(Display Name not set)June 2006 Archives

An incredible story about the moral confusion and emotional anxiety over the vast population of frozen human embryos -- about half a million -- piling up in fertility clinics across America. Excerpt:

But the impact of the embryo is also taking place on a more subtle and personal level. The glut’s very existence illuminates how the newest reproductive technologies are complicating questions about life; issues that many people thought they had resolved are being revived and reconsidered, in a different emotional context. As with ultrasound technology—which permits parents to visualize a fetus in utero—ivf allows many patients to form an emotional attachment to a form of human life that is very early, it’s true, but still life, and still human. People bond with photos of three-day-old, eight-cell embryos. They ardently wish for them to grow into children. The experience can be transforming: “I was like, ‘I created these things, I feel a sense of responsibility for them,’” is how one ivf patient put it. Describing herself as staunchly pro-choice, this patient found that she could not rest until she located a person—actually, two people—willing to bring her excess embryos to term. The presence of embryos for whom (for which?) they feel a certain undefined moral responsibility presents tens of thousands of Americans with a dilemma for which nothing — nothing — has prepared them.

God knows the churches have done little or nothing to prepare people to think through these issues. You read this story, with its quotes from parents involved here, and you can see their consciences struggling toward truth and moral clarity. But our society has taught them to think in terms of consumerism and utilitarianism, so they find themselves paralyzed over what they've done, and where to go from here. These are just clumps of tissue, right? Except their heart tells them otherwise. And nobody seems willing and able to help them.

Someone once said that the American way is to decide first what you want to do, then marshal the arguments to support it. Witness this in the life of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a pro-life Republican ... except when it doesn't suit his personal needs. Notice the clear, firm reasoning here:

It should be pointed out, however, that even anti-abortion conservatives are not united in their ideas about the embryo and whether it has rights, or best interests, or even the potential for life. Once a person contemplates an embryo—really looks at it, under a microscope or in a photograph—his or her opinion is often changed, and not in any consistent or predictable direction. This is true for pro-choice and pro-life alike. While researching a book on assisted reproduction and its impact, I interviewed California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a reliably anti-abortion Republican member of the House. Rohrabacher was one of some 50 Republicans who defied the president by voting in favor of federal funding for stem cell research using surplus ivf embryos. For Rohrabacher it was not abstract: He and his wife, Rhonda, went through IVF treatment and have triplets as a result.

Going through that process, Rohrabacher told me, fundamentally changed his thinking about life and its origins. “For a long time I’ve been pro-life, and I still consider myself to be pro-life,” he reflected, sitting on the front porch of his Huntington Beach bungalow, which, inside, had been taken over by the demands of triplet care. “I have done a lot of soul-searching but also a lot of rethinking about reality, and what’s going on here, and I have come to the conclusion that I’m…first, I’m still pro-life. But I always said that life begins at conception. But…I was always predicating that on the idea that life begins at conception when conception begins in a woman’s body.”

Now, Rohrabacher realizes, conception can take place outside the human body. That, for him, is a meaningful difference. The crux of the matter: Is the embryo in the womb, or is it in a lab? “I don’t think that the potential for human life exists in a human embryo until it’s implanted in a human body. So you are not destroying a human life by basically not using a fertilized egg. These are not potential human lives until they are implanted in a body. Left alone, they will not become a human being. When they are implanted in a female body, they have a chance to become a human being, so I still would be opposed to abortion.”

At least Rome is thinking, and talking, with its customary clarity about this stuff. Where are the parish priests? Where are the pro-life clergy of other churches? Ordinary people really do need help understanding this. The Mother Jones story I linked to made it dramatically clear that ordinary people are desperate for real direction on this matter.

Sensible commentary from Father Neuhaus on the immigration debate. Excerpt:

In First Things, I have been critically appreciative of the urgings of Samuel Huntington ("Who Are We?") and others who contend that at stake is whether the United States will remain a sovereign nation in legal and cultural continuity with its history. Such arguments may be overblown, but they cannot be dismissed as nativist or lacking in moral seriousness. Anyone who thinks a devotion to nation and peoplehood is incompatible with Catholic social doctrine should spend some time with John Paul II’s last published book, "Memory and Identity."

Again, I don’t know what specific policies should be adopted. The choice should certainly not be between enforcement-only, on the one hand, and virtual amnesty that encourages yet more illegal immigration, on the other. But the hotting up of the immigration debate is turning my long-standing hunch into a deepening conviction that no immigration reform will be possible until Americans believe that the lawlessness of the past decade and more has been brought under a reasonable approximation of legal control.

As I've said before, I have a belief that the anxiety many Americans feel over the immigration question has far less to do with the supposed racism and xenophobia that many on the left would like to think fully explains opposition to the proposed immigration reforms, and much more to do with a general anxiety that the economic and cultural fates of everyone is slipping out of our control. There really is something very wrong with a country that cannot control who comes in and out of it -- and in the case of the Mexican immigration issue, a country that will not control who comes in and out of it. As Father Neuhaus indicates, people are not wrong to insist that we first get control of basic law and order, then we'll talk about comprehensive reform.

Here's a sobering story about how Catholicism is contracting in Latin America, even as Pentecostalism is expanding. This is not a new story. Nor is it a new story about how mainline Protestantism is collapsing in the US, while Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism are booming. Catholic blogger Mark Shea captures what's most challenging about the Latin American Catholic story. Excerpt:

[I]f the Church is to respond adequately to the people she serves, we have to know what people are seeking and why. Those who snort at the hordes who are leaving the Church in Latin America and say, "Good riddance! Who needs a bunch of Pentecostals!" are, not to put to fine a point on it, betraying the Church's mission of evangelization and seeking to make the Church a sort of Liturgical Club. This Congregationalist mentality is just another form of Protestantism in the long run.

The people described in this article are seeking something and their desire is not simply contemptible and dismissable. Is it partly disordered. Of course. So are your desires. So are everybody's. So the Church must either prudently begin to assess what the need is (warts and all) and respond to it. But for the Church to, as some members of Fortress Combox Utopia Catholica suggest, just sneer and continue to hemhorrage is not an option that her missionary mandate allows her to take.

Mark's observation is something for all Christians to take to heart. A couple of years ago, I think, I was making mild fun of Joel Osteen for his shallow, folksy, feelgood presentations, when a Catholic friend pointed out that Joel Osteen didn't become so popular by failing to meet the needs of people. Rather than satisfy myself with pointing out what was wrong with Joel Osteen, my friend said, it would be more profitable to find out why people are drawn to what he has to offer, and why they aren't drawn in similar numbers to what more traditional forms of the Christian faith have to offer.

He had a point. It is tempting for many of us to turn up our nose at popular religion, because so much of it is awful (you wouldn't believe the televised religious junk on our cable system in Dallas). And we must constantly keep in mind that truth is not decided by popularity. Still, my own spiritual struggles, and my own spiritual brokenness, have made me less rigid than I used to be, and more aware of what it means to be poor in spirit, and even at times a beggar. I think back to the proud man I was one winter's day in 1998, on a pilgrimage to Fatima, tromping through the gaudy Portuguese tourist town from the bus station, appalled by all the Marian kitsch in the shop windows. It was enough to make you want to have a moneychangers-in-the-temple fit. And yet, to go out onto the plaza in front of the basilica, and to see the poor walking on their knees on the cold, wet asphalt in prayer -- the same poor that would go home with their trunks filled with the glow-in-the-dark statues of Mary, and suchlike -- is to be faced with a spiritual and human reality that one might not be prepared for. I know I wasn't.

People need God, and as messed up as we all are, we will go get Him where He can be found. Or more to the point, where we, in our frailty, can find Him and His mercy.

UPDATE:For a picture of the kind of conditions that most Christians (and Muslims, and everyone else) on the planet will be living in this century, check out this piece. How does the Church universal do effective ministry in these vast slum cities? The challenges seem unimaginable -- and if nothing else, make the concerns of us First World Christians over matters like homosexuality, the role of women in the clergy, the Latin mass and so forth seem really ... small. Not unimportant, mind you, because they are important. Just small by way of comparison.

In the Orthodox Church, yesterday was the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul. To celebrate, I was invited to a parish dinner at the rectory of Archbishop Dmitri here in Dallas. Though the cathedral is quite lovely, the archbishop -- "Vladika" they call him (from a Russian word meaning "Master," used here as a term of affection) -- lives humbly in a small cottage out back. His house was full of parishioners last evening, everyone bringing food and drink for the feast. Unsurprisingly, there was lots of Russian fare, and several bottles of frozen vodka. Vladika himself is a gourmet cook, and had prepared a flan, a flan de queso, a dried apricot torte, and some sort of complicated raspberry meringue cake. One sidebar filled up with deviled eggs, cheeses, anchovies, sausages and other antipasti, and the more hearty dishes lined a side table in the dining room. There were old people there, and kids, and you could hear at least three languages being spoken as people laughed and chattered on the feast day in the crowded little cottage behind the cathedral.

Finally, Vladika called everyone to attention for the blessing. Everyone turned toward the icon at the head of the dining room, crossed themselves, and prayed the Our Father. Then it was prayed a second time, in Russian. Then a third time, in Spanish. Vladika blessed the food, and the feast began in earnest.

Vladimir, the iconographer, leaned over and whispered in my ear, "This is the Church." Yes, I thought, it sure is.

I've been putting off blogging on SCOTUS's Gitmo ruling because I want to have time to think about what it means. So I suppose I'll have a longer, more thoughtful blog tomorrow (and Bubba says: "It'll be longer, but I doubt it'll be more thoughtful." Ba-dum-bum!). My initial impression is to offer a qualified endorsement of the ruling, because I have been troubled by the notion that the President has the right to do whatever he wants to with prisoners taken in the terror war, and they have no rights at all. It would seem to be, then, that this ruling is a victory for the rule of law. But I am also given to worry by Andy McCarthy's pre-ruling musing in The Corner, in which he speculates that if SCOTUS finds that terrorists are covered by the Geneva Conventions (as SCOTUS did), that the Gitmo savages will be found to have the right to Zacarias Moussaoui-type jury trials.

What I want to know is: does the Hamdan ruling leave Congress room to set the rules of engagement, so to speak, between the US Govt and the terrorist combatants? If it does, and therefore it removes sole discretion from POTUS, then I think that's a good thing. And if the Geneva Convention aspect of the decision forbids torture and inhumane treatment of the prisoners, I think that too is a good thing. But if it can be read to grant them rights to criminal trials in US courts, that is catastrophically bad. Please chime in below with your own views. I'm still not sure what to think.

Well, no, actually I am sure on one point. Wesley Clark said today on John Gibson's Fox News Channel show: "We don't need military tribunals. We need to turn these people over to an international court. They are threats to the whole world." Wesley Clark is nuts.

Wow, wow, wow. The large and vibrant Truro Church in Fairfax, Virginia is now an Anglican cathedral. Its rector, Father Mynns, is as of today a bishop serving under the Primate of ... Nigeria. Virginia, you will recall, led the...

Annie Lamott confesses to helping kill a friend of hers. This will strike some of you as warm and humane. It strikes me as absolutely monstrous -- especially monstrous because it is presented as so soothing, so decent, so loving....

If you were feeling uncharitable towards a certain faction at Baylor University over the David Jeffrey story I blogged about yesterday -- whose accuracy in several respects has been vigorously challenged, I should say -- I invite you to pay...

Yes, yes, we'll get to the Gitmo ruling in a second, but first I want to try to apply the calculus of moral theology to my deliberation over the news that a mondo pregmo Britney Spears has posed nude for...

The impressive Illinois Democrat had some good things to say today about why the Democratic Party has to get over its fear of religious folks. Said Obama, "Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the...

Daniel Pipes points out some telling information in the recent Pew Forum survey of attitudes in the Muslim world. Did you know that solid majorities of Muslims in Western nations, and overwhelming majorities of Muslims in Muslim countries, do not...

Dan Froomkin of the WaPo has some pretty solid thoughts on the political game the White House is playing on the banking story. My initial impulse was to side with Bush in slamming the New York Times for writing the...

Abdullah Zainal Alireza, the Saudi minister of state, came calling today here at the paper. He was in Texas this week speaking at the US-Arab Economic Forum in Houston. Abdullah came across as a highly sophisticated diplomat, and he had...

...a documentary starring Oliver O'Grady, a pedophile priest from Los Angeles. He raped a five-year-old girl. And that's only one of his victims. The spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles calls the film an "obvious anti-Church hit piece." I...

Highlights for Children is 60! Go Timbertoes, it's your birfday! Actually, I can't stand those stuck-up Timbertoes. And since Ritalin came out, Goofus hasn't been as much fun as he used to be, has he?...

Being energy self-sufficient "is neither attainable nor desirable" said one oil industry exec at the US-Arab Economic Forum in Houston. So did a lot of them, in fact. Big Oil says that we need to stay dependent on foreign oil...

I'm not quite sure what to make of the news that Rush Limbaugh uses Viagra (and despite his pillhead past, doesn't have enough sense to avoid getting in trouble with the law over it), but I'm sure planning to watch...

Here's the story from today's Dallas Morning News on Christ Church Episcopal parish's decision to leave ECUSA. It explores a bit the implications of the move, given that the Bishop of Dallas, unlike in similar previous cases elsewhere in the...

Jeff Jacoby draws attention to a new novel that imagines what the US would be like under Islamic law. Pretty grim, it would seem. People who were unfazed by that Times story in which the "moderate" Imam Ziad Shakir talked...

Hey gang, here's your one-stop online shop for "Biblically-based 'Superman Returns' materials." Look, I'm all for examining popular culture from a religious angle, and I look forward to reading the discussions we'll all be having about Christian metaphors in the...

In 1949, the Orthodox Fr. Alexander Schmemann had some wise words for all of us Christians -- Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, and so forth -- caught up in serious church controversies:When controversies are ignited and flare up in the Church, which...

The Archbishop of Canterbury has drawn up a plan to split the Anglican Communion, and to expel the Episcopal Church. Full Canterbury statement here. Ruth Gledhill explains it all on her blog. And TMatt at Get Religion has, as usual,...

Touchstone's Anthony Esolen comments on the necessity for spiritual fatherhood. Very interesting observation here:Given Roman Catholic teaching regarding the valid operation of the sacraments, everyone will acknowledge the need for a priest: without him (or without a “him” on call...

This is a breathtaking story of an extraordinarily gifted Christian scholar, David Jeffrey, and what was done to him here in Texas when he tried to make Baylor University into a more intellectually serious college, but one that was still...

Christ Church Episcopal in Plano, Texas, one of the largest and most dynamic Episcopal parishes in the country, announces that it is leaving the Episcopal Church USA. But here's the thing: the parish says it is grateful for the conservative...

To me, the most radical and amazing thing about the Buffett gift is that he's deliberately shutting out his kids from the great majority of his wealth -- not out of spite, but out of concern for their character. Reading...

Is this counterintuitive in the present moment, or what? Jeremy Lott draws attention to a new book called "In Defense of the Religious Right." Good. Somebody has to do it these days....

As most of you know, I've been spending a great deal of time in the past few months traveling in Eastern Orthodox circles, and worshiping at St. Seraphim's Cathedral (of the Orthodox Church in America). It has not escaped my...

I found myself tonight sitting in a restaurant across from a sweet Fort Worth Episcopalian lady in her mid to late 70s, who asked me what I thought about their new Presiding Bishop. I had a laugh, and told her,...

Reader Mike from Long Beach, California sends in this quote from commie folksinger Pete Seeger, which I think is pretty great (I think Seeger is pretty great too as an artist, though his politics are, ahem, lousy):"I like to say...

The federal indictment describes them as Islamic terrorists, but it's beginning to look like the seven kooks taken into federal custody in Miami were members of a syncretist sect that combined teachings of Islam and Christianity. OK, so they're not...

I've been watching the various press conferences on CNN all morning. One thing stands out: the need for all of us to start paying much closer attention to what's going on with potential Islamic radicals in our own communities. FBI...

Don't know how I missed this earlier in the week. The Washington Post published what a cable to Washington from the US Embassy in Baghdad. You can read the whole thing here in PDF format. (Here's a news story with...

Dilshad Ali, Bnet's Islam editor, writes:An important thing to note about the seven individuals who have been indicted in a terrorist plot to blow up the Sears Tower and an FBI building in Miami is that no news reports and...

Well, I'll be blogging on the Miami terror arrests later, but I just saw an official from CAIR on CNN saying that the Muslim civil liberties group is worried about threats to the country from terrorism BUT are also worried...

The Catholic bishop of Santa Rosa, California -- one of Cardinal Mahony's men -- waited three days to report to police an admitted molestation of an altar boy by one of his priests. Enough time for the accused priest to...

A new Brookings study indicates that middle-class neighborhoods are disappearing. Excerpt from the WaPo account:The Brookings study says that increased residential segregation by income can remove a fundamental rung from the nation's ladder for social mobility: moderate-income neighborhoods with decent...

On the comments thread below on the entry about the importance of the way buildings and neighborhoods look, frequent CC critic Bubba says the following:Rod, if you're willing I would love to talk about this particular subject in detail. More...

Parkland Hospital, the public hospital in Dallas, is going to send a bill to the government of Mexico requesting reimbursement for expenses having to do with treating poor illegal immigrants. They know they're not going to get a dime from...

From "The Old Way of Seeing," by Jonathan Hale:A great buildilng can give us the same exhilaration we experience in a natural landscape. We expect that of great budilings; but we tend to forget that a townscape of ordinary buildings,...

Michael Ledeen makes a tough but necessary point in his NRO column today. He says that not all mosques, obviously, are incubators of jihadism, but all jihadis come from a mosque:Look at the 9/11 terrorists, look at the killer of...

I've never been a Dan Rather fan, for the usual reasons, but there's something disgraceful in the way CBS is treating him, blackballing him out the door after having given virtually his entire career to CBS News. The piece in...

Couple days ago I posted a blog whaling away on House Majority Leader John Boehner for demagoguery. This is because he characterized the House vote last week as a choice between "al-Qaeda or America." This would have been rank demagoguery...

Quite a report here about the ECUSA General Convention refusing to affirm the particular Lordship of Jesus Christ. Here's a veiled example of the reductio ad Hitlerum invoked by a Tarheel divine:"This type of language was used in 1920s and...

Via Pod, check out this joyous homemade video of the Peanuts gang "performing" Outkast's "Hey Ya." This will make you happy, promise. At least for four minutes. Then it's back to blood, sweat, toil and tears....

If PB Schori didn't exist, you'd have to invent her. Today, addressing her flock at the last day of the ECUSA General Convention, she said, "Our mother Jesus gives birth to a new creation. And you and I are His...

Today's Wall Street Journal has a personal finance column (not available unless you subscribe) that takes note of the fact that Americans aren't saving anything. The problem is not excess spending on Starbucks lattes and the like. The problem is...

You know what I'd pay cash money to see? Archbishop Peter Akinola, the archconservative Anglican Primate of Nigeria, descending upon the ECUSA General Convention from the heavens in the P-Funk Mothership, and tearing the roof off the sucker....

LGF notes that today in a press conference held at the Riyadh headquarters of the Saudi-sponsored World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), CAIR announced today the launch of a $50 million campaign to fight "Islamophobia" in the United States. LGF...

Here is an amazing snippet of an interview with the next Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA:Interviewer: So what happens after I die? SCHORI: What happens after you die?.. uhh– I would ask you that question.. but what’s important...

Inspired by the squirrelly Presbyterians who are coming up with new, non-offensive titles for the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, a friend suggests a contest to rename the Christian Godhead to suit popular American tastes. He proposes:Class Act,...

I'm grateful to David Dark for his thoughtful review of "Crunchy Cons" in The Christian Century....

Washington Monthly has a piece out (as yet unlinkable) speculating on whether it will matter that three GOP presidential hopefuls -- McCain, Gingrich and Giuliani -- are all adulterers. The piece suggests that McCain will probably skate, because it didn't...

I've never been able to figure out why some Jews get all worked up over the intense support many Evangelicals have for Israel, given that quite a few of those Evangelicals believe the establishment of the state of Israel is...

Father Neuhaus on what the election of Schori as Presiding Bishop means for ECUSA, worldwide Anglicanism and ecumenical dialogue with Rome. None of it is any good, according to Neuhaus, who's right about this. It's fascinating to watch this play...

Today's Wall Street Journal front page has a disturbing story about what happened to Souleiman Ghali, a truly moderate Muslim who led and effort to modernize a mosque in San Francisco, arguably the most liberal city in the USA. He...

...or, "That vaca frita I made this weekend was heaven on earth." Steve Bodio asked me in the weekend cooking thread below to post the recipe for the Cuban fried beef I prepared last night. Happy to oblige. As Julie...

"It's time to stand up and vote. Is it al Qaeda or is it America?"I would like to tell you it was Homer Simpson, inspiring a mob of Duff-soused poltroons massed outside Springfield City Hall. It would at least be...

Reader Caleb sends a link to the cover story on Christianity Today's website: a case, based on Michael Kazin's new biography, for why we need a William Jennings Bryan figure in America today. Excerpt:Kazin makes no effort to disguise the...

Via the Corner comes news that the Presbyterian Church (USA) is suggesting that individual parishes can rename the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit -- the Trinity -- so as not to offend 21st-century Americans. Here are some of...

The Episcopal Church just elected a woman as its presiding bishop. Well, it's over for them in their present incarnation. The vast majority of the Anglican Communion -- that is to say, Africa and the rest of the Global South...

Over at Amy's, they've been talking about the alleged Marian apparitions at Medjugorje, in the former Yugoslavia. They've been going on for over 20 years now, and it's either an unprecedented miracle, or the world's longest running sideshow. Me, I...

The front page of today's NYTimes features a story on two American-born Muslim leaders -- Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and Imam Zaik Shakir -- who, the newspaper says, are fighting hard against Wahhabism and Salafism, and trying instead to lead US...

Happy Father's Day! The one thing I've written over the course of my career that makes me proudest is this tribute to my father. Excerpt:At bedtime, as night falls over Brooklyn and my toddler Matthew has said goodnight to Moon...

Ah reckon because it's Father's Day weekend, the wardens here are letting me do pretty much what I want. And what I want to do is to cook! Every now and then I have to fill out something or other...

I never have been able to figure out how Southern Baptists and other Christians who believe any and all consumption of alcohol to be sinful get around the idea that Jesus Christ's first public miracle was not turning water into...

My wife just got this e-mail from a CD company, confirming her order:1 DAN ZANES AND FRIENDS: catch that train! $15.00 $15.00 Sub Total $15.00 Shipping $2.25 Grand Total $17.25 Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby...

After years of resisting, the US Catholic bishops have voted to obey the Vatican's directive on the use of English in the mass. Hallelujah for that, though it is telling that it makes news when Catholic bishops obey the Vatican....

Charles Krauthammer brilliantly analyzes the awful killing of a Palestinian family on the beach in Gaza. He acknowledges that there is serious doubt as to whether the explosion was an Israeli shell at all. But let's say for the sake...

Yesterday I blogged about David Brooks' column asserting that there's a political realignment underway in which the terms "liberals" and "conservatives" don't mean much anymore, but are giving way to a divide between nationalist populists and progressive globalists. Ross Douthat...

Whole Foods has decided to quit selling live lobsters and soft-shell crabs because "they could not ensure the creatures are treated with respect and compassion." Well, good grief, what the sensitivo Whole Foodies need to do is to hire Smoove...

A poor misguided communiss in one of the comboxes below is under the impression that I am posing as a faux-populist when I refer to myself as "Your Working Boy." No, no, no! I am merely paying homage to what...

We have to face up to Garrison Keillor, says Sam Anderson in Slate. Well, okay, if you insist. Actually, I quite like Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion" work -- I grew up in a small town too, and I recognize...

Too bad that I can't link to today's David Brooks column. It's right up this blog's alley. Brooks opens thus:If American politics could start with a clean slate today, the main argument wouldn't be between liberalism and conservatism, words that...

Well, well, well, if you think homegrown Islamic terror cells are something that only Canada and Britain are dealing with, think again. Scott Redd, director of the National Counterterrorism Centre, said in a written statement to the Senate that the...

Just got back from a long lunch with a politically connected retired Republican banker here in Dallas. I'm not sure whether it would be more accurate to call him disgusted or despairing. Probably both. He said, "I have kids your...

Here's a great piece by Slate writer Emily Yoffe, who got lambasted by readers of her "Dear Prudence" column when she advised a reader to reconsider her decision not to have kids. Look, I know that some people who choose...

Important things said in Paul Cella's interview with Bruce Frohnen and Jeremy Beer, co-editors of "American Conservatism: An Encylopedia". Like this, on how the editors decided what to include and what to exclude from the volume:Jeremy Beer: ...For me, at...

Two stories in today's NYTimes tell a troubling tale about where we're headed in American society with the Boomers aging.First is this piece about how Muslims are struggling to figure out how to care for their elderly and still be...

If you have a few minutes, take the time to listen to this commentary by Rawlins Gilliland, a Dallas writer, who offered it earlier this week on KERA, the public radio station in Dallas. It's about the emotional and mythical...

As long as I'm querying the room, let me ask you to talk about your dangerous idea. What do I mean by that? The idea comes from The Edge, which made "What is your dangerous idea?" its annual question for...

It's summertime, and some people -- not Your Working Boy, alas -- have more free time for reading. Beach reading, whatever. I was thinking about whether or not there are any books I'm planning to read this summer, and the...

Eric Miller's Books & Culture review of "Crunchy Cons" is available online. I'm pleased to be able to say that I called Eric after I first read this piece, and enjoyed talking to him so much that his comments --...

Clever piece up at Slate today by Bryan Curtis, on how soccer has become the favorite sport of American intellectuals. I especially liked this observation: There's also a frisson of underworld glamour in soccer writing. To chronicle the international game...

At the Corner, Andrew Stuttaford catches up to my comments of last week in which I observed that he has made the discovery that material prosperity is insufficient to sustain a society that lacks moral stability and social cohesion --...

Julie and I discovered today, in a sonogram session, that our third child is going to be a little girl. We were thrilled -- now Matthew and Lucas will have a sister. The sonogram technician told us that you'd be...

The whole kerfuffle between Dallas Muslim leader Mohamed Elibiary and Your Working Boy occasioned a visit to my files here, to go over a printout of e-mail traffic on a Dallas Muslim listserv dedicated to criticizing The Dallas Morning News....

Everybody go read John Derbyshire's essay on NRO. Derb supported the war at first, but no longer does. For the most part, he gives voice to my own view (and my own regret over my earlier support of this intrinsically...

I haven't read Ann Coulter's book "Godless," and, continuing my unbroken streak of never having read an Ann Coulter book, don't plan to. I have read her columns, though, and I laugh out loud half the time, and wince half...

I see that Dallas Muslim leader Mohamed Elibiary's warning to me that if I didn't stop writing about Islam in ways he disapproves of, I "could expect" someone to put a banana in the exhaust pipe of my car ("or...

Here's an interesting piece from today's NYTimes op-ed section, examining the contemporary appeal of communal living arrangements. When I think "commune," I think of free love, pot and an insufficient attention to personal hygiene. But that's a stereotype. There are...

Amy has a post up linking to a Religion News Service report about the gender imbalance in today's churches. Amy's right: this isn't new news. Amy's also right: what might be new news to most people is to learn that...

Here is a statement about the Toronto arrests on the website of the Young Muslims of Canada:Statement on Alleged TerrorismThe Young Muslims of Canada unequivocally condemns acts of terrorism. Islam does not motivate, nor does it legitimize the loss of...

One of the most frustrating things about Blogger having been down for most of the past two days was the inability to comment on the ongoing Ramesh-Derb smackdown at The Corner. I told Jonah Goldberg that those guys make the...

The Motion Picture Association of America now apparently considers the presence of Christianity in a film to be so troubling that parents require advance warning....

Mike Crowley at TNR picks up on an interesting concession on the Wall Street Journal's editorial page today. Here's what the Journal said:The bomb attack that wounded CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier and killed two of her colleagues and a U.S....

Mike Aquilina says the early Church attracted converts by offering hardship, sacrifice and what you might call adventure. He writes:Search all the volumes on the ancient liturgies, and you’ll be hard pressed to find a scrap of a Mass we’d...

Here's something else from that same Journal editorial:We're not military experts, but as a political matter securing Baghdad first may be the better strategy. Countries can live with unstable hinterlands if they have to; ask the Colombians. But security in...

Earlier this week on the Dallas Morning News blog, I posted a comment about the Toronto terror arrests, and noted how these homegrown alleged terrorists were nurtured at a local mosque, where a radical Muslim cultivated his own circle of...

Well, there won't be 72 virgins, or raisins, waiting for that S.O.B. There is justice in the fact that that devil went out of this world in the same way he dispatched hundreds, and maybe thousands, of Iraqis and U.S....

Sorry I'm just now back posting. Blogger was down for most of yesterday....

Via Kathy Shaidle comes this very sobering account of a blogger's discussion with an elderly German who had lived through the Nazi era. The man's family were aristocrats who were not Nazis, and who in fact thought the Nazis were...

The Senate is this week considering a bill that would allow Hawaiians of native ethnic stock to set up their own tribal-style race-based government, which would give them the right to negotiate with the U.S. Government over land, leases and...

Islamofascism conquers Somalia. And according to Zeyad, the blogging Iraqi dentist, it's conquering Baghdad too. (Don't worry, says the vice president, the insurgency is in its last throes.) I don't know what to think or how to feel when faced...

Ross manages the unusual and praiseworthy feat of taking John Derbyshire seriously but critically without having a conniption fit. Unlike Ross, I have met Derb, and like him very much. But Ross's criticism is apt....

I am sitting at my desk right now in the Dallas Morning News building, thinking about the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City is not too far from Dallas, and the bombing of the Murrah building...

Imagine that: at least one of the Broad Stratas in Canada allegedly planned to break into Parliament and freaking behead the Canadian prime minister. Where on earth do random civilians from a broad strata of Canadian society get the idea...

A couple of readers brought to my attention this insightful Michael Pollan essay from The NYT Magazine this past Sunday. In it, he explores the moral complications of Wal-Mart's decision to go organic. You really should read the whole thing,...

You know that I'm second to none in scorning the cynicism of the President and the GOP on the gay marriage issue. But liberals are pretty cynical too. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid's stance is typical. You might sum it...

Via LGF comes news that the Canadian Muslim Congress is blaming Canada for the apparent fact that some broad stratas want to blow up Canadian buildings for the sake of Islam. Excerpt:It is irresponsible for our Prime Minister to paint...

I am in the position of supporting the Federal Marriage Amendment but thinking that the Republicans and President Bush are entirely cynical about the issue. Go back and read what the president said in 2004 when he announced his support...

A Toronto Star columnist says, of the foiled jihadi bomb plot:Be sickened. Be frightened. Be angry. But don't you dare be shocked.Oh, but we will be shocked here, my dear, when the police uncover a similar plot in the US...

So I pick up my New York Times this morning, and I'm reading a story on the front page about how police in Ontario have arrested 17 in an alleged bomb plot that sounds like a Timothy McVeigh redux deal...

Here's Melanie Phillips on how multiculturalism and cowardly appeasement is allowing radical Islam to fester in Britain. Lessons here for us all. Excerpt:THE former FBI head of counterintelligence, Oliver Revell, says both America and Britain suffer from "a fastidious reluctance...

A reader asks me to start a discussion thread for the Walter Miller novel "A Canticle for Leibowitz," which I'd mentioned in a recent thread. Here ya go! Follow the link to a Wikipedia entry on the novel to know...

Over at the Corner, Andrew Stuttaford has made a discovery:Freakoutnomics [Andrew Stuttaford]Jonah, you’re right. That’s an important piece, and this is the most important passage:“The sharply increased social and geographic mobility of the 1870's set people adrift from traditional sources...

Even when I disagree with him, I can't deny that there is almost no more interesting essayist writing today in American journalism than Christopher Hitchens. I wish we had 10 more like him. Here's the blustery atheist's interview with World...

Yesterday we talked here about the prospects for a third party, and the revival of American populism. There's a tremendously important op-ed in today's NYTimes that strongly suggests we are on the verge of a populist revival. Its author, Charles...

I try to read the comments boxes as much as I can, and to answer queries as often as I can. But I can't get to them all. I have a day job, and I just realized that if I...

President Bush is set to announce his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment on Monday. This is completely meaningless, utterly transparent election-year hype by a Republican president desperate to win back his flagging base. If I thought he meant it,...

A couple of self-identified liberal essayists in Time magazine ask: "Are Americans suffering diversity fatigue?" Excerpt:It's clear people are tired of walking on eggshells, afraid to offend those with different beliefs, ideas, and lifestyles. It's grown exhausting, and they want...

Not making this up. I genuinely love this!...

Amy Welborn has some thoughtful reflections on a forthcoming Philip Jenkins book, which focuses on how the Bible is lived and experienced in the Global South. In Amy's telling, the Jenkins book discusses why what many of us privileged and...

Here we are at the start of hurricane season, and there are still no small number of people who have not prepared for it. In fact, news reports suggest that despite evidence (via Katrina) of what a catastrophic natural disaster...

Now this is interesting -- someone who wants not only to talk about the ideas in the book, but to act on them radically: I received this email from a reader who is a journalist:My wife, a journalist who now...

There are signs. I consider myself a theocon, which is to say, a Religious Rightist. But I saw first-hand what politically organized Christians are capable of when I covered the GOP primaries in South Carolina back in 2000. Nothing wrong...

Peggy Noonan is often very good at discerning the country's mood, and the deeper emotional truths that undergird our public debates. I think she's spot-on this morning with her column saying that the time might be right, at long last,...

You might get the idea that the only people upset about the immigration reform bill in the Senate are conservatives. But here's liberal Jack Beatty, writing in The Atlantic Online, arguing that continuing to bring over low-wage workers from Mexico...

Earlier, I'd expressed interest and even enthusiasm for a John McCain candidacy in 2008. What I like about McCain, aside from his being pro-life, is my sense that he could get us out of the Iraq debacle with honor, and...

Greg Djerejian notes that a year has passed since Dick Cheney went on "Larry King Live" and said that evidence indicates the Iraq insurgency is in its "last throes." Oh? Greg has the numbers on how much worse the insurgency...

A new St. Augustine has appeared among us in the Diocese of Dallas. Here, taken from his just-published (in a local alt-weekly) "Confessions", are some scintillating spiritual insights leading to his conversion:OK, you’re thinking — so he came to Catholicism...

Before watching this Flemish-language video clip, all you need to know is that the guy being interviewed on this chat show had his bolletjes removed by accident in a botched surgery. You have to make sure you can hear the...

One more thought: I believe that for most Americans who want the immigration situation to be stabilized (and as Samuelson points out in the column I linked to below, on 17 percent of Americans polled say they want to see...

Jonah Goldberg wonders how come Republicans who are so worried about gay marriage don't do anything about it until it comes time to rile up the base for the election? He couldn't possibly be more correct in identifying this GOP...