The Other End of the Iceberg

  “Possession is nine-tenths of the law” isn’t an actual law, it’s an expression. It means that ownership is easier to establish if one has possession of a thing, more difficult to establish if one does not. For nearly fifty years, the pro-abortion front owned the debate...
Read More →

Of Elephants and Men

  In June 1215, English barons cornered King John on the fields of Runnymede and forced him to sign the Great Charter—Magna Carta—among whose guarantees was the right to habeas corpus: “No man shall be arrested or imprisoned . . . except by the lawful judgment of his peers...
Read More →

Stupid Covid

  Who here remembers “two weeks to flatten the curve”? Anybody? How about six feet of social distance to “stop the spread”? And let’s not forget this hoary chestnut: “Follow the science.” All of these were still in vogue—though the bodies stacked outside Elmhurst hospital,...
Read More →

The Answer to Roe is Nuremberg

  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 →

Roe Goes. Now the Row

  Has anyone heard, in these heated post-Roe days, a well-reasoned, legally sound defense of the 1973 opinion itself? Crickets? That tells us a lot. But let me take a step back and celebrate the moment, which, to be honest, I never thought would come in my lifetime. Through...
Read More →

Accidental Media

  In the eighties and nineties, I would meet with a group on the Lower East Side for discussion and commentary on the arts-and-culture scene. Okay, okay, we were there to buy pot. Gordon (not his real name) was the dealer, and he was very organized and surprisingly strict....
Read More →

Fatherhood in a Post-Roe America

  Father’s Day is June 19. A decision by the Supreme Court regarding the fate of Roe v. Wade is likely any day now. The conjunction of these two events is important. It ought to initiate a national conversation about fathers and their unborn children. Roe is just the tip of...
Read More →

The Abortifacient Pill Debate Comes to Japan

  A Japanese friend and colleague who studies history and historiographical epistemology sometimes remarks that cultural battles in the United States break out in Japan five or ten years later. That analysis is proving true once again in the case of abortifacient pills. In...
Read More →

Chesterton for What Ails Us

  We live in interesting, even dangerous, times. Take your pick of crises from the headlines: shootings; inflation; suicide epidemic; pandemic; opioid overdoses; looming war in the West; threats of violence if Roe v. Wade is overturned. There’s little good news or comfort...
Read More →

Making Someone Else’s Bed

  On a pack of cigarettes, we see WARNING: Smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and may complicate pregnancy. Some pill bottles read WARNING: Do not drive or operate heavy machinery while taking this product as it may cause drowsiness. Abortion has packaging...
Read More →