Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
With a vengeance: The striking similarities between what happened to black Americans at an earlier stage in our history and what is happening now to white working-class Americans may shed new light on old debates about cultural versus structural explanations of poverty. What’s clear is that economic opportunity, while not the only factor affecting marriage, …
Continue reading "The Class Struggle Finally Comes to America"
Our Lord wept over Jerusalem, but what about this: My last Palm Sunday piece concerned the custom of the palm crosses at Bethesda-by-the-Sea. Evidently it's just as well Bethesda stuck with palm crosses; a real triumphal entry into Palm Beach would have been met, not by the Pharisees, but the Palm Beach police. And it …
Continue reading "Jesus' Triumphal Entry: Not in Palm Beach"
It took long enough: In November 2011, President Obama lamented that “some in Congress are trying to undo these automatic spending cuts” that were part of that August’s deal to raise the debt limit. “My message to them is simple: No. I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to …
Continue reading "The Republicans Finally Figure it Out on the Sequester"
All glory is fleeting, I suppose: Andrew Jackson, the president whose divisive political instincts would shape the Democratic Party for generations, was born less than 20 miles from here, in the Waxhaw region between the Carolinas. Until the 1980s, “Old Hickory” was considered a near-great president, just a few notches below Washington, Lincoln and Franklin …
Continue reading "Old Hickory Falls Out of Favour in his own Party"
In a recent comment on my page Think Before You Convert "KYCath" (I assume that means Kentucky Catholic) there was the following: In short, Wills exposes how the original infrastructures of the Catholic Church morphed and transformed over the ages, so that original dogmas–and the understanding of their meaning thereof–changed to the point where the …
Continue reading "In Defence–Really Praise–of Scholasticism"
Political analysis and punditry can date awfully quickly. Nevertheless--and this is especially true in a place like the United States, whose structural continuity is exceptional--some pieces of political prose, especially when written in a historical context, can have relevance for several generations. One of those analyses--actually a series of essays not originally intended to be …
Tina Turner calls its quits on the U.S.: US pop legend Tina Turner, who has been living in Switzerland since 1995, will soon receive Swiss citizenship and will give up her US passport, Swiss media reported Friday. "I'm very happy in Switzerland and I feel at home here. ... I cannot imagine a better place …
Continue reading ""Proud Mary" No Longer Proud to be an American"
I guess any creature can only take so much: Two lemurs were captured early Monday morning after they escaped from their cages and one scratched a 2-year-old girl. About 2 a.m., North Miami Beach Police received the call about the lemurs which were loose near 2049 NE 173rd Street. "This is the first time I've been …
Continue reading "The Animals Finally Lose it in South Florida"
Today is Fake Inauguration Day in the United States. Our President, coming from a triumph many said would never happen, was actually sworn in yesterday. If I were him, and I wanted to stick it in the eye again to serious Christians, I would have done the thing on Sunday, the way other places do …
Continue reading "The Two Questions Many Churches Never Stop Answering I Never Asked"
Ever since the hapless Rowan Williams began his exit from the stage of Lambeth Palace, and the former oil executive Justin Welby began measuring the curtains, there has been a great deal of optimism about the future course of the Church of England. Would there be a way of putting the Communion back together again? …
Positive Infinity 