“You can see God by sniffing the gas in a cotton.” — Allen Ginsberg

Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation. The phenomenon of Allen Ginsberg by Bruce Bawer, The New Criterion On Allen Ginsberg’s poetry, 1985. I’m so lucky to be nutty.—Allen Ginsberg, “Bop Lyrics” (1949) The very first poem in Allen Ginsberg’s Collected Poems 1947-1980 [1] seems, in a way, to prophesy Ginsberg’s entire career. It is titled “In Society,” and it dates… Read More “You can see God by sniffing the gas in a cotton.” — Allen Ginsberg

November 21, 2025November 21, 2025 SDHLeave a comment

From Rembrandt to Picasso

When in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the avant-garde was given diverse powerful platforms to announce that traditional art forms were passé, and art galleries exchanged space for the mystic likes of Picasso, Surrealism, and, in some degree, Andy Warhol, etc., they arguably prepared the way for the denial of natural gender distinctions and the… Read More From Rembrandt to Picasso

November 21, 2025November 21, 2025 SDH

Francis Schaeffer on the Philosophy of being

…and Epistemology. [P]hilosophy and religion deal with the same basic questions. Christians, and especially evangelical Christians, have tended to forget this. Philosophy and religion do not deal with different questions, though they give different answers and in different terms. The basic questions of both philosophy and religion (and I mean religion here in the wide… Read More Francis Schaeffer on the Philosophy of being

November 2, 2025November 2, 2025 SDH

The Scholar and the Abbot

The story is told of an archaeologist scholar who specialized in the earliest era of Christianity. He decided to take some students to visit ancient monasteries near the Sinai in Egypt. He was no believer. Upon arriving at one such site after a long journey he knocked on the entrance door hoping to be allowed… Read More The Scholar and the Abbot

October 28, 2025December 10, 2025 SDH1 Comment

How the ’60s Changed Ratzinger

The events of 1968 had a strong bearing on his shift to a more conservative outlook. Excerpted from “POPE BENEDICT XVI: A Biography of Joseph Ratzinger.” (c) 2000 by John L. Allen, Jr.The Continuum. Joseph Ratzinger arrived at Tübingen [University] in 1966, still enthusiastic about the promise of Vatican II and ready to take his… Read More How the ’60s Changed Ratzinger

October 22, 2025October 22, 2025 SDH

“Straying, as through infinite nothingness”: The Collapse of Nietzsche

“God is dead but given the way of men there may be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. And we will have to vanquish his shadow, too.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, # 109 At the very dawn of the 20th century, on 25 August in the year… Read More “Straying, as through infinite nothingness”: The Collapse of Nietzsche

September 1, 2025January 8, 2026 SDHLeave a comment

Sartre’s Humanism

Norman Geisler, the Evangelical scholar who studied at Loyola University, Chicago, reflects on Jean Paul Sartre’s atheism: “It should be noted … that Sartre’s attempt to eliminate God is seriously flawed. First of all, he constructs a straw God by defining him as “self-caused.” Most theists do not believe God is a self-caused being; they… Read More Sartre’s Humanism

August 2, 2025December 12, 2025 SDHLeave a comment

April is the cruellest month

David Starkey tracks the history and influence of the Dada movement of art and its influence in modern culture and life through his experiences with the Royal Academy. BBC: December 3, 2004. An autographed gentleman’s urinal has been named the most influential modern art work of all time. “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, which shocked the… Read More April is the cruellest month

January 15, 2025January 15, 2025 SDH

Boston’s woke mayor claims criminals should not be prosecuted for shocking crimes

Long march through the Institutions… 5/29/24. “… The offenses are all on a ‘do-not-prosecute’ list that was created by former Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins. Rollins, who later joined the Biden administration but resigned amid ethical violations, had advocated for the non-prosecution of more ‘low-level’ offenses… But Wu’s progressive outlook goes even further with the 39-year-old… Read More Boston’s woke mayor claims criminals should not be prosecuted for shocking crimes

May 31, 2024June 8, 2024 SDH

The Primacy of Lucifer

Solange Strong Hertz. Quis ut Deus? Who is like God? The very name of St. Michael, Commander-in-Chief of the Church Militant, is a question. So capital a query immediately suggests another which must have preceded it: Who thinks he can be like God? Answers to both are given in Scripture, for God would not have… Read More The Primacy of Lucifer

March 15, 2024March 28, 2024 SDH

Aldous Huxley, Sex, and Corporate Psychological Manipulation

It was Aldous Huxley who, very early, saw sexual decadence combining commercial interests with political manipulation in the emerging media. And he knew what that would mean for a culture. “Aldous Huxley in his 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World depicts a culture in which pleasure is compulsory and engineered to eliminate intellectual challenge and to… Read More Aldous Huxley, Sex, and Corporate Psychological Manipulation

November 9, 2023November 9, 2023 SDH

Reengineering the Human Soul

Our children are the Guinea Pigs. By Christopher Rufo. First Things Magazine | The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin raised his glass to a group of artists assembled at the home of famed writer Maxim Gorky in 1932. “The ‘production’ of souls is more important than the production of tanks,” he said, explaining that the communists… Read More Reengineering the Human Soul

July 23, 2023July 31, 2023 SDH

Catholic “Chat” with Bing AI About the Future, Family and Gender

I “asked” Bing AI about those who see the traditional family as “a social structure of oppression” and who suggest that the dissolution of the traditional family might or would be a good thing for the world. I asked about those who say boys and girls, men and women, are becoming obsolete categories making room… Read More Catholic “Chat” with Bing AI About the Future, Family and Gender

May 17, 2023May 17, 2023 SDH

Acedia and Its Discontents

Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire “In the arid wasteland that is academic writing, amid the wider desert that is modern secular thought, R. J. Snell’s book on acedia is an oasis of flowers and fruit and fresh water. Professor Snell reminds us that man must never be made subordinate to work, nor even to the empty… Read More Acedia and Its Discontents

July 2, 2022August 31, 2024 SDH

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Category: Jean Paul Sartre