Category: Feature

6

Guns ’n’ Grammar

The late Charley Reese got the gun issue right: “Some might say the Second Amendment is obsolete. Our own century shows us that it is not.  Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot and Mao all saw to it that people were disarmed prior to commencing their reigns of terror and tyranny.  God forbid, but Americans, too, could find themselves some day having to choose between submission or resistance to a tyrant.”

5

Χρίστος Ανέστη

This great Easter hymn was composed by Venantius Fortunatus, an Italian who lived roughly from 530 to  600 or some time thereafter. Born in Venezia, near Treviso, he was educated in the then still-civilized Ravenna some time after Justinian’s reconquest of Italy.  He made his way to the Frankish court in Metz, where he established himself as court poet.  

6

The Inconvenience of Truth

In its original Latin use, inconvenient, meaning not accordant or unsuitable, was—as far as I know—innocent of sinister implication; but in the six hundred years since its importation into English via French, it has tended to take on the coloring of a euphemism.  Although the Oxford Dictionary shows no awareness of the fact, in the days of Elizabeth I, if her Lord Treasurer William Cecil began to think that someone’s presence or behavior was inconvenient, then it was probably time for that person to start thinking seriously about putting his property in trust, and planning a trip overseas. In contemporary...

19

Jeremiah’s Job

What should be the posture of a solitary reactionary, who disagrees with every progressive policy promoted by both parties—or at least promoted by the one and resisted feebly by the other?  I shall not presume to give advice, but I would invite our attention to an ancient parallel case:  The people of Judah in the time of Jeremiah