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The digitization of the Japanese bureaucracy appears inevitable. The hanko, although still used everywhere today, may be destined to end up in museums alongside the typewriter and the floppy disk. Read More →

  January 6, 2021, would have been my brother Robert’s 61st birthday. He died of cancer on December 28, 1994, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, at age 34. Always at this time of year, Robert is present in the minds and hearts of his family and friends—we share memories, eat... Read More →

Most of us have a commonsensical grasp of the common good, which we can apply easily if we do not allow ourselves to be misled. Pro-life arguments can be strengthened by appeals to the common good. Pro-choice forces, however, often encourage us to misunderstand or neglect the... Read More →

I would be at a terrible loss if politics were the most important thing in my life. I’d be holding straw. Daffodils are immune to political spin. Dogs, too. Moby Dick defies political deconstruction. Love defies political deconstruction. And so does truth. Read More →

A literary critic whose name I do not now recall observed that Charles Dickens’s greatness as an author lies in the fact that he could put death into a Christmas story . . . and get away with it. Who, after all, is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come but the Grim Reaper? Only the... Read More →

  A wedding is supposed to be a happy—almost deliriously happy—affair. Two people in love pledging to honor and cherish one another until death parts them. It is heady stuff, standing before God and man to make a promise that will profoundly affect the rest of one’s earthly... Read More →

How do we count the dead? One by one. Parading statistics down a path of false horror can only end in a competition of fools. Who can cite the biggest statistic of American deaths: 225,000; 250,000; 283,000? The World Health Organization counts over 1.5 million people worldwide. ... Read More →

Murder begins as a thought. Homicide, the broader category that includes murder, begins as either a thought or the failure to take thought—that is, the failure to take care. Let’s say I was texting on my phone while driving a car. If in my distraction I hit a pedestrian who then... Read More →

  After visiting the United States, G. K. Chesterton asked himself the question, “What makes America peculiar?” He answered it with accustomed perspicacity: “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth in the Declaration of... Read More →

  I am the proud owner of a coffee mug that displays wisely worded encouragement from Thoreau: Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. I got it at a high-end “Second Time Around” sale at a well-heeled Episcopal Church in New York City—for... Read More →