Brendan O’Neill offers some perspective: Many contemporary opinion-formers are not concerned with getting to the truth of how widespread Catholic sexual abuse was, or what were the specific circumstances in which it occurred; rather they want to milk incidents of abuse and make them into an indictment of religion itself. They frequently flit between discussing… Continue reading

I wonder if Alcuin knew back in the 8th century how much easier he was going to make life for bloggers? He was a respected teacher in Northumbria before being brought to court, where he had an enormous affect on the scholarship — establishing the liberal arts (the trivium and quadrivium) as the basis for… Continue reading

Is the new bill already effecting the economy? Democrats wary of voting for the health care bill may have been soothed by the Congressional Budget Office’s report that it would reduce federal deficits over the next 10 years. But bond buyers know that the Democrats gamed the CBO system to get a good score. The… Continue reading

M. John Harrison on Ian McEwan’s latest novel, Solar: For some readers it will return to McEwan a little of the credibility he seemed to be working so hard to lose with novels such as Saturday and On Chesil Beach; others may require more of him.   I didn’t realize British literati think McEwan was jettisoning… Continue reading