Pope Francis and President Trump walk into a bar. There’s a duck sitting on a stool watching the nightly news. The President and the Pope pull up stools on either side of the duck. “What are they saying about him?” the President asks the duck as he nods to the Pope. “They are praising him for upending Catholic orthodoxy,” says the duck. “And what are they saying about him?” the Pope asks the duck, pointing to the President. “They are condemning him for challenging liberal orthodoxy.” “And what do you think?” the two leaders ask the duck. “I think… Read

The men whose actions precipitated the “#Metoo” movement believed that no sexual behavior was off limit to them, because the Sexual Revolution had convinced them that no sexual behavior was immoral. Going forward, many innocent men, and indeed society itself, will pay a heavy price as the civil war of modern governance attempts to impose order, and does so arbitrarily, brutally and without remorse. It’s another win for the “Enlightenment.” Read

In 1973, the science-fiction legend Ursula K. Le Guin published “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” In it, she describes the city of Omelas, a utopia filled with laughter, music, love, and, above all, happiness. Everyone in Omelas is joyous. They are content, absolutely, completely, and undeniably fulfilled. Well, almost everyone…. You see, locked in a small basement room with no window, little light, a damp dirt floor and foul air, lives a little child. Read

Three years ago, the French Government banned a public service advertisement called “Dear Future Mom,” which was an attempt to convince Europeans not to abort children diagnosed in utero with Down Syndrome. Why? Because two viewers complained, one of whom had aborted a Down Syndrome child and found watching the ad “violent.” The ad ran unopposed in Great Britain and the U.S. That geographic dichotomy highlights one of the great divides in the West: the source of our rights. Who gets to decide what we can or cannot say or who should or should not live? God, or the Enlightened? Read

Two years ago, economics professors at Princeton shocked the academic and political worlds with a ground-breaking study that showed the death rate among middle-aged, working-class whites has been increasing dramatically since the turn of the century. Last month, a follow-up study showed that those trends are increasing. What is it about our brave new world that is taking such a toll on this particular group of people? Read

Last Thursday, Italy’s Senate began deliberations on the question of “civil unions.” I can’t help but wonder if the Italian people and even the Church are wasting their time bickering over the question of homosexuality’s role in defining the family, even as the basic family unit is collapsing in Italy and throughout Europe. In Italy – as in the rest of “Christendom” – the family was destroyed long ago and by forces that have nothing whatsoever to do with homosexuality or same-sex relationships. Rather, it was destroyed by selfishness, laziness, cultural apathy and, above all, antagonism to, and resentment of, traditional Judeo-Christian religious values. Read

This week, as American Pro-Lifers march in somber commemoration of the 43rd anniversary of Roe v Wade, the government of China has, however unwittingly, sent the United States and the rest of the West an urgent and fitting message: people are not the problem, and abortion is not the answer. Indeed, the construction of that equation has the variables precisely backward.
Read

The recent attack on a Planned Parenthood facility, unleashed more talk about gun control, the war on women’s health and religious fanatics. What it failed to unleash were thoughtful reflections on a far more serious phenomenon: In a world stripped of its meaning and purpose, Westerners are finding or creating meaning anywhere they can. And in the case of men unmoored from the traditional defining behaviors and beliefs of adulthood – manhood – this creation of meaning often manifests itself as violence, and “heroic” violence especially.

Read

Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, a patron saint of “progressivism,” and the founding father of the American administrative state. He was also a racist and dedicated eugenicist. As the governor of New Jersey, he signed one of the nation’s first and most draconian state eugenics laws–a law drafted by Dr. Edwin Katzen-Ellenbogen who would become a notorious killer doctor in Hitler’s Buchenwald concentration camp. Have the juvenile antics of our Ivy League university students uncovered an awkward fact of history? Read

Late last month, the United Nations adopted what it calls its Agenda for 2030. It reads in part: “We are resolved to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet. We are determined to take the bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path. As we embark on this collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind.” This is a sweet sentiment, I suppose, but it is also, to put it mildly, nuts.
Read