Modern Age articles from March 2005

Modern Age archives from March 2005

A nation in decline.(A QUARTERLY REVIEW)(United States of America)
March 22, 2005... VIEWERS THE WORLD OVER witnessed not long ago the Reagan funeral service at the Episcopal Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, the impressive neo-English Gothic structure in Washington, D.C., popularly known as The National Cathedral. The...

The evolution versus religion controversy: how two mystiques devolved into politics.
March 22, 2005... I The evolution versus religion controversy rages on, lately simmering in debates about whether so-called "creation science" is a valid scientific substitute for the Darwinian notion of evolution. In the past there have been court cases;...

The Marcuse factor.(GREAT TEACHERS IN OUR LIVES)(Herbert Marcuse)
March 22, 2005... ONE EXPERIENCE as a graduate student at Yale University that left its lasting mark on me came in the spring of 1964, when HerbertMarcuse arrived to teach a course in the history of socialism, in which I quickly enrolled. With his flowing gray...

The cultural hostility to religion.
March 22, 2005... WITH FIRST AMENDMENT FREEDOMS, the courts act as guardians, protectors from whatever social and cultural attitudes might threaten those freedoms. In the area of religion, however, the courts have not been so steadfast. According to a recent...

John Greenleaf Whittier's Civil War.
March 22, 2005... THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA recently issued a volume of the poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier. This is fitting. While he will never be placed in the first rank of poets and even his admirers admit that he authored much dismissible verse, Whittier,...

Zoo keeper's view.(Poem)
March 22, 2005... The snake ought to have been in a cage. Being dangerous, it shouldn't be allowed to roam about, spreading its poison. Is paradise for everyone? Did God perhaps wish to let every creature have a taste of it, even when in hell? (Which in...

Corruption and innocence in Robert Penn Warren's fiction.(critical evaluation of "The Flood" and "All the King's Men")
March 22, 2005... AN EPISODE IN Robert Penn Warren's novel Flood is emblematic of his understanding of human guilt and innocence. The deputy warden is giving a tour of Fiddlersburg prison, and he recounts how one of the sharpshooters in the prison tower had cost...

Two irascible Englishmen: Mr. Waugh and Mr. Orwell.(George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh)
March 22, 2005... 2003 MARKED THE CENTENARY of two of the most influential English authors of the middle years of the twentieth century: Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell (1903-1950), and Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966). Although the themes and topics...

A conservative Historian's Memoir.(Recovering the Past: A Historian's Memoir, Forrest McDonald)
March 22, 2005... Recovering the Past: A Historian's Memoir, by Forrest McDonald, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004. 198 pp. AS A TALENTED COLLEGE ATHLETE in the 1940s, Forrest McDonald hoped to become a major league baseball player. He might well...

Moral foundations in collapse.
March 22, 2005... The Strange Death of Moral Britain by Christie Davies, New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2004. xxiii + 264 pp. ALTHOUGH FOCUSED ON BRITAIN, Christie Davies's well-documented social-historical study addresses several of the major...

Neither Greek nor Jew.(Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, Roman and Greek religious and cultural relationship)
March 22, 2005... Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, by Remi Brague, South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, 2002. 205 pp. IT HAS BEEN SAID that the core of the spiritual vitality of the West is the fundamental tension between Athens...

Enhancement technologies.(critical evaluation of Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream, by Carl Elliott)
March 22, 2005... Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream, by Carl Elliott, New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. VARIOUS ENHANCEMENT TECHNOLOGIES now promise to make us "better than well." Not only is American medicine responsible for the...

Two of a kind?(Leslie Fiedler and Aldous Huxley)
March 22, 2005... "Too Good To Be True": The Life and Work of Leslie Fiedler, by Mark Royden Winchell, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002. 368 pp. Aldous Huxley: A Biography, by Nicholas Murray, New York: St. Martin's Press, 2003. 496 pp. ...

The essential Guardini.(Romano Guardini's works)
March 22, 2005... ROMANO GUARDINI is sometimes referred to as a "Philosopher of the Christian World" whose lifelong task was that of "proclaiming the sacred in a modern world." A world-famous Roman Catholic thinker and a prolific writer who was born in Verona,...

Flannery O'Connor in her letters: "a refugee from deep thought".
March 22, 2005... ONCE UPON A TIME, I spent a winter alone in a small, poorly heated apartment in Kyoto, Japan. My classes were over, students and colleagues had dispersed, and I had no friends and no place to go. When I awoke in the morning, it was 38 degrees...

Malcolm Muggeridge: a modern pilgrim.(nonconformist writer)(Biography)
March 22, 2005... THE YEAR 2003 marked the centenary birth of Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge, the nonconformist writer, journalist, BBC commentator, Roman Catholic convert, and declared enemy of liberalism. Muggeridge saw liberalism as being the new gospel and great...

In memoriam: John Attarian (1956-2004).(economist and writer)(Obituary)
March 22, 2005... CULTURAL CONSERVATISM lost a true friend and feisty champion with the passing of John Attarian on New Year's Eve, 2004, at age 48. An economist by training and a man deeply attuned to the health of Western Culture, he was a champion of...

Garden.(Poem)
March 22, 2005... The backyard is a garden, Or more precisely, three, Two shaped like crescent moons, One serpentine, all separated By a pond of tiny stones Through which a winding line Of larger stones insinuates Like Milton's beast into The...