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Creighton Abrams, easily the best U.S. commanding general in Vietnam during the war, had a simple principle for dealing with cranks and nasty critics: “Never wrestle with pigs; the pigs love it, and you get dirty.” It’s sound advice, if sometimes hard to follow, given the toxic... Read More →

    As I write, America is reeling from yet another mass shooting. My social media has been overflowing with disturbing images—e.g., a dump truck emptying piles of waste labeled “thoughts and prayers”—along with loud calls for more gun control and equally loud calls to... Read More →

  In the twentieth century, transgression outstripped the framework of crime. The maddest dreams of the maddest men of the past could never have conjured up the horrors of modern mass killing—Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, Buchenwald. It was in numb recognition of the inability of... Read More →

Many years ago, when I was a federal prosecutor, I understood that one of the worst things that can happen to a person is to come to the attention of a federal prosecutor. Mark Houck, a pro-life leader and founder of the Catholic men’s ministry The King’s Men, is now... Read More →

Ross Douthat (Convergent Books, 2021, hardcover, 224 pages, $26; Kindle $14.95) Reviewed by Brian Caulfield _________________________________________________________________ Halfway through this book, I called a friend who has had Lyme disease for more than four years. “Do you,”... Read More →

One of my life’s defining moments occurred before I could read the back of a cereal box. I was four years old, too young to tie my own shoes, when I stood on tiptoes and looked into my father’s casket. He was just thirty seven. His bipolar disorder had overcome his brilliant... Read More →

Dr. Leana Wen had just lost her baby. It was a hard blow during a difficult season of her life. As then-president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Dr. Wen was struggling with bureaucrats who didn’t share her vision for the organization. They’d criticized her,... Read More →

Suicides are now at crisis levels. The number of people who kill themselves in the United States has risen 30 percent since 2000. Indeed, so great is the number that, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suicide has become one of the country’s leading... Read More →

  At the altar rail to receive Communion, she knelt, with intention that might not have been so obvious a decade or two ago. Looking up at me, she held out her hands, and then wiggled her fingers to show off her sparkly new manicure. She was a grandmother, but in that moment... Read More →

After the close of the 2020-21 Olympics, the gymnast Simone Biles, who identifies as Catholic, took to her Instagram account to declare herself “prochoice” regarding the issue of abortion. The news, as they say, went around the world—instantly. In that announcement Miss Biles... Read More →