Before the site is glutted with debate commentary, a word on Rod Dreher’s latest C11 column. Its title, and much of its substance, is taken from the last page of After Virtue, but a couple of Dreher’s comments on Benedictine monasticism are misleading. The paragraphs I’m talking about (all emphases mine):For some time now, Julie and I have been talking with … [Read More]

“All country people hate each other,” wrote William Hazlitt. “There is nothing good to be had in the country, or, if there is, they will not give it to you.” I wonder what Hazlitt would have made of last week’s convention. I was among those who found it slightly chilling to see America’s Mayor get his William Wordsworth on, and only … [Read More]

Not that I need one, but the release of Diane English’s remake of The Women is a good excuse to revisit the George Cukor original.  It dates from 1939, that year when someone—maybe the Communists, although it doesn’t really sound like them—put soluble genius in Southern California’s drinking water and ended up giving us Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of … [Read More]

Early yesterday morning, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo announced his decision to begin looking into war crimes allegedly committed by Russian and Georgian troops in South Ossetia.  The announcement, though misguided, was appealingly symmetrical .  After all, if overreaching by one international body was partly responsible for this mess (when the United States and Russia compete to prove how … [Read More]

One provision of Congress’s newest higher education bill requires that colleges and universities report their reasons for tuition hikes to the Department of Education.  It will be interesting to see how many ways they can come up with to say, “Because we can.” The motivation behind the bill, which passed both houses of Congress today, is to expand access to higher … [Read More]

Halfway through my sophomore year of high school I was overwhelmed by an impulse to become more traditionally feminine, which I satisfied by getting a job in the children’s section of the public library.  I remember presiding over a storytime circle of elementary schoolers in which I tried to guide them towards an appreciation of modern art—“It’s a kind of picture … [Read More]

My Southern suspicion that New England is full of crazy people gained another exhibit for the prosecution last week.  The “Parade of Horribles” in Beverly, Mass., a Fourth of July tradition of grotesquerie that is exactly what it sounds like, featured several floats mocking the Gloucester “pregnancy boom” in which seventeen girls at one high school decided that sixteen was an … [Read More]

Whether due to the dramatic failure of last year’s attempt at comprehensive reform or to the essential similarity of the two candidates’ positions, the issue of illegal immigration has so far kept a fairly low profile in the presidential campaign.  Given McCain’s heterodoxy, this may be a blessing.  In the absence of a federal solution, state and local governments have begun … [Read More]

The question of whether or not to see “Sex and the City” is easy to answer: if you are a man, no. There is nothing here for you. If you are a woman, still no. The sugary cocktail of glamour and sentimentality may prove addictive; those DVD box sets aren’t cheap, and watching them will make you dumber. For sensible people, … [Read More]