Rod Dreher

I forgot to note the recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision denying the rights of a Christian group on a California college campus to deny membership to gays who don’t believe in traditional Christian teaching on sexual morality. The Court said that the college was within its rights to deny the Christian Legal Society official recognition.…

This morning on the way into the office, I heard a radio discussion on the BBC on whether or not scientists and researchers ought to be more open for scrutiny in the wake of the East Anglia climate office scandal. One commenter said yes, because scientists should want their research open for public scrutiny, because…

Did you read the massive, acres-and-acres-of-newsprint story in the New York Times, in which they documented how American tax policy was underwriting the settlement of the West Bank by right-wing Israeli Jews? It was the kind of “ooh, scary religious people!” piece that the Times just loves, because they really don’t seem to understand how…

You just know that young Iranians are laughing their butts off: The haircut guidelines appear to be aimed at balancing the more aggressive enforcement with a softer promotion. On Monday, the director of the Veil and Chastity Day festival, Jaleh Khodayar, appeared at a news conference with hundreds of barbers and hairdressers to release the…

Uh, I don’t think so: This might have made sense — might have — during the “Die Hard” heyday. But that was 20 years ago! Quick, name one Bruce Willis movie from the last 10 years. OK, yes, but nobody saw that one. So name another. Can’t do it, can you? If there’s one thing…

Dude tells Esquire after having received permission: I got in touch with his wife, and I mentioned that I’d never try to exploit my discovery. She said, “No, please, do whatever you like. You don’t have to be tasteful. This is Spalding Gray. All he ever talked about was his own death.” Ever seen a…

I’d like to riff for a second off these remarks from Dalrymple’s essay about why he hates sports fans: Like many phenomena, snobbery is easier to recognise than to define. The definition of a snob in The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is inadequate. The Penguin English Dictionary does much better. It defines a snob as…

Theodore Dalrymple admits that he’s a huge snob about sports fans. It’s not sport itself, but rather the fans who care inordinately about something blindingly trivial. Here he is decrying the French (he lives in France, a British expat) for going to pieces over the abject and shameful failure of their national soccer team in…

Just got a call from a friend from down South who’s vacationing with his family in Quebec City. He said he’d read my report about the incivility at the Fourth of July event in downtown Philadelphia, and couldn’t help contrasting it with what he’s seeing at public parks and suchlike in Quebec. He says the…

Netherlands beats Uruguay to go to the World Cup final on Sunday! Everybody sing the Dutch fight song:I love that song. It’s so very Dutch. It’s cheerful in an oom-pah-pah way, and the odd lyrics basically say not “let’s slaughter our opponents,” but rather, “let’s make a good showing, lads” — and in a charming…

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