“He threw it all away” – Robert George on Richard John Neuhaus
The April issue of First Things is entirely a tribute to the late Richard John Neuhaus, who passed away on January 8th of this year, and it contains many wonderful pieces about him and about his legacy. You would need to be a subscriber to read the entire issue right now, but available free online are great pieces by Maria McFadden Maffucci and Midge Decter.
And then there’s also an article available online by Robert P. George which isn’t in the print issue, but is an especially fine article, called, “He Threw It All Away.” In addition to being a perceptive piece on RJN, it is a concise and profound reflection on why the terms liberal and conservative don’t necessarily mean what they used to mean, in America; that is, if they ever meant what they used to mean. [Read more →]
It used to be that mothers would tell their children, “Go out and play in the sunshine, it’s good for you.” In more recent years, saying something like that too loudly might have gotten a poor mom arrested and her children taken away from her. “The sun, good for you? Are you crazy? Are you trying to kill your kids with skin cancer?” At least, make sure the urchins are slathered all over in 45 SPF sunscreen, and preferably wearing hats and long sleeves. You might call this the Gospel of St. John the Dermatologist, and it has now been extremely well learned and internalized by a couple of generations of people in the United States and to varying degrees across what we call the developed world. And this much is now clear: it has been killing people. 
It’s a dog’s life. That expression was originally coined and used to characterize a life of misery (where you might be treated like a dog, get sick as a dog, and die like a dog). In more contemporary times it’s often heard and used in exactly the opposite sense, that of a dog’s life as one of carefree laziness, with every want fulfilled. Since dogs have, in many societies, gone from working beasts thrown scraps to pampered pets who shop at canine boutiques, it’s not hard to understand how the expression has garnered its new meaning. 
Every day there are more of those intriguing offers in one’s inbox from friendly Nigerians with too much cash and too few bank account numbers. This is just about one such offer, and the response. 
