Posted inIn All Things

2 Thoughts Amidst the Scrambling

Evelyn Waugh once wrote that New Yorkers suffer from a neurosis that they mistake for energy a kind of must-do-this-now-latest-thing drive that simultaneously gives life some meaning and robs it of value In that sense today I am a New Yorker I am in the midst of a major scramble to meet academic

Posted inIn All Things

Who is Truth?

A friend recently told me that he was participating in a new inter-religious initiative at a Catholic university in Europe I didn rsquo t envy his assignment Though vitally important in a world that is too often visited by the violent acts of self-avowed religious believers such dialogues can be

Posted inIn All Things

Bringing (Good) Things to Life

Sergeant Jeremy Mendenhall of the Ohio State Highway Patrol is really mad He is the president of The Ohio Troopers rsquo Association and is busy working to defeat Republican-sponsored legislation that he says would gut Ohio rsquo s collective bargaining arrangements and seriously enfeeble the po

Posted inIn All Things

Scalia’s Originalism

It is a safe bet that the smartest guy ever to graduate from Jesuit-run Xavier High in Manhattan currently sits on the U S Supreme Court Even as a student his former classmates say Antonin Scalia was scary-smart first in the class of 1953 I was never cool though he once remarked That seems

Posted inIn All Things

Joey, We Hardly Knew Ye

Those sounds you heard a few days ago turned out to be the exploding heads of Connecticut Democrats During his announcement last week that he would not seek re-election U S Senator Joseph Lieberman said that his politics were those of John F Kennedy a comparison that sent the state s liberals i

Posted inIn All Things

Britain and Cable-gate

Well into day five of Cable-gate the reaction of folks here in London is a collective ho-hum The Queen s subjects are buzzing but not about the wayward opinions of their American cousins nor even about London s rioting students or its knee-high paralyzing snowfall Treason is the word on pe

Posted inIn All Things

What Happened?

It is 7 a m British time and the results of yesterday rsquo s U S election have reached London There were few surprises one of those rare moments in recent American politics when the polls and pundits got it right The question on everybody s mind of course is what the results mean When folks

Posted inIn All Things

Of Diamonds and Politics

Add this to the list of possible omens for tomorrow rsquo s election Neil Diamond is about to release a new album The gravely voiced soft rock sensation will release ldquo Dreams rdquo on Election Day Mere coincidence Perhaps Yet Diamond rsquo s anthology has provided an uncanny soundtrack

Posted inIn All Things

Girard and Desire

As I write this I am en route to Belgium for three days of meetings on the thought of Rene Girard the French-American historian literary critic and philosopher of the social sciences Girard is receiving more and more attention these days from theologians among many others for his insights into

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