The Tide is Turning

May 19, 2018 By Sean P. Dailey

Note: first published in February, 2018, as a guest post on Suspended in Her Jar. Reprinted by permission. I will post a reaction to Friday’s school shooting later today. -spd Seven days after seventeen Florida high school students were gunned down in the third worst school shooting in American history*, a motion to take up an assault weapons ban failed in the Florida state House of Representatives 36-71. The representatives chose to keep assault weapons on our streets while survivors... Read more

In the arena

May 17, 2018 By Sean P. Dailey

Before Friday, May 4, the last arena rock concert I attended was The Who, in 1982, in the late, lamented Checkerdome in St. Louis, home of the St. Louis Blues hockey team. May 4, I with my wife and youngest son saw U2 in Scottrade Center in St. Louis – which is now the home of the Blues. I guess I’ve come full circle. It’s not that I don’t like live music. I do. But the bands I like play... Read more

Illinois House resolution: update

May 17, 2018 By Sean P. Dailey

The Illinois House resolution condemning white nationalism, which I wrote about last week, was voted out of committee May 16 on a unanimous, bipartisan 6-0 vote. It’s gotten four more co-sponsors, two Democrats and two Republicans. I’ll keep updating as it advances. See, Tennessee? This isn’t so hard. Read more

Tom Wolfe, rest in peace

May 15, 2018 By Sean P. Dailey

If you read one book by Tom Wolfe, it should be The Right Stuff. What makes The Right Stuff great, and not merely very good, is that Wolfe is not content to merely write about manly men doing manly man stuff. He gets to that eventually, but first – and probably alone (or at least the first) among the chroniclers of the early years of the space program – Wolfe asks what would not be obvious others: what was it... Read more

Alfie Evans, part II: parental rights and more

May 14, 2018 By Sean P. Dailey

In Part I we discussed whether Alfie Evans’ death was murder. Here, we delve more deeply into parental rights, the use of G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist, and government-run health care. Mr. Ahlquist argued in Catholic World Report that removing Alfie from life support was still immoral, because it was against the will of his parents. The parents, Mr. Ahlquist wrote, were the ultimate authority over Alfie, not doctors or courts, and that parents’ authority over their children is absolute. In... Read more

Alfie Evans, part I: no, it was not murder

May 11, 2018 By Sean P. Dailey

Quoting G.K. Chesterton is always dangerous, but especially if you quote him to serve a preconceived or ideological conclusion. Rather than running the risk of thinking, you run the risk of misrepresenting Chesterton with quotations taken out of context. This, I fear, is what my friend, American Chesterton Society president Dale Ahlquist, has done in an article in Catholic World Report, on the Alfie Evans case in England. Alfie, born in May, 2016, in Liverpool, was at six months found... Read more

Be it resolved: ride the nightmare

May 10, 2018 By Sean P. Dailey

It should not be hard to pass a resolution condemning neo-Nazis and white nationalists. At least, once, it was not. Not anymore. Earlier this spring, the Republican-dominated Tennessee General Assembly failed to do exactly that – twice. But Illinois may accomplish what Tennessee could not. Following the second failure, Illinois State Rep Lou Lang (D–Skokie) took it up. According to the Chicago Tribune, Rep Lang “has pledged to pass the Tennessee measure in the Illinois House.” “Moral courage should not... Read more