René Girard warned that the desire to assign blame can generate violence in the manner of a meme spreading through society.
Nathan Beacom
Nathan Beacom writes from Des Moines, Iowa. His writing has previously appeared in Plough Quarterly, Comment Magazine and elsewhere.
Posted inPolitics & Society, Short Take
A patron saint for migrants in the rural Midwest
Msgr. Luigi Ligutti, an immigrant priest who served other migrants in Iowa, teaches us to look toward rural America, its old residents and new arrivals alike, with sympathetic eyes.
Posted inFaith, Short Take
Did Pope Francis say that all religions are equal? Here’s what the Catholic Church teaches.
A snippet from some impromptu remarks caused a stir, but the pope’s point was that all religions are ways of communicating with God, not that they are all “the same.”
Posted inPolitics & Society, Short Take
Democrats have a rural America problem. Calling them ‘weird’ won’t help.
The “weird” meme, popularized by the Harris-Walz campaign, goes hand in hand with a longstanding ridicule of rural America, and it is punching down on some of the most disadvantaged people in our society.
Posted inPolitics & Society, Short Take
The problem with cutting off your family members
A “chosen family” has its benefits, but it can also be a way of avoiding the accountability and personal growth found in long-term, committed, familial bonds.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The difference between ‘becoming like God’ and ‘playing God’? The virtues of humility and gratitude.
David McPherson’s new book on the importance of placing limitations on our ambitions and desires touches on existential, political, moral and economic questions.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Making a home in a time of alienation
In her new book, Uprooted, Grace Olmstead investigates the social and personal costs of shopping for a place to live the way we shop for cars.
Posted inPolitics & Society, Short Take
Cities get our attention, but rural America has many of the same challenges
As rural America becomes more diverse, it faces many of the problems associated with big cities, writes Nathan Beacom. The urban-rural divide in our politics does not reflect reality.
Posted inPolitics & Society, Short Take
Farms may depend on water — but they are also polluting it.
In “Laudato Si’,” Pope Francis called drinkable water a human right. But as Nathan Beacom writes, our methods of farming and raising livestock are degrading our soil and polluting our waterways.
Posted inPolitics & Society, Short Take
What a 19th-century Catholic addict and poet can tell us about the modern-day opioid crisis
The current opioid crisis has strong parallels to drug addiction in Victorian England, writes Nathan Beacom, and the struggles of the Catholic poet Francis Thompson.