2022

9/11 & The Pedagogy of Amnesia

A new generation of voters will go to the polls this year with no memory  of 9/11. What knowledge they might have of it has been given to them in classrooms sodden with ideological agendas and careless of history. Careless of the truth of things. In American Thinker this morning Pamela Geller asks:
Twenty-one years on, and where are we? What do our children know about 9/11 and the Islamic terrorists who attacked our country in the worst attack on our homeland in American history?
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Huey Newton

The violent bear it away. That title of Flannery O’Connor’s 1960 novel still resonates. Some relentless atavism is at work in our culture, a monstrous irrationality that awakens what O’Connor called “the stuff of which madmen and fanatics are made.” Violence, no longer shunned, is now an accepted political tool. The attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh—preceded by U.S Attorney General Merrick Garland’s refusal to enforce federal law against protesters at justices’ homes—exposed the fragile divide between constituted order and willed anarchy. Continue Reading
America Magazine: A Sentimental Education

America bills itself as the go-to publication for “thinking Catholics and those who want to know what Catholics are thinking.” Distressingly often, the Jesuit flagship puts me in mind of the hookah-smoking Caterpillar who shouts to Alice “I’ve something important to say!” Sometimes it really does. Other times I wonder if St. Ignatius has his regrets. My wonderment spikes when the editors prod me to think deeply about the eco-spirituality of Pope Francis. Laudato Sí placed environmental issues at the heart of Christian concern. Continue Reading
pregnant pro-abortion protester

The Dobbs decision has been thoroughly analyzed and discussed elsewhere. What appears here are notes jotted in the margins. Begin with the anarchic trajectory of Justice Kennedy’s “mystery passage” of thirty years ago. Roe v. Wade invented a Constitutional right out of whole cloth. Planned Parenthood v. Casey exalted the grounds of that invention. The 1992 decision codified Justice Kennedy’s madcap dictum: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Continue Reading
Minton in drag

Biden’s new appointment to the Department of Energy is a strutting, non-binary drag queen. He is also a packmate in the leather subset of “pup handlers.” You can bone up on the culture of puppy love later. For now, pay attention to Sam Brinton holding forth on the ethical necessity of role-playing of another kind: genderqueer pronouns for the newly discovered constellation of gender identities. A link to his three and a half minute video is in the previous post. Still, it is better to have the libretto in front of you. Continue Reading