Politics & The World

Lady Columbia

Politics is outside the bailiwick of Studio Matters. Yet election of the once-and-future President Trump was so remarkable, so exhilarating in its implications, celebration is mandatory. There should be dancing in the streets. Fireworks, too . But all I have is words. Permit me, please, just a few of them. Just this once.     It was June, 2015, when Donald Trump came down the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his run for the presidency. I scoffed at the news. Continue Reading
Mass Migration: Slouching Toward Dissolution

Our betters tell us that mass migration is a moral imperative. “Love has no borders,” they croon. They use this facile sentimentality to bully us into assenting to the dissolution of shared culture and a collective identity. It is hard to muster courtesy toward the Better Sort who consciously conflate the word immigration with migration. The first is a legal process, in effect a contract between arrivals and the state. In current context, the second assents to illegal entry by the brute force of overwhelming numbers. Continue Reading
Lepanto Redux or The Idolatry of Devout Ideas?

Is the upcoming presidential election our Lepanto moment? Is it a watershed event as consequential to civilization as the Battle of Lepanto? It certainly looks that way. Unhappily, Christian civilization is less capable today of defeating the enemy than it was on October 7, 1571. Collective discernment dissolves in a daily acid bath of media exertions to synthesize a viable candidate from a calculating, Marxoid cipher who parlayed sexual favor to the 41st mayor of San Francisco into a lucrative public service job. Continue Reading
A Florida Initiative, Abortion & The Lesson of Venezuela

The specter of Venezuela looms over a complacent American electorate. Mary Jo Anderson, a notable Catholic journalist and public speaker, gave a talk to an organization of Republican women in central Florida’s Volusia County on August 8. Her topic was Florida’s Amendment 4, a.k.a. Right to Abortion Initiative, a hot-button issue for discussion that preceded the group’s business meeting. The agenda included an introduction to Faustina Guzman-Trump [no relation to Donald], a Venezuela-born candidate for the office of Republican Committeewoman in the county. Continue Reading
Harrison Butker At The Podium

Harrison Butker’s commencement address at Benedictine College was a mixed pleasure. There was much in it to cheer. Nonetheless, his spotlight on Josemariá Escrivá de Balaguer, (1902-1975), founder of Opus Dei, raised a red flag. How familiar is Butker with the richness of Catholic tradition beyond the contours of a quasi-sectarian, ultra-orthodox movement hinged on a personality cult? More on that later. But first, the pleasure. Part homily, part pep talk, the address challenged young Catholics to recognize the moral bankruptcy of the culture they will inhabit as adults. Continue Reading