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Rod Dreher

A Soviet dissident tells it: I was 18, and not entirely pop-illiterate: the “Beatli,” the “Rollingi” and the Monkees were always seeping out of friends’ tape recorders, opening up new, unknown sounds and spaces. But all that was anticipation; it was as if we were being prepared for something big, something that would make the…

A friend passes along this lovely essay by the British journalist Peter Hitchens, a political conservative and a mid-life convert to Christianity, in which Hitchens writes at length (and with gratitude) about how he and his famously atheistic brother finally reconciled. Fantastic! (And P. Hitchens reports that C. has quit smoking — surely a minor…

Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Michael Ruse, the historian and philosopher of science, considers recent skepticism about Charles Darwin voiced not by creationists, but by eminent philosophers. Excerpt: Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini were an isolated case, one could dismiss their book with a grimace (if you were a biologist), or welcome them with a…

The NYT Magazine examines the controversial field of behavioral optometry, which holds that many kids diagnosed with ADHD and other modern maladies are actually suffering from neurological problems that can be cured or at least ameliorated with eye therapy. Though mainstream opthalmologists insist there is no scientific evidence to back this claim, there are lots…

David Rieff asks: As a thought experiment, pretend you are a complete innocent, knowing nothing about this society (I am talking here about the developed world as a whole–not just the Golden Calf that conservatives and liberals alike have made out of the United States of America, worshipping–what?–themselves? their demographic and historical good luck?–as they…

It has a lot to do with the federal government badly skewing the market with subsidies. Look: If the government is going to game the system via subsidies, why not subsidize the production of fresh fruits and vegetables, to make healthy food more accessible to poorer families? Government also supports the market by buying up…

I’d said in the Ugly Churches post that calling a particular church “regrettable” isn’t meant as a judgment on the religion itself or the parishioners who worship there, but only on the architecture itself. But it’s true that architecture, especially church architecture, should express the values and beliefs of those who use the building for…

An image of this monstrous French church, L’Eglise Ste-Bernadette du Banlay, assaulted me as I read the NYT Arts section today. Reviewing architect Claude Parent’s work, the Times critic says: Mr. Parent’s building — massive concrete walls with rounded corners and slot windows — is the expression of a culture living under the constant threat…

Yuck:

Poor Walmart. Yes, you read that right: the Crunchy Con officially feels sorry for Walmart this afternoon. Why? This nonsense: Walmart is raising eyebrows after cutting the price of a black Barbie doll to nearly half of that of the doll’s white counterpart at one store and possibly others. A photo first posted to the…
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