Archive for February, 2010

Three Weddings and a Funeral

For several decades “conservatives” have debated ways of strengthening marriage in the United States. The standard line has been to call for the repeal of no-fault divorce laws or to put sharper legal teeth into the marriage contract arranged by the state. As with every other major issue confronting us today, a lack of understanding about reality—in this case, the institution of marriage—makes it impossible to consider the most useful political options.

Obama’s Problems—and Ours

We inherited the worst situation since the Great Depression.

That is the reflexive response of President Obama to the troubles from which he has been unable to extract his country.

Even before the inauguration, he says, there were projections of a $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009. That deficit is not my deficit.

A Cautionary Tale

Jury selection began yesterday in the murder trial of Harlan Drake, the man who has confessed to killing pro-life activist James Pouillon, but the Associated Press reports that Shiawassee County, Michigan, prosecutors “have warned a judge that it will be ‘almost impossible’ to seat jurors.” Pouillon, the AP reports, “was everywhere—the farmers market, City Hall, the county courthouse, football games—with verbal taunts that were as shocking as his signs.” While the national media is finally covering this side of the story, Chronicles gave its readers the full story four months ago.

An Arresting Moment

Five years ago, I wrote of the horror that Aaron Wolf and I experienced as we spent a morning photographing the old Turner School here in Rockford. Built in 1898, the massive brick-and-stone structure was closed 80 years later by a school board attempting in vain to avoid a lawsuit over busing. Today, little effort is being made to maintain the exterior, and weeds grow up in the lawn out front and the former playground in back. Four or five days out of every week, passersby might assume that the building is still shuttered.

Time to ‘Plant’ Obama’s Health Care

It’s moments like this one—our Health Care Moment, we could call it—that make numerous friends of democracy and good government want to pull the covers over their heads and leave a wake-up call for next month.

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

One of the great interests of Anglo-Saxon poems is the heroic code of the warriors.  They fight for their own glory, of course, but also to protect and avenge their lord, to preserve their religion, and defend the liberties of their people.  Unlike the Vikings, they are neither savages nor merely predators.

Liquidating the Empire

A decade ago, Oldsmobile went. Last year, Pontiac. Saturn, Saab and Hummer were discontinued. A thousand GM dealerships shut down.

To those who grew up in a “GM family,” where buying a Chrysler was like converting to Islam, what happened to GM was deeply saddening.

Yet the amputations had to be done—or GM would die.

Unzism, A Dangerous Doctrine

Ron Unz, the neoliberal publisher of The American Conservative since the departure of Patrick J. Buchanan and Taki Theodoracopulos, penned an article for the March 1 issue of TAC entitled, like Geraldo Rivera’s recent pro-immigration book, “His-Panic,” where he argues that the notion of widespread Hispanic crime is largely a myth. He writes that conservatives have “accepted the myth that Hispanic immigrants and their children have high crime rates” and even goes so far as to put the word ‘gang’ in scare quotes when discussing Hispanic gangs.

I Gave it Up for Lent

My good friends at Catholic Answers in San Diego invited me to be a guest on their excellent radio program last Monday to discuss the tensions between being a “good” American and “good” Catholic. The Americanist heresy came up, and the near convergence of that discussion with the start of Lent brings into focus for me the problem with a practice present even among tradition-minded Catholics.

Abuse Your Illusions

Walter Block is a libertarian without guile, a theorist who refuses to confine his classical-liberal analysis to strictly economic questions. Liberty is liberty, he would argue, and value is value, whether we are deciding a question of zoning or a case of censorship.