For conservative Catholics, Pope Francis’s hell remarks commit a double heresy
But is he actually wrong?
Saturday
Does President Trump believe in the resurrection?
Easter weekend must be interesting for the interfaith First Family
Friday
If Trump is Bertie Wooster, who is Jeeves?
California, once a citadel of conservatism, now a bastion of liberal progressivism, continues to harbour a few intellectual redoubts on the right. Up north you can find the Hoover Institution, which is located on the Stanford University campus. And down south, near Los Angeles, there is the Claremont Institute, another scholarly outfit which also happens … Read more
On guns and porn, morally elevated citizens should tell the busybodies to buzz off
Will foreign pornographers be the last defenders of the Bill of Rights? America is going through one of its periodic seizures of moral grandstanding, with gun owners and supporters of the Second Amendment now deemed so unclean that one may not even have commerce with them. Under pressure from Twitter mobs and activist bullies, companies … Read more
What are Kim Jong-un’s motives in meeting Xi?
Kim Jong-un surprised the world—once again—by making an unannounced trip to China earlier this week, and observers in the United States still haven’t come to any agreement on what it means. The North Korean leader traveled to Beijing by bulletproof train to meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping ahead of a planned meeting later this … Read more
The diplomat expulsion game is a pointless charade
Diplomats are poker chips. The pomp and mystery that accrues to the diplomatic and intelligence services en poste overseas conceal a simple truth: in today’s world, journalists, bankers, NGOs and bloggers are, far more often than not, better informed than diplomats about the countries in which they operate. I know this to be true in
Thursday
Trump’s new VA Secretary has worked for four successive presidents. The media doesn’t care
Context is everything. But if you’re a busy person trying to navigate the personal and professional traps of modern life – and aren’t we all? – you don’t always have time to read a lot on every topic. You rely on the media to tell you succinctly what you most need to know. But that … Read more
Wednesday
The truth about Charles, Prince of Wales – and Larry Kudlow
At dinner the other night a friend wondered what came first, social climbing or name-dropping? It’s obviously a very silly question, and we all had a laugh about it. ‘As Achilles told me in his tent the other evening, Helen always fancied him and Menelaus didn’t like it a bit.’ Or, ‘I’m rather tired of
Can you prove you’re not a racist?
After an essay in this month’s Prospect about literature and freedom of speech, it seems I was cited on Twitter as a ‘racist provocateur’. Now, I rather fancy being a ‘provocateur’. But as for the adjective. Someone can call you ‘stupid’, and that’s just one person’s opinion. It doesn’t seem true because a single childish
Who knew that Arabic has more than 30 words for wine?
You know you’re in good hands when the dedication reads: ‘To the writers, drinkers and freethinkers of the Arab and Islamic worlds, long may they live.’ Abu Nuwas was all three, and a complete hoot. Why he is so little known in Britain should be a mystery. But outward-looking as we are as a nation,
Are the French right to be obsessed with their Gaulish ancestry?
This book reminded me of Kurt Andersen’s Fantasyland — but where Andersen thinks only Americans have lost their minds, David Andress thinks everyone has. I can’t say I disagree, being a subscriber to the Hourly Outrage, also known as Twitter. Andress refers to Brexit, Donald Trump’s election and Marine Le Pen’s rise in French politics
How Christianity saw off its rivals and became the universal church
In the reign of Constantine, whose conversion to Christianity in AD 310 set the entire Roman world on a course to becoming Christian, a Palestinian scholar named Eusebius pondered the reasons for the triumph of his faith. Naturally, he saw behind it the guiding hand of God; but he did not rest content with that
Tuesday
Why isn’t Donald Trump tweeting about expelling Russian diplomats?
“President Trump ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian officials from the United States and ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle, the White House announced Monday” was how NPR started its report on the surprise story that started the week in Washington, and most outlets followed suit. In this way, the press emphasised … Read more
Revealed: Cambridge Analytica and the passport king
The Cambridge Analytica story is full of hot air. Everybody delights in talking about how scary Facebook is, and lots of people believe the Donald Trump and Brexit campaigns somehow hoodwinked whole electorates — because, well, how else could they have won? We hear about creepy and sophisticated-sounding techniques such as ‘micro-targeting’ and ‘psychographics’. But
Monday
Trump vs Biden, Peterson vs Mishra — American culture is going the way of WWF
Americans breathed a sigh of disappointment last week when the promised super-heavyweight bout between Joe Biden and Donald Trump stalled after the weigh-in trash talk. “They asked me, would I like to debate this gentleman, and I said no,” Biden said as he stripped to his trunks. “I said, ‘If we were in high school, … Read more
Donald Trump turns on Putin
It seems like only yesterday Donald Trump was buttering up Vladimir Putin. His congratulations on Putin’s victory and failure to mention the nerve agent attack in Salisbury sent the foreign policy establishment in Washington into high dudgeon. Now the administration has expelled 60 Russian diplomats and shuttered the Russian consulate in Seattle. This is only,
Saturday
Why John Bolton is no warmonger
The hysteria from the Left over Donald Trump’s appointment of John Bolton as National Security Advisor to replace Lt. General H. R. McMaster has been partly hilarious, partly alarming to behold. From The Guardian in this country to The New York Times, CNN, Slate, Salon, and beyond in the United States, we are presented with a scarecrow figure … Read more
Friday
Why did McMaster go?
Everyone wants to know what caused President Trump to dump national security adviser H.R. McMaster. Today’s papers are saying it was because McMaster, addressing the Munich Security Conference in February, said he had ‘incontrovertible’ evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump was quick to signal his disapproval. ‘General McMaster forgot to say that … Read more
Did Trump appoint John Bolton to distract from his spending bill failure?
Another massive America news blizzard yesterday: Trump lawyer quits, tariffs tariffs tariffs, stock-market slide, former alleged mistresses of the President speaking out, McMaster out (finally), Bolton in (finally). And then, as a night cap, the Senate approves a $1.3 trillion spending plan to prevent a government shutdown. The Bolton news has, so far, been the
Thursday
Isolationist? Donald Trump appears to be assembling a war cabinet
Is the third time the charm? President Trump has already run through Mike Flynn, who enjoyed the shortest tenure in history of any national security adviser. Next came three-star General H.R. McMaster. Now John Bolton, the former George W. Bush ambassador to the United Nations who has been angling for the job ever since Trump … Read more
