy to foresee. You can see this especially among the emerging Evangelical elites. Says Hunter, "Most of the Evangelicals I know...

Hunter says cultural conservatives, like everyone else, has sought political solutions to the issues that trouble them the most: abortion, gay marriage, school issues, etc. "It is precisely because they have chosen a political strategy, which is in effect a...

John Siniff of USA Today asks Hunter to expand on his statement that what conservatives have gained in politics they've lost culturally.Hunter says Evangelicals have been playing a defensive game in this conflict. Their defense has been a political one....

Alan Wolfe is passionate this morning about the inappropriateness of using the term "war" to describe American politics. The language itself is hyperbolic, he says, and forces us to conceive of normal politics as being at each other's throats. Wolfe...

The question is put to Wolfe: Why would you think that conservative Protestants, having spent 40 years building a powerful political machine, would abandon it?Because, says Wolfe, its leaders are having an epiphany about what their role as Christians in...

You must read Spengler's review of the Melanie Phillips' book "Londonistan". I have not yet read this book, but I respect Phillips enormously for having the courage to try to see things clearly, and not to do the usual Western...

Ross Douthat wonders:I'm curious about why so many sensitive, highly-intelligent writers - for whose opinions, on most questions, I have the utmost respect - seem to be so untroubled by America's completely-permissive approach to abortion law. I can understand why...

I brought up to Bill Galston just now Maggie Gallagher's recent Weekly Standard cover story, in which she reports on how legal scholars on both sides of the gay marriage debate foresee a coming train wreck between religious liberty and...

Galston says that the following events tell the story about the role of religion in American politics over the past 50 years or so:1. The fall of the informal Protestant establishment. Started in 1960 with election of a Catholic president,...

In a discussion just now of the use of the word "fundamentalism," scholar James Davison Hunter said that there's an important distinction between fundamentalism and orthodoxy. "Fundamentalism, all fundamentalism, is orthodoxy in confrontation with modernity," Hunter said. And all fundamentalists...

An editor said that he's had several writers who have expressed an unwillingness to write about this or that aspect of Islam out of fear. The editor asked Prof. Cook if his unwillingness to discuss certain topics this morning without...

Bill Galston, a longtime Democratic strategist, says that the Democratic Party's behavior in the two recent SCOTUS nominations was "close to disgraceful," especially on the Alito nomination. "That, quite frankly, represents the Democratic Party at its worst."There is an increasing...

William Galston began his question by saying that among Jews, although Moses is the highest and most nearly perfect prophet, there are still extensive discussions of his errors and flaws. I think it is a matter of some cultural significance...

The important thing to get, Cook says, is that Muhammad created both a religion and a state. What Muhammad did was get the Arabs together on the same page. If you could do that, you could send them out to...

Continuing the liveblogging ...Galston says he thinks there are a rising number of religious folks, liberal and conservative, are disappointed and fed up with the way we talk about moral values in our politics. He says,"The first political leader who...

Greetings from Key West, where as I blogged last night, I'm attending a conference sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. We're about to hear a lecture on what Muhammad accomplished and why it matters. The lecturer...

Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution is now presenting a paper on the topic of "Religion, Moral Values and the Democratic Party." His first topic: What happened with American religion and the 2004 presidential election? Unsurprisingly, the exit data show...

Someone asked Cook about the role of jihad in Islam, framing it as the question,, "Is Islam inherently violent?" His answer, in effect, was, "Yes, but you can minimize or maximize the degree to which it is violent." He explained...

"We don't know what we'd do without him - he's so adored," says the mother of a Down Syndrome child in England, who was encouraged to abort her baby at 35 weeks after his handicap was detected. The story makes...

Every time I hear someone lamenting the faithlessness of Europe, versus the supposed faithfulness of America, I think, "It ain't necessarily so." In that vein, Tim Rutten, the media columnist for the LA Times, speaks the truth. Excerpt from his...

See, this is why the Religious Left is not about to amount to anything. These folks are so sold out to pluralism that they cannot affirm anything as true, except the dogma that "the Religious Right is wrong." Good luck...

I don't know about you, but when I think "religion and public life," the first words that come to mind after that are "Key West." Ahem. Which makes it fitting that I'm writing tonight from Key West, where the Pew...

It occurred to me last evening that when my father, who is 71, dies, an entire body of knowledge will die with him. He grew up in the rural South during the Great Depression. He can do any practical thing....

Reader Conor just sent in this bit from John Allen's latest Word from Rome column (which I can't link to with the version of Blogger software I'm working with this morning). It has to do with the Catholic philosopher David...

Remember the claims made by the Saudis that they'd cleaned up their wicked textbooks? Freedom House's Nina Shea, writing in today's WaPo, says it isn't true. Here are examples of what they found in recent, supposedly cleaned-up, Saudi textbooks:"As cited...

I got in not long ago from a dinner for the 10th anniversary of Spence Publishing here in Dallas. They had a panel of Spence authors who took questions from the audience. Among the panelists were Phyllis Schlafly, J. Budziszewski,...

Leave it to the berserker left to remind you....

The Iranian parliament has reportedly voted to force Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians to wear colored badges on their clothing, so Muslims can identify them. Bernard Lewis is right: it is 1938 again. We need a Churchill, and everywhere we see...

If you're a CC blog reader in Dallas, and have nothing better to do on Saturday afternoon except be harangued by a shiftless scribe, stop by the Borders Bookstore on Lovers Lane at Greenville, and see Your Working Boy talk...

Here's the Vatican statement on the Maciel case. Check out this intriguing tidbit from John Allen's story:A senior Vatican official told NCR that the decisive break came only in late 2004, when a number of additional accusers came forward. Prior...

Andrew Sullivan says:...the true conservative today is someone who defends the social architecture of liberal society, rather than pining for a past that never was in order to buttress prejudices that merely mask bigotry. That's the distinction between conservatism and...

Richard John Neuhaus's judgment in the Maciel affair may have been unsound -- he claimed with "moral certainty" that the charges against Maciel were false and malicious; if the Vatican's statement tomorrow is as reported, he owes an apology to...

Julie Myers heads the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She got into a situation the other night on Hugh Hewitt's radio program after the president's speech. Hugh pressed her on the administration's view on a border fence. She...

Harsh but prophetic words for President Bush and the GOP Congress from Peggy Noonan this morning:The disinterest in the White House and among congressional Republicans in establishing authority on America's borders is so amazing--the people want it, the age of...

A new study indicates that the Roman Catholic Church is rebounding from the scandal. Catholics have not left the Church, stopped attending Mass, or stopped donating to their parishes. Satisfaction with church leadership "has now largely rebounded to prescandal levels,"...

The Vatican has ruled on the case involving Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legion of Christ religious order, and the news is not good for Maciel and his supporters. The official Vatican statement will come tomorrow, but...

No kidding, A.N. Wilson, of all people, says so! Scroll down to read it. Excerpt:The factual absurdities could all be dismissed by anyone with the smallest knowledge of history. What is harder to dismiss is the blatant anti-Catholicism, which is...

The feddle gummint is on the hunt for wacko polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs. Here's a piece Naomi Schaefer Riley did for the Dallas Morning News last year on why the Jeffs sect compound is a clear and present danger...

Read this e-mail exchange between a military columnist and Rumsfeld spokesman Larry Di Rita. This is one for the history books. Seriously....

The Mexican government says if any National Guard troops get involved in detaining its citizens who are in the United States illegally, it will file lawsuits in American courts. The nerve! They can't build the wall fast enough, if you...

So say the Cannes critics. Permit me to get in touch with my inner Nelson Muntz and say "HA-ha!" Barbara Nicolosi is entitled to a paroxysm of Schadenfreude. But you know, people will still go see this thing, and the...

Andrew Sullivan speculates as to why conservatives are so dispirited, and have given up hope on Bush. For me, the precise moment was "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." The Harriet Miers debacle followed quickly thereafter, which made...

I am so glad this brave woman is coming to America! Here's her farewell speech to the lower house of the Dutch parliament. Excerpt:I am therefore preparing to leave Holland. But the questions for our society remain. The future of...

Christopher Lasch:The hope of a new politics ... lies in rejecting conventional political categories and redefining the terms of political debate. The idea of a “left” has outlived its historical time and needs to be decently buried, along with the...

A new survey of "Da Vinci Code" readers in Britain finds that reading the book dramatically affects the core Christian beliefs of most. This is diametrically opposed to the Barna findings in the US. Leaving aside the methodology questions, how...

Over at the Reactionary Radicals blog, John Zmirak makes an enthusiastic case for the value and diversity of localism in New York City, his hometown. John's bit made me think about my small hometown, and how growing up there in...

This is making the blogosphere rounds. It's a list of definitions of racism taken from the Seattle public schools website. Presumable it defines school policy. It's bizarre, and more than a little scary. For example, according to the Seattle Public...

Dan Larison identifies an astonishing quote from GOP Rep. Mike Pence, from a recent National Journal story:"We may be the party of Big Government, but they are the party of Really Big Government." Pathetic doesn't even begin to describe this....

There's an Internet game now that allows players to act out the roles of Columbine massacre villains Klebold and Harris. The Rocky Mountain News writes:"We live in a culture of death," said Brian Rohrbough, whose son, Dan, was gunned down...

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington will be moving on soon, and the Vatican has named Bishop Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh to replace him. Good, I guess. There was a time when I would have had a lot to say about...

True!...

As part of a Mother's Day package that ran in yesterday's DMN, a colleague paid tribute to his working-mom wife, and I paid tribute to my stay-at-home-mom wife....

TMatt has a story of deadly violence inflicted on Pentecostal broadcasters in Kenya by unidentified gunmen angry over a program that featured a convert from Islam to Christianity who was on the air comparing the Bible to the Quran. The...

A new survey by the Barna Group finds that "The Da Vinci Code" has become the largest-selling spiritually-themed book in US history, not counting the Bible. Bad news right? Not necessarily. Barna's poll found that only five percent of those...

Had a great conversation with Geneva College's Eric Miller this morning about, in part, the relevance of Christopher Lasch to crunchy conservatism and its future. In e-mail correspondence over the weekend, Eric directed me to this 1987 exchange between Lasch,...

Great news -- the heroic Ayaan Hirsi Ali is moving to the United States to work for AEI. She is essentially being driven from her adopted country, the Netherlands, because of death threats from Islamic extremists. She's been living with...

Bill Kauffman and friends (including Caleb Stegall, late of NRO's Crunchy Con blog) have a lively new blog up in support of Bill's wonderful, crazy-a*s new book "Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists." The blog...

Diogenes makes a Kierkegaardian point about Truth, in the face of popular gnosticism. Excerpt:So what can an ordinary Christian point to in refutation of those glib, professorial, subversive neo-Gnostics who contend that The Da Vinci Code somehow overthrows the orthodox...

I've been poking through some old books this morning as I'm putting together the new chapter for the paperback edition of "Crunchy Cons." Here's an interesting thought from Christopher Lasch, from "The Revolt of the Elites":The more closely capitalism came...

Ramesh Ponnuru cites a rather jaw-dropping letter from pro-choice lawyer Ron Weddington to President Clinton, urging him to do everything to make the abortion pill legal and widespread in this country. Why? For the sake of, um, social reform. Here's...

A woman in England is pregnant with the first baby genetically modified to prevent the child from inheriting its mother's propensity to a kind of eye cancer. Well, why not? The child is being spared suffering -- though the embryos...

Of all the criticism I've gotten about "Crunchy Cons," the observation that I find the truest and most helpful is that the sensibility I write about in the book lacks a public dimension. A friend just sent me a copy...

Red State reports that in Georgia, a Bank of America declined to give its annual donation to the Boy Scouts this year because of the Scouts' position on homosexuality. We move closer and closer to the society Maggie Gallagher wrote...

Reason's Jesse Walker is a libertarian who says that too many conservatives have become politically correct whiners. His piece got me to thinking about ways that my side is guilty of political correctness. P.C. is all about an inability to...

Back in the mid-1990s, I was so moved by New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal's passionate advocacy for Sudanese Christians persecuted by the Islamist government in Khartoum that I actually wrote him a letter thanking him. Terry Mattingly reflects on...

From one of the contraception comboxes below, a reader responding to the point that those who don't believe in contraception will inherit the world (because the contraceptors aren't having enough children to compete), a reader commented:What makes you think that...

We just had an editorial board discussion about what to say concerning the latest NSA revelations. I was probably the most critical board member of the president. I flat-out don't believe him when he says that the NSA is operating...

Yesterday a colleague floated the idea that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had "hijacked" Islam. I responded, "How would we know?" My point was that none of us in this department know enough about what constitutes normative Islam to be in a position...

Got a press release last night about this story: the Catholic Archdiocese of New York is going to launch its own channel on Sirius satellite radio. One hopes for the best, but doesn't expect much of anything out of this...

You really can't hope to do better than the smackdown Christianity Today's Ted Olsen did to Russell Shorto's NYT Magazine scare piece about the attack on contraception. The heart of what's wrong with the Shorto piece, aside from the fact...

One of my personal hobbyhorses is how so many of us in the establishment media simply don't get religion (and here is the place to plug the entire blog dedicated to tracking this phenomenon!). Whenever Hamas is discussed, media folks...

Here's Tom Hibbs's review of "Crunchy Cons" in Crisis. Excerpt:Dreher’s book details a kind of awakening of many Americans from a certain naïveté about the market and popular culture. There is a disconnection, or perhaps a hidden connection, between the...

One thing that caused the Bush Administration to jump the shark with me was its rank cronyism. We saw the cost of putting political hacks in charge of important government business when it was revealed that the top leadership of...

Just spent an hour interviewing Clark Kent Ervin, former top Homeland Security staffer whose new book, "Open Target," details his deeply troubling experiences with DHS. Ervin's a Republican and a longtime Bush friend, and he comes across as a straight...

Ross Douthat has picked up on the CC post the other day on whether or not Evangelicalism is a good fit for conservatism (this, based on a Wilfred McClay speech). He says that the Bush Administration's failures are not only...

Last night I caught part of a program on PBS about speed dating. It was a BBC show, and what shocked me was how sleazy the women were. I can't see that it's much of an advance for humanity if...

An update on the anti-Catholic incident at Baylor is on the Dallas Morning News blog....

How bad has the military recruiting situation gotten? So bad that recruiters bullied an autistic young man who didn't even know there was a war going on into signing up....

Barbara Nicolosi can't figure out why many Christians are either enthusiastic for "The Da Vinci Code," or at least fail to see it as a threat. Excerpt:We need to be very clear here: The Da Vinci Code is much, much...

I have a great fondness for the Netherlands. I've been going there regularly for over half my life, visiting a number of dear friends I came to know through a high school pen pal. The Dutch people are hospitable, warm...

Another point, this one brief. A colleague of mine, a religiously observant Democrat, asked me recently why religious conservatives are so hung up on abortion, such that we are effectively single-issue voters (and we almost always go for Republicans). We...

My book "Crunchy Cons" is filled with Sturm und Drang over the complicated and anxious relationship conservatives like me have with the Republican Party. But it takes something like Maggie Gallagher's must-read cover story in The Weekly Standard to remind...

Sen. John McCain is headed to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University to deliver the commencement address on Saturday What does this mean? Is this McCain, realizing from bitter experience that he cannot win the GOP presidential nomination against the wishes of...

The question is put: "Is 'The Da Vinci Code' anti-Christian?"Well, I haven't read the book, but I guess I gotta, because it's all we're going to be talking about for the next few weeks. Why haven't I read the book?...

Over at Amy's, a reader writes to ask if he/she was the only one who heard a homily yesterday on the parable of the Good Shepherd as relates to "Brokeback Mountain." Actually, the two protagonists in "Brokeback Mountain" were awful...

Catholic bishops in Belgium are allowing Muslim "refugees" to take over their churches, offering them sanctuary in hopes of preventing the government from deporting them (they're in the country illegally). In one church, the Muslims are being allowed to cover...

The pseudonymous Asia Times Online columnist Spengler, who writes one of the smartest columns on geopolitics and culture anywhere, has joined the "Art and Faith" discussion thread below. An admirer of Benedict XVI, Spengler links to one of his own...

On this lovely Sunday afternoon here in Dallas, I took a walk down to a used bookstore I hadn't yet visited. There I found a thin hardback volume called, I think, "Art and Religion: The Letters of Jacques Maritain and...

A note to all of you who are writing me privately about the Catholic/Orthodox dilemma. I am reading all of your mail and taking it to heart, but I'm getting so much of it from both sides that I can't...

I know I'm gonna get hate mail on this, but I have to say I found it pathetic that Patrick Kennedy stood there and whined about his "sickness" as he was headed out the door to rehab. I don't deny...

Wilfred McClay gave a speech earlier this year that ought to be shouted from the rooftops. Here are the money grafs:We often fail to remember what a socially conservative coalition, by our standards today, the New Deal era Democratic Party...

Check out this wonderful letter from a reader of my book:Your book "Crunchy Cons" gave me a lot to think about. I am not a "crunchy con" in the terms you describe: I guess that most people would describe me...

CC readers will remember my blogging the other day about Baylor University president John Lilley's session with the Dallas Morning News editorial board, in which I asked him repeatedly about a recent incident at the university in which an undergraduate...

Via Michelle Malkin, I found this commonsense column by the invaluable Heather Mac Donald, who wonders why the MSM clutched its collective pearls over how illegal immigrants were living in new fear that the stepped-up enforcement of American laws would...

The big front-page story in today's Dallas Morning News is the grand re-opening of North Park, the Dallas shopping center which today becomes Texas' largest mall. I could not possibly agree more with the news judgment that landed this story...

If stay-at-home moms got paid a salary for the work they do, they'd pull in about $134,000 a year, according to a new survey. That would make my wife the major breadwinner in our family by far....

Warm, witty reflections from the Orthodox priest Father Joseph Hunnycutt on the search for religious Truth and the blogosphere....

Thanks to Jonah, I've just learned about what sounds like the most perfect cookbook since the last thing Marcella Hazan wrote: "Saffron to Sassafras", a combination of Indian and Cajun recipes compiled by members of the Indian community living in...

Somebody in the comboxes asked why I'm so hard on the Democrats. Hey, I wrote an entire book slamming the faults of the Republicans, my own side! I am weary of the philosophical ruts that both parties have fallen into,...

...as someone infamously asked. I want to start a new thread off the "Orthodoxy and Me" one below. While I don't intend to say any more about my own consideration of converting from Catholicism to Orthodoxy, I do hope to...

I find that when I have conversations with smart journalists about the birthrate collapse in Europe, the first thing many of them bring up is Hitler's plans to breed Aryan youth for the greater glory of Germany. That is to...

Note: I've combined the Orthodoxy post into one long one, and shortened it a bit, to separate it out from the WaPo story piece. -- RD.It will come as a surprise to some readers of the WaPo story, though maybe...

That was a foolish and unjust verdict. The man deserves to die--and I say that as someone who is generally against the death penalty.I mean, most convicted killers deserve to die, but I am generally in favor of granting them...

Caitlin Flanagan nails it, just nails it, in this Time magazine essay in which she argues that the Democratic Party stupidly and self-destructively alienates traditionalist churchgoing people. Here's an excerpt, but you really should read the whole thing:I am a...

Last month, the Washington Post dispatched Style section reporter Hank Stuever to our humble abode to have dinner with the fambly, and write a piece about this whole crunchy con thing. Here it is. Have to say I'm pleased with...

TMatt at Get Religion says the WaPo piece was nice enough, but obsessed with the surface of things, not caring to dig down too deeply into the book's ideas (Dan Larison concurs). Katolik Shinja is worried that my temptation to...

In the comboxes below, a reader writes that being a stay-at-home mom is something only wealthy people like Caitlin Flanagan can do. She (the reader) writes that if she quit her job to do that, she'd have to live in...

Byron York has been posting absolutely devastating material about New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, from a Douglas Brinkley profile in Vanity Fair. See here and here and most especially -- Ray Nagin thrown out of the bathroom on Air Force...

A reader suggested in one of the comboxes that we should be talking about how Mexican and Central American immigration is going to affect American spirituality. Good point. It's obvious to say that it stands to make America a lot...

Andrew Sullivan wonders if President Bush has been Carterized -- you know, at the bottom in the polls, tapped out, fallen and unable to get up. You can never bet against the ability of world crises to rally people around...

Daniel Larison, in responding to Meilaender's criticism of "Crunchy Cons" in First Things, makes a very solid point:Men like choice, but one of the fundamental things that conservatives need to relearn is that choice is unnatural. We were not created...

Amy deals with a woman who is committed not to truth, but to truthiness. I had a similar conversation once with a relative who called me up to ask me if I'd read "The Da Vinci Code." No, I have...

I promised to say something about the First Things review of my book by Gilbert Meilaender once I'd read it. Well, now I have, and ... I'm not really sure where to begin, because I don't recognize in his piece...

Here at the News, we met this afternoon with Dr. John Lilley, the new president of Baptist-affiliated Baylor University. At the end, I asked him what he thought of a recent controversy in which a campus satirical group, the NoZe...

Think of all the material! I just got this from my old pal Thomas, a fellow Louisiana native:My father’s dachshund (Huey, named after Huey Long) was going to turn 16 in June. My folks had to put him down on...

I'm not sure what I think of it. Here's what's going through my head.1. I think the Latino activists will overreach with this. It's my impression that they have no idea what kind of backlash is building up. It will...

To expand on my "Allahu akbar" comment from last night...I congratulate the filmmakers for not pulling any punches in disguising the fanatical religious motivation behind the hijackers' crimes. I was thinking this morning, though, that it must be excruciating for...

Just got back from seeing it. Let's just say that if I never hear the words "Allahu akbar" again as long as I live, that'll be okay. Really, it will. More thoughts tomorrow morning, after I've sorted out all kinds...