From the editor’s desk: I have noted before that the greatest influence on my thought and writing is George F. Will, but he has not the only writers to guide my political thinking and career choice. Two others were the historian Paul Johnson and journalist Patrick J. Buchanan. In January, we lost Johnson who died at the age of 94 and Buchanan, [...]
From the editor’s desk Paul Tuns I read a lot and many of the books I read get reviewed in these pages, either in longer reviews or essays under my byline or as unsigned brief reviews. But there are many that I can’t get around to writing a review about and I want to let you know about several of them, and [...]
Paul Tuns: In July, the United Nations’ Population Division predicted that on Nov. 15, global population would hit 8 billion people. Let us be among the first to wish the newborn baby boy or girl, probably born in Africa, the Middle East, or south Asia, a happy birth day and welcome to the human family. Typically, the UN’s population estimates come with [...]
Paul Tuns: In 2017, the British journalist David Goodhart coined the theory of Somewheres and Anywheres to describe those who were grounded to the place they were born (and were generally more politically and personally conservative) and those who see themselves as citizens of the world (and were generally more politically and personally liberal). Somewheres usually outnumber Anywheres but Anywheres have outsized [...]
Paul Tuns: A CNN report on the May 23 mass shooting at a Uvalde, Texas elementary school began, “we may never know why a shooter gunned down 19 children and two teachers in a massacre Tuesday at Robb Elementary School …” Not specifically, no. Reasonable explanations often betray such evil acts. But it is not impossible to diagnose the moral muck from [...]
From the editor's desk: I had planned to use this column to write about the Uvalde school shooting in Texas on May 18, and how it ties back to abortion and other cultural rot. I’m postponing that essay because this issue is jam-packed with a lot of “heavy” material. Instead, I return to covering a miscellany of events as is my usual [...]
From the editor’s desk: Cook at Mercatornet made an excellent point about the abortion debate in the United States following the leak of a Supreme Court decision that indicates that the five-decade old Roe decision is about to be overturned: the pro-abortion side is going to have to learn to debate their position. For nearly five decades, the pro-abortion side has been [...]
From the editor’s desk: You probably saw that during Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, she refused to answer what a woman is. Joe Biden appointed Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court because she was a black woman, the sole qualification Biden outlined for his first Supreme Court appointment when he was running for president. Asked if she agreed with the late Justice [...]
The mainstream media has parroted a Democrat talking-point in labeling a Florida parental rights law a “don’t say gay” prohibition in the classroom. Florida House Bill 1557, the Parental Rights in Education Act was passed in the state house in February and the state Senate in early March, and was set to be signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis. The move [...]
Paul Tuns From the editor’s desk: Cardus, a Canadian think tank, released a report, “Needs Improvement: How Public Schools Teach About Religion,” authored by Andrew P.W. Bennett. The study looked at how religion is taught in elementary and secondary schools in British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and Ontario. It found that approaches varied, with Ontario being a “stand-out example of a more [...]
Whatever Happened to Tradition: History, Belonging, and the Future of the West by Tim Stanley (Bloomsbury Continuum, $38, 266 pages) Tradition and especially traditionalism has a bad reputation. It is often conflated with the old-fashioned and nostalgia, which barely begin to scratch the surface of the richness of tradition. Tim Stanley, an editorial writer for the Daily Telegraph in London comes to [...]
Paul Tuns, From the editor's desk: Christine Rosen, senior writer for Commentary, wrote the magazine’s January cover story, “The New Misogyny,” on how women are denigrated by the transgender ideology. Under the guise of a “liberationist philosophy,” she writes, this “progressive” spirit is actually “an audacious form of woman-hatred” that “comes in the guise of opening up womanhood.” This new misogyny “insists [...]
Paul Tuns I listened out of both duty and interest to the oral arguments before the Supreme Court, and followed along on Twitter and a number of people live-blogging the proceedings. Since the Court accepted the case, I’ve assumed that it would uphold Roe v. Wade but amend it by permitting supposedly severe restrictions before the commonly accepted point of viability point [...]
Paul Tuns Review The Critical Temper: Interventions from The New Criterion at 40 edited by Roger Kimball (Encounter, $39.99, 561 pages) The idea of the culture wars is much derided by pundits, often considered distractions from real issues. I would argue there is nothing more important than to go to (metaphorical) war over than culture. A field general in the war over [...]
From the editor’s desk I read a lot. Not only for my job, but for fun so I thought I’d write about a few non-work books that I enjoyed immensely this year. For years baseball was my favourite sport; it has since been usurped by football and I no longer watch the game that I spent years watching and listening to, but [...]