“Mr. Ambassador, enter the Orient Express and go back to Istanbul, your wonderland!”

Quote of the Day for Thursday, Dec. 2nd, 2010: Maybe Europe is not a lost cause after all? Perhaps my disillusionment with the post-modern political and cultural character of the Old World has been unduly overwrought? Between this dressing down by Austrian MP Ewald Stadler and the Nigel Farage tirade in Brussels the other day, perhaps I should be holding to a firmer hope for a European future worthy of its past. Not that I have any illusions about these guys representing majorities, but: Who woulda’ thunk? An MP on the floor of a 21st century European Pa...

The Error of Permitting Religious Practice

A local furor erupted a couple days ago over a Wellesley Middle School class’ visit to an area mosque, a story which has subsequently gone national. This whole story is just so wrong, on so many levels, that it approaches (?) the absurd. It is a microcosm of everything wrong with the deracinated public life that has banished religious faith to the margins, and adopted a functional atheism as public policy (despite the lingering religiosity of much of the unwashed masses). The 6th grade class found itself at the mosque as part of a social studies unit cal...