Fueled by imagination

Fouad Ajami is concerned about crowds. It is true that a crowd can be the most lonely place, and that lonely and alienated people provide the best material for politicians in search of a crowd.

Culturally divided

Howard Fineman is rightly astonished that the electoral race is not over. Indeed, given the mood of the country Obama should be 30 points ahead. The fact that he is not points to to something interesting: US elections are about conflicting ideologies (as opposed to conflicting interests) much more than they used to be. Many people don't vote for a political program, they vote based on cultural identification. And many people simply cannot identify culturally with Obama.

Disenfranchised

John Allen on US Catholics and the presidential elections.

Fantasy world

All the news coverage of sex addiction is of some interest for two related reasons: 1) it undermines one of most nefarious and pervasive ideologies that shape our culture, the theory of sexual liberation originally elaborated by Wilhelm Reich (Freudo-Marxism), 2) because just raising the question of "reality" awakens, implicitly but inevitably, a religious question.

Fingers crossed

Michael Gerson offers a typically balanced assessment of what would decide the success or failure of an Obama presidency in domestic policy. As for foreign policy, let us just hope that Sen. Biden is wrong.

Memento mori

Christopher Hitchens reviews Brideshead Revisited.

Enough

It is appalling that an intelligent Catholic layman like E.J. Dionne accepts as a the normal state of affairs that US catholics should be divided "conservative" and "progressive" groups. It is a sad truth that US Catholics think of themselves according to such external political categories. But do they realize this a symptom of complete cultural failure on their part? If you let the secular culture set the terms of the debate to the point that you end up dividing the Church exactly along the same political lines as the rest of society, that means you have not done your homework in developing an original Catholic political culture. It is a shame, really.

Rugby, the meaning of life?

What kind of parent would bring his/her paralyzed son to Switzerland?

Divided

The scary thing about the persisting and bitter polarization in the US is that is based strictly on ideology, not on economic interest. This almost unprecedented in American history.

Persecution

Things are getting worse for Christians in Mosul.

Coming to a city near you

ACORN seems to be an interesting example of how ideology makes people impervious to reality.

End of freedom

If you think Sweden is a crazy country, think again. Often extreme cases only reveal what is logically implicit but still undeveloped in the mainstream.

Trendy

The Economist is baffled:

All this amounts to something that Europeans, at least, may find surprising. In much of Christianity’s former heartland, religion is associated with tradition and ritual. In China, it is associated with modernity, business and science. “We are first-generation Christians and first-generation businessmen,” says one house-church pastor.

We noticed

While obvious and not in need of scientific verification, this connection does have some impact on human affairs.

Self-destructive

An intervention by Cardinal Ouellet on the situation in Quebec.

Poverty is not just money

George Packer on the working class and the elections. It is a melancholic piece because it is obvious what this people really need is certainly not income redistribution by the government, or anything the candidates are proposing. In fact, the things they need the most (stable families, better education, economic creativity, participating in the life of a people) is simply beyond the reach of politics per se. However, politics could at least support whatever forces are capable of social reconstruction.

Yawn

The NYTimes has discovered a debate in the Catholic Church re. the elections. Of course there is no such thing, given that during the last few years the US bishops have been remarkably unanimous in saying what they regard as priorities. But this never stopped the NYTimes before...

Natural affinity

The history of Christianity in India sounds interesting.

At the beginning, experience

Forty years ago died Romano Guardini.