Latest Posts

May 03, 2022

Hollywood’s craven surrender to the Chinese Communist government

Who’s in charge in Hollywood? Surely studio bosses, well-compensated executives, A-list actors, and celebrated writers and directors set the agenda in the American entertainment industry, don’t they? Not so fast, says Wall Street Jour­­nal reporter Erich Schwartzel in a rigorously researched, admirably hard-hitting new book that looks at the pernicious influence of China on Hollywood. Continue Reading...
April 28, 2022

Waiting for a miracle in the noir classic Laura

I will close this series on film noir with Laura, because it’s altogether more beautiful and it has something of a happy ending. In being the most beautiful noir, it also involves the most sophisticated reflection on beauty in its relation to American society and to tragedy. Continue Reading...
April 27, 2022

John Calvin and God’s civil government

John Calvin (1509–1564) was a towering figure of the Protestant Reformation. The author of the magisterial Institutes of the Christian Religion, published in numerous editions between 1536 and 1559, Calvin was a second-generation Reformer. Continue Reading...
April 26, 2022

Soylent Green takes place in 2022, which is nice

According to an old Hollywood commonplace, nothing can beat the plot of a good sci-fi film when it comes to predicting the future. Many of the promotional taglines that accompany these features assure us that, should we invest in a ticket, we’ll be “entertained” and “educated,” or even “enlightened,” by a product that “presciently signifies the all-but-inescapable fate of our planet” (2012), that warns of a future that “looks, feels, and almost tastes and smells like a nightmare vision of our times” (1984), or that offers a “harsh but searingly urgent” glimpse of the overall prospects for mankind (Blade Runner). Continue Reading...
April 22, 2022

Leo Strauss, Spinoza, and an enlightened faith

Love him or hate him, it’s almost impossible to ignore the philosopher Leo Strauss (1899­–1973). Few individuals have drawn out so thoroughly some of the implications of philosophy for a range of political positions while simultaneously exploring perennial issues such as the meaning of the Enlightenment and its relationship to classical and religious thought. Continue Reading...
April 20, 2022

Should you bet on Bitcoin?

For those who’ve heard the word a lot but are still not sure what it means, cryptocurrency is a digital asset used to make purchases. It operates using a computer network, often a blockchain, a shared ledger that acts as a mechanism to transfer value from one person to another and that records and stores information in chains of “blocks”—chronological groups rather than tables or folders like more traditional databases. Continue Reading...
April 14, 2022

Put on the seamless garment of paschal love

Before beginning his earthly ministry, our Lord Jesus Christ, “led up by the Spirit” (Matt. 4:1), wandered in the desert for 40 days, fasting, praying, and finally being tempted by the devil with the enticement of food, force, and fortune. Continue Reading...