Speaking a different language forces the traveler to wonder how in the world foreigners manage to distort English—and vice versa. In Italy a bar is a place to get coffee and a pastry, have a light lunch, drink a glass of wine, but it is not for serious drinkers and does exclude children.
Growing up, my only training in the martial arts was the experience of getting beaten up by older boys until I learned how to inflict pain even when losing a fight. It was a useful lesson, and just as useful was my intuitive understanding of the basic principle of judo, which (so I have been told) is to use your enemy’s strength against him. I was forced to apply this principle more than once in college, when my athletic friends, invigorated by the joy of youth and a fifth of Jack Daniels, would suddenly realize how pleasant it would be...
A paragraph from an irresponsible rant on the murder of a Saudi journalist. …. It is quite possible that the murder took place exactly as the press, claiming the CIA as the ultimate source, has described it. On the other hand, there is no reason to believe anyone in the media, whether Jim Acosta or Sean Hannity, and after the past few years it is pretty clear we have no reason to believe the FBI, and if the FBI is specializing in political propaganda, can the CIA–the agency that appears to have engaged in massive drug smuggling in order to...
First, a Digression on What The Greeks Mean To Us The ancient Greeks are among are most significant ancestors or, at least, godfathers. They are one of those mirrors we hold up in order to contemplate our own faces, which we inevitably confuse with theirs. Christians have often read their own darkest impulses into Greek mythology and “idolatry.” (A passing thought: Did St. Paul or St. Jerome really believe educated Greeks worshipped statues made by human hands?) Romantic poets found the dynamic imagination they were trying to cultivate, and since Nietzsche some have found justification for their own chaotic passions...
In the time of Christ and his Apostles, it was enough to accept Christ–that is, the promised Messiah–and Him crucified, but it is a thoroughly human trait to draw conclusions, which are then treated as first principles. In the Golden Age of the American republic, many, perhaps most Americans believed in liberty, both in the sense of political independence and in the sense of moral and social freedom. If a man had a skill by which he could earn money, then–subject to legal, moral and social constraints–he could expect to practice that trade. Then wise guys came long and raised...
I am revising a series of articles and lectures I wrote on American Imperialism. In some places I have deleted political references that have lost their significance, in others I have expanded and developed an argument in light of later events and more serious consideration. The first version of this was written in (so far as I can tell) 2002. While the Trump administration may, viewed in retrospect, represent a lull in the imperialists’ Grand Design to wipe the old America from the face of the earth, no President willing to hire John Bolton or Nikki Haley can be regarded as a defender of the American Republic.
Megyn Kelly gets fired for making sense the first time in her career, while Don Lemon is praised for living down to expectations…
The change-over in the House was predicted by pundits from the day of Donald Trump’s election and therefore means very little. Nonetheless, it does show that the American electorate–it is hardly possible to speak of Americans as “a people”–is not only divided by class and region and race but even segments that supported Trump two years ago failed him. A cynic might say it is because America’s blue-collar class and Middle Americans in general are fat, stupid, and cowardly, and cynics are generally right.
Ignatius warned against one of the perennial temptations—to impose Jewish customs on the Church: “It is absurd to profess Christ Jesus, and to Judaize. For Christianity did not embrace Judaism, but Judaism Christianity, that so every tongue which believeth might be gathered together to God.” [Magnesians 10] Ignatius also warned against the poison of heretics who denied the reality of Christ’s passion. [Trallians 11]
Building The Gentile Church The early Church faced many grave crises and challenges, many of which can be summed up in one question: What kind of Church was it to be? This question was first posed as a set of alternatives: Was it to be a Judeo-Christian Church limited to Jews, including Gentile converts to Judaism, or a Christian Church liberated from most of the peculiarities of Jewish law and custom? But a second part of this question was whether this Church was to be a sect alienated from everyday life, like the Essenes, or an institution that existed in...
