Confessions of an “Elitist”
The term “elitist” has been bandied about so promiscuously in this election cycle that it’s become virtually content-free. Yet “elitist” is also being weaponized as a scare-word to prevent legitimate
Now What?
Two days after that circular firing-squad known as the “Republican primaries” came to a de facto conclusion on the banks of the Wabash, theWall Street Journal had this to say:
Good Catholics, Good Citizens
The Catholic love affair with the United States of America is heading into rough and uncharted waters—and not only in this 2016 election cycle, but for the foreseeable future. U.S.
Catholics and Campaign 2016
Serious Catholics bring to American politics a distinctive way of thinking about public life that’s built on four core principles, drawn from the Church’s social doctrine. The first principle is
‘A Tiny Bit of a Man’: Evelyn Waugh’s Anticipation of Donald Trump
More than 70 years ago, while on leave from the Royal Marines, Evelyn Waugh penned a portrait of a buccaneering moneyman with political ambitions and a hollow interior, a sketch
Resisting the Demagogue
You’ve got to have a good memory for mid-Sixties pop music to remember the Seekers, an Aussie quartet that once vied for the top of the British charts with the
An Appeal to Our Fellow Catholics
In recent decades, the Republican party has been a vehicle — imperfect, like all human institutions, but serviceable — for promoting causes at the center of Catholic social concern in
After Justice Scalia
The death of Justice Antonin Scalia on February 13 – unexpected and, for many reasons, tragic – draws a curtain on the life and public service of one of the
Anger and Citizenship
The Iowa caucuses are in the rear-view mirror, the New Hampshire primary looms on the horizon, and by most media accounts, the leitmotif of Campaign 2016 is “anger.” As in:
Looking Toward November 8
To redeploy a phrase from President Ford, our “long national nightmare”—in this case, the semi-permanent presidential campaign—will be over in eleven months, or at least suspended for a year or
The Speaker and the Social Doctrine
TRIGGER WARNING: This column will speak well of Paul Ryan, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, and compare him favorably to two liberal icons. Over forty years of
Lessons from the Rough Rider for Today’s Political Ruffians
Sitting at a writing-desk in the White House on December 11, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt was an unhappy camper. In previous letters, he had addressed his correspondent as “Dear Maria.”
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