The Narthex

An excellent article on U.S. involvement in Ukraine -- one that provides more background and analysis than a hundred mainstream pieces -- is offered by Christopher Caldwell at the Claremont Review website. A link to "Why Are We in Ukraine?" (Summer 2022) can be found below. To sample Caldwell's valuable…

Today Arizona governor Doug Ducey is signing a universal school-choice law that gives parents $7,000 per child per year to spend at any educational institution of their choice, including private schools and religious schools. Catholic schools in Arizona will be among the many beneficiaries of this innovation. In City Journal…

The City of New York recently released a 90-second public service announcement (PSA) on "Nuclear Preparedness." The Emergency Management department's video is so odd, it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the thought that people may put their trust in it. Imagine, the video's narrator says, that…

Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh recently spoke at a local pro-life fundraising event, and afterward he was criticized in the usual quarters. But instead of retreating from the subject of abortion, he decided to elaborate on his stance in an interview with ESPN. In the interview he says he tells…

Among global leaders, only the Pope has repeatedly called for de-escalation in Ukraine. A quick scan of the front pages of major American news websites -- Fox News, CNN, MSNBC -- today shows almost no mention at all of the ongoing conflict (only CNN has a link to "live updates"…

The latest group to protest faceless and heartless technocratic control is Dutch farmers. According to Joe Barnes at The Age (July 10), huge protests are sweeping the Netherlands "triggered by the introduction of laws designed to cut nitrogen and ammonia emissions by up to 95 percent" in the agricultural sector.…

As of today, thirteen U.S. states have banned or widely restricted abortion after the Supreme Court's ruling on Dobbs. Tennessee, the thirteenth, has a six-week "heartbeat" ban and next month may see a trigger-law ban go into effect that protects the unborn starting at conception. LifeNews.com's Steven Ertelt offers a…

Even the so-called best of our modern schools offer suboptimal conditions for boys. Warren Farrell and John Gray's The Boy Crisis (2019) substantially treats the topic, as does the older War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers (2015). We all experience manifestations of the boy crisis in our daily lives…

Over at The Federalist, author Joy Pullmann's article "The Left Has Effectively Banned Christian Kids From Public Pools, Libraries, And Summer Camps" paints a picture of what beleaguered Christian parents have to look forward to this summer (May 23). Pullmann's description of interactions with formerly benign groups like 4-H leaves…

The first serious truce between warring parties in Yemen took effect earlier this month. The Yemen conflict has continued for six years and killed 400,000 people, has led to the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and involved the U.S., but American media gave it scant coverage compared to the invasion of…

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is admired by Americans for his ability to make money. But there's a dark side to all that cash. Hayden Ludwig's "The Big Money Behind Abortion Activism," in The American Conservative (Jan. 18), tells of Buffett's "charitable" foundation, which since 2000 has given $4.7 billion --…

Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) missionaries run a news website called AsiaNews, which provides news briefs from Asia and around the world. A recent article called "Asia in 2022" (Jan. 1) offers a round-up of important events on the horizon for the enormous continent and its dominant player, China.…

Reporters at The New York Times have made public hundreds of confidential reports by the Pentagon on civilian casualties from U.S. air-strikes in Iraq and Syria, covering September 2014 through January 2018. The journalists describe the air-strikes as "marked by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting, and the…

Misguided "opinion leaders" have induced such panic in our youth that one in five British children reported having nightmares about climate change (Reuters, March 2, 2020). Certain "green" spokesmen and non-profit groups have admitted to their overheated rhetoric but justify it on grounds that only a widespread sense of panic…

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court heard the Mississippi case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which many hope will overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling of 1973. Such an outcome does not mean that abortion would automatically become illegal across the United States; rather, the power to make laws on abortion…