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America And France Turn Right

December 12, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on America And France Turn Right

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN In the December 6 first round of regional elections in France, the clear and stunning winner was the National Front of Marine Le Pen. Her party rolled up 30 percent of the vote, and came in first in 6 of 13 regions. Marine herself won 40 percent of her northeast district. Despite tremendous and positive publicity from his presidential role in the Charlie Hebdo and Paris massacres and the climate summit, Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party ran third. What drove the victory of the National Front? According to The Wall Street Journal’s William Horobin, “Ms. Le Pen, who has combined the party’s anti-immigration stance with calls for hard-line security measures and tighter control of France’s borders, has…Continue Reading

A Book Review . . . Cultural Identity Is National

December 11, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review . . . Cultural Identity Is National

By JUDE DOUGHERTY Redner, Harry. The Tragedy of European Civilization: Towards an Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2015. xxiii + 257 pp. This is a collection of essays each of which could have been turned into a book. Harry Redner, retired reader at Monash University in Melbourne, has served as a visiting professor at distinguished universities in Europe and the United States as well as in Israel. He is the author of Totalitarianism, Globalization, Colonialism, and other major studies. At the outset of this book, Redner identifies ten leading thinkers who he believes comprise much of the intellectual history of the 20th century. They are Marx, Weber, Freud, Spengler, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Arendt, Nietzsche, Foucault,…Continue Reading

A Book Review… A Magnificent Work On The Catholic Intellectual Tradition

December 10, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review… A Magnificent Work On The Catholic Intellectual Tradition

By JUDE DOUGHERTY Royal, Robert. A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2015; 619 pages. To order visit www.ignatius.com or call1-800-651-1531. It is hazardous to speak of a Catholic intellectual tradition. There are Augustinians, Thomists, Scotists, and perhaps some Ockhamists among the linguistic analysts, not to mention schools of personalism and phenomenology that arose in the 20th century. Within each tradition some scholars are primarily indebted to Aristotle, others more to Plato or to neo-Platonism. Robert Royal is aware of all of this as he identifies a “core intellectuality” that may be called Catholic. He brings to his work an exceptional erudition, perhaps unsurpassed by any contemporary author. A Deeper Vision opens…Continue Reading

Culture Of Life 101 . . . “The Many Weaknesses Of The Special Rights Movement”

December 9, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Culture Of Life 101 . . . “The Many Weaknesses Of The Special Rights Movement”

By BRIAN CLOWES (Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For the complete set of 38 “Culture of Life” articles on homosexuality, including footnotes, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.) + + + It is appropriate to conclude this “Culture of Life” series on homosexuality with a few encouraging words. Despite what slanted polls say, most Americans — and certainly all Wanderer readers — strongly believe that matrimony is a sacrament established by Jesus Christ Himself, reserved only for a man and a woman. Those of us who do not believe in ersatz homosexual “marriage” or any other special rights for homosexuals should be encouraged not only by the rightness of our…Continue Reading

Culture Of Life 101 . . . “How To Organize A Pro-Family Group”

December 8, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Culture Of Life 101 . . . “How To Organize A Pro-Family Group”

By BRIAN CLOWES (Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For the complete guide to organizing an effective pro-family group, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.) + + + Part 3 So far, so good. Your pro-family group has found a spiritual director, started meeting, has begun to gather information on the opposition, has elected your leaders, and has begun training your people. It is time to complete the process before stepping onto the field of battle over homosexual “special rights.” Task 6: Establish Your Vision, Values, Mission, and Tactics. Now it is time to define the organization’s parameters — its vision, values, mission, and tactics. Your vision is a summary of…Continue Reading

Tarzan And The Ape Men

December 7, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Tarzan And The Ape Men

By JOHN YOUNG How did the world reach its present stage, with all its vast complexity? The current orthodoxy is that it happened by chance. Billions of years ago primitive non-living entities evolved into primitive living beings, and through vast reaches of time they advanced to the almost infinitely complex universe of today. Take the human brain. An article in New Scientist (May 26, 1988) by Michael Recce and Philip Treleavan stated: “In crude terms, the human brain is a natural computer composed of 10 to 100 billion neurons, each of which connects to about 10,000 others, and all of which function in parallel….Neuronal systems take about 100 processing steps to perform a complex task of vision or speech which…Continue Reading

A Book Review . . . Significant Reminders Of Catholic Contributions, But Some Omissions

December 6, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review . . . Significant Reminders Of Catholic Contributions, But Some Omissions

By DEXTER DUGGAN Forty Catholics Who Shaped the World in Which We Live, by Claire Smith, www.famouscatholics.com, St Pauls Publishing, Staten Island, N.Y., ISBN 978-0-8189-1388-4, 260 pages, paperback, $19.95, 2015. Souls and salvation are of timeless importance, beginning with the Garden of Eden, but the physical world in which humans live has changed most drastically since the mid-19th century. Try to imagine a big city, or even a neighborhood, without plenty of bold electrified lighting as night descends. Yet for most of history, the daily departure of the sun meant the enclosure of a tomb of darkness upon a portion of the Earth, broken here and there by such instruments as oil lamps, torches, and, later, gaslights. For millennia, night…Continue Reading

Obama Wants To Organize The World Around Climate Change

December 5, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Obama Wants To Organize The World Around Climate Change

By TERENCE P. JEFFREY (Editor’s Note: Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor-in-chief of CNSnews.com. Creators Syndicate provided this column. All rights reserved.) + + + President Barack Obama has expressed an apocalyptic vision he suggests other reasonable people must embrace. On Monday, November 30 in Paris, he said he foresees: “Submerged countries. Abandoned cities. Fields that no longer grow.” And also: “Political disruptions that trigger new conflict, and even more floods of desperate peoples seeking the sanctuary of nations not their own.” Climate change, he argues, threatens to cause these problems. Therefore, at the international climate change conference, he repeated his call for an international agreement that seeks to curb global carbon emissions from human activities. “So I just want…Continue Reading

The Spies Who Ruin Us

December 4, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on The Spies Who Ruin Us

By ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO In an effort to draw attention away from the intelligence failures that permitted the attacks of 9/11 and create the impression that it was doing something — anything — to avoid a repeat, the federal government tampered seriously with freedoms expressly guaranteed in the Constitution. Its principal target was the right to privacy, which is protected in the Fourth Amendment. At President George W. Bush’s urging, Congress passed the Patriot Act in October 2001. This 315-page statute passed the House of Representatives with no debate, and there was very limited debate in the Senate. I have asked many members of Congress over the years whether they read this bill before they voted upon it, and I…Continue Reading

Rich In Mercy

December 3, 2015 Featured Today Comments Off on Rich In Mercy

By DONALD DeMARCO Today, as I write this, is November 30, a fitting day to write about mercy. It was on this final day of the 11th month of the year in 1980 that St. John Paul II published his second encyclical, Dives in Misericordia (“Rich in Mercy”). It serves as excellent prelude to and preparation for a better understanding of the yearlong celebration of the Jubilee of Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis for 2016. In the words of the reigning Pontiff, “The Church must be a place of mercy freely given, where everyone can feel welcomed, loved, forgiven, and encouraged to live the good life of the Gospel.” Thirty-five years is roughly the equivalent of a generation. The Church’s…Continue Reading