Not every deep, loving relationship between people of the same sex is “gay.” Last week, in an essay for The Federalist, D.C. McAllister offered this valuable and timely reminder to a society that has largely forgotten what true friendship looks like. Drawing heavily on C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves, McAllister references the traditional Greek distinction between
READ MOREBoth British and American authors have produced a number of children’s bestsellers. But, as Colleen Gillard argues in The Atlantic, the British may have an edge when it comes to children’s literature. Why? According to Gillard, it’s because they tend to produce more books in the fantasy genre: “The small island of Great Britain is
READ MOREChristianity is often derided as “unintellectual”. Yet, if you actually spend any time with those making the most dogmatic arguments about the “stupidity” of religion, particularly Christianity, you get the feeling that few of those individuals have actually engaged in any meaningful way with the intellectual tradition of Christianity. In The Spirit of Early Christian
READ MOREBenjamin Franklin’s famed Autobiography portrays a bright, talented young man, eager to be a success, but with a touch of mischief coursing through his veins. Reading between the lines, one can almost picture the spirited young Franklin as the equivalent of a modern-day Facebook troll. But something happened to Franklin in his late teens that
READ MOREMuch of modern postsecondary intellectual discourse emblematizes a regressive displacement of phraseology toward loquacious amalgamations intended to subvert intelligibility. Which is academic-speak for “Most academic writing these days is crap.” We’ve written on this subject before. In no other time in history have so many professors written so much that is unintelligible to the public,
READ MOREThe British author Hilaire Belloc once noted that “men are always powerfully affected by the immediate past—one might say that they are blinded by it.” When confronted with change, most people evaluate it based upon a very limited understanding of what’s considered normal. Our modern age, obsessed with diagnosis, has apparently come up with a
READ MOREIt’s amazing how relevant ancient works can be to modern life. Such is the case with Plato’s dialogue Gorgias?, which contains a very applicable warning about politicians. The Gorgias is a polemic against rhetoric—the art of speaking well and persuading others. Plato was not completely against rhetoric; he was okay with it if used “with
READ MOREAwful things took place in Cologne and other German cities over New Years. In Cologne alone, 1,000 men assaulted women to varying degrees, including rape. As the BBC reports: “City police chief Wolfgang Albers called it ‘a completely new dimension of crime’. The men were of Arab or North African appearance, he said.” Ah, yes,
READ MOREIt’s not hard to find a child these days who has been diagnosed with ADHD. According to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, the number of children labeled with the condition had risen to 11% by 2011. But a new medical article by Dr. Dimitri Christakis raises the question: are American adults
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