The Totalitarian Temptation in the Groves of Academe
In his “Notes & Comments” column in the November issue of the New Criterion, editor Roger Kimball dilates on the truly daring nature of the new Christ…
Matthew Peterson’s Not-So-Modest Proposal on Student Debt
Everybody agrees student loan debt is a large problem. In the United States approximately $1.5 trillion is currently owed by around 45 million people at an average…
Does Classical Education Promote Diversity?
Though classical learning is gaining steam again in many parts of the United States, one common argument often made against it is that the promotion of Western…
Can We Save Our Dying English Departments?
Q. What’s the difference between a park bench and an English major? A. The park bench can support a family of four. Despite the jokes, English majors,…
Some Vagaries and Evagaries of Avarice
The image that always comes to mind for me when thinking about the vice of greed, or avarice, is that of Scrooge McDuck entering his vault and…
The Real Season of Giving
Complaints about “materialism” at Christmas have never really bothered me. For those who believe in the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, there is a real lesson about…
Justice Returns to the Sources
The Art of the Good. Valentin Tomberg, translated by Stephen Churchyard and James T. Wetmore. Angelico Press, 2021. Fiction will never really be able to compete…
Why We Play: Football Coaches and The Making of Boys Into Men
I sing of shoulder pads and the player. Even more so the football coach. This position is controversial these days. After all, football is, in George Will’s…
Nietzsche, Christ, or Civil War?
Power and Purity: The Unholy Marriage That Spawned America’s Social Justice Warriors. Mark T. Mitchell. Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2020. What in hell is going on in…
Is Online University Education Possible?
Is there anything better for a teacher than watching one’s students do great things? I have never bought into the rhetoric that some teachers use about “learning…
The Economy of Funerals and Aunts
The office of the Vice President, FDR’s second veep John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner allegedly said, is not worth a bucket of warm spit. What do vice…
Saint John Henry Newman, Sacramental Economist
One might not think of the newly-canonized Catholic Saint John Henry Newman as a patron of businessmen or investment bankers. After all, in “Christ the Quickening Spirit,”…
Leisure the Basis of Labor
Getting Work Right: Labor and Leisure in a Fragmented World, by Michael J. Naughton (200 pages, Emmaus Road Publishing, 2019) “Work-life balance” is a topic of…
May I Retire?
You can call it Gen-X cynicism, but when the Social Security administration used to send out those letters indicating the amount of our monthly earnings given how…
How Much Exactly Do I Have to Render Unto Caesar?
Income tax season is mostly over. For our family it just ended a week ago when the IRS sent us our refund after a long summer of…