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The Long View

The Long View: World War Z

World War Z remains one of my favorite books. I liked Brooks’ device of an oral history, and I enjoyed the wide variety of characters we meet through the “interviews”. As with so much of my favorite fiction, the characters seem like real people you could meet somewhere, or maybe

The Long View 2006-10-18: Doomsday Deniers; Treason on the Right; Spengler Back

The first item John Reilly mentions, from the National Review Online’s blog The Corner reads like a precis of Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission. I wish John Reilly had lived to see Houellebecq’s book, it seems to the embodiment of one of John’s main interests, the relatively unknown

The Long View 2006-10-17: Refutation of the Refutation

The Long View re-posting project took a back-seat while I struggled through J. G. Ballard’s short stories, but we are back! An interesting bit that I missed at the time this was going on in 2006 was Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio publicly criticized Pope Benedict for his Regensburg address, and

The Long View 2006-10-16: Crunchy Convert; Cardinal Invisible; Stinger Countermeasures

Both Rod Dreher and now Damon Linker have quite publicly left the Catholic Church in reaction to the on-going sexual abuse scandals. Both of them have also publicly said that part of their reason for doing so is their disappointment in the behavior of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in reaction

The Long View 2006-10-13: Eurasia Spotting; Zombie Watch; Looking for Character

Just today, David French wrote a piece for the Atlantic, "America Soured on My Multiracial Family", in an odd coincidence with John Reilly's ponderings from 2006 about Madonna and other celebrities adopting African children. Brad Pitt and Angelia Jolie also come to mind. French is hurt

The Long View 2006-10-11: Springtime for Doomsday; Mainstream Crusade; Tridentine Indult; Idomeneo; Secure Yourself

A Canticle for Leibowitz is one of the few Catholic apocalyptic novels. It remains one of my favorites, because of how seriously, and how imaginatively, Miller took Catholic doctrine. Will Wilson's brutal tweet about the online LARPing of Catholic space empires is on point, and the best response

The Long View 2006-10-10: Remove Barriers; Shoot the Hostage; Breed Like Rabbits

Here is something to ponder. New York City took down its post-9/11 vehicle barriers, intended to prevent truck bombings and the like, in 2006. Ten years after that, European cities have added them. Of course, the state of the art changed quite a bit. Truck bombings take hard work