March 6 marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and creator of the Objectivist philosophy. Her novels still sell, but are her ideas still taken seriously? Were they ever? Read More… If it had not been for the railroads, I would never have gotten beyond the first chapter ofAtlas Shrugged. Having had a vague idea of what Ayn Rand believed in, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the story depended so heavily...

What begins with a surprisingly positive portrayal of Catholic church life among the faithful ends in all-too-familiar Hollywood territory. Is this the best we can hope for? Read More… Near the beginning of the Netflix series Midnight Mass, released in late 2021, an Ash Wednesday service is faithfully plete with a young priest’s effective and moving sermon, explaining the ashes as “a smudge of death, of ash, of sin—for repentance—because of where this is all heading, which is Easter. Rebirth,...

When citizens’ right to peaceful protest and redress of grievances is treated as the equivalent of war by their government, everyone should be terrified. Read More… The mask has been torn off. If anyone had any doubts that some governments will do literally anything to suppress anyone who protests what they regard as unreasonable measures by the state to address the COVID pandemic, events in Canada has surely disabused them of such illusions. In times of war, we generally allow...

Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson has managed the impossible: a love story wise as serpents but innocent as doves. And no sex! Read More… My series on cinematic nostalgia continues—after Wes Anderson’s Francophilia, Ridley Scott’s Italian farce, and Spielberg’s Puerto Rican fiasco, here’s a California story: Paul Thomas Anderson’s ninth feature film, Licorice Pizza, the only Hollywood movie made last year with some reason to be remembered. It’s a story about the ’70s, Hollywood, and the confusion of love in post-’60s...

The abilities to know truth and choose the good are gifts of our reason. They are natural to us and make us fully human. Read More… Perhaps the most confusing aspect of natural law is the phrase itself: “natural law.” For many people, the word “natural” implies human biology or the physical environment. For others, it means “instinct.” Likewise, when some people hear the word “law,” it implies “constraint” or obedience to legislation, regulations, and codes decreed by institutions with...

Instead of finding ways to do more and more, we should view our limitations as God’s gift so we know always to rely on him. Faithfulness is more important than great success by worldly standards. Read More… I love productivity books. I’ve read all the big classics on the subject, from Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People to Cal Newport’s Deep Work. I am a devotee of David Allen’s productivity ur-text, Getting Things Done. That book, in a...

The gains made in fort by modernity still leave room for ancient wisdom and ancient law. In fact, they demand them. Read More… “All human societies face about the same problems,” claim David Friedman, Peter Leeson, and David Skarbek in their fascinating and peculiar book Legal Systems Very Different from Ours. “They deal with them in an interesting variety of different ways. All of them are grownups—there is little reason to believe that the people who created the legal systems...

The next installment of the dino-tech Jurassic Park series ing soon, which is always a good time to ask about the ends of our God-given dominion over nature, and whether nature is beginning to demonstrate its dominion over us. Read More… In case you missed it, there’s an official trailer out for the next (and supposedly final) installment of the Jurassic Parksaga. Jurassic World Dominion, in theaters June 10, may be your last chance to enjoy the larger-than-life danger, drama,...

A list of the world’s worst state actors when es to religious persecution is out, and Christians are suffering terribly for their faith around the world. Christians in the West should be concerned but also grateful that what they put up with from secularists is nothing like persecution on this scale. Read More… The group Open Doors USAfigures that 360 million Christians last year lived in countries where persecution was “significant.” Roughly 5,600 Christians were murdered, more than 6,000 were...

It was supposed to shine a light on American susceptibility to con men and demagoguery. Instead, this Oscar-nominated film is strangely clueless about its own self-deception. Read More… Guillermo del Toro won Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for The Shape Of Water (2017), a movie infamous for a leading lady so desperate for intimacy that she makes love to a fish, probably the best metaphor for the ongoing moral collapse of the women who like such movies. It was...