In the Middle of the Forehead

“But I propose a contest. Let’s build an altar of stones, an altar of absolute toleration. Let’s have ACLU lawyers dance around it until noon, cutting themselves with knives and hitting themselves on the head with briefcases. Let us build another altar, and ask Elijah to stretch out his hands toward Heaven and call upon …

Or, More Recently, Presidential Portrait Painters

“I do not believe that the builders of the Salisbury Cathedral, the composer of the Brandenburg Concertos, the painter of The Night Watch, or the writer of Paradise Lost, have anything to apologize for in the thin shade of Kanye West, John Cage, Jackson Pollock, Walter Gropius, or Barry Manilow” (Empires of Dirt, p. 165).

And Occasionally Insufficient Gratitude

“Since secularism took over from the bad old religious bigots who used to kill scores and scores of people, we have since that time had a long millennium of sunshine and glittery rainbows, in which only scores of millions of people have been slaughtered. We celebrate this deliverance of ours and bow our heads in …

Like Making Typhoid Mary a Nurse

“Here’s a thought experiment for you. Take a couple of princes from the seventeenth century, one Catholic and one Protestant, and both of them experienced soldiers. Show them, in a vision, the battle of the Somme, the bombing of Dresden, the battle of Midway, the Great Leap Forward, the gulags of communism, and the two …