26 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(01/17/01 11:00am)
It seems that a new doctrine is being forged in Washington D.C. Applicants for public office who are conservative, pro-life, or religiously orthodox need not apply. If one happens to be all three of this unholy trinity (I do not equate the three as those on the left and in the media do), one is ipso facto a racist, homophobic, extreme religious zealot who threatens to impose one's moral vision upon the rest of us. I suppose I take umbrage because I happen to be all three. So is Senator John Ashcroft, President-elect Bush's selection to be United States Attorney General, and the man who is bringing the word 'bork' back into common usage.
(06/12/00 9:00am)
I remember my dad's car pulling away from the curb close to four years ago as I began my Dartmouth journey. There was a slight drizzle in the air. I soon walked down to the Choates and prepared for a few days of hiking with my DOC group. Like many, perhaps most, my heart was filled with a mixture of trepidation and expectation at what the next days and months would hold. Packed into that initial anxiety and anticipation were concerns, excitement, and questions about roommates, classes, the social scene, friends, majors and future vocations. Well, many of those things have come and gone as the days and months soon turned into years and we arrived at end of the line of our Dartmouth careers. Majors were declared long ago. Lifelong friendships were forged. Many have discovered the paths they will take in life. As we embark on new journeys I wanted to reflect briefly on the great gifts we've been given here at Dartmouth and the grave duties and responsibilities that come with those gifts.
(05/18/00 9:00am)
Communism is a good idea, just no one's done it." Those were the words I overheard in the Hop several weeks ago. The student making the statement was commenting about the exchange of letters in The Dartmouth over the visit of the American Communist Party Chair Sam Webb. His comment was a disdainful rebuke to Professor Jindrich Zapletal's criticism of Webb. These sorts of comments are commonplace on college campuses and the strongly held opinion of many of our generation. The understanding is that communism is a wonderful and sound theory that simply has never been put into proper practice. And indeed the student making the comment, said it with a certain level of condescension. He was suggesting that anyone who holds communism to be both bad in practice and in theory is utterly out of touch and confused.
(05/10/00 9:00am)
Imagine if you will a country in which euthanasia has been allowed. Let us suppose that within this country over 1,000 people are killed involuntarily through euthanasia in a given year. At the same time over 40 percent of doctors in this country have performed involuntary euthanasia. In nearly 5,000 cases a year a doctor administers a morphine overdose to kill a patient without that patient's consent.
(05/04/00 9:00am)
This past week I, the Aquinas House community past and present, and the whole Dartmouth community suffered a great loss. Monsignor Bill Nolan, the founder and longtime director of Aquinas House, who retired in 1987, passed away on Monday afternoon. This man has touched my life in many and innumerable ways and yet I never saw more than a picture of him. He will continue to touch generations of Dartmouth students though many of them will never know his name. To understand Father Bill's impact one must begin back at the beginning. Those who knew Fr. Bill personally can better render the story. I only hope I can catch some of his essence as I try to express the gratitude that needs to be expressed.
(04/06/00 9:00am)
One of the frequent observations about Dartmouth is its total lack of a dating culture. More often than not this observation is couched in the form of a complaint by both male and female students. Heck, from my own experience -- which has been mainly one long dry spell -- I've observed that dating is simply not something that occurs with frequency on this campus. In this column I will investigate several reasons why I think this is so, give several reasons why a dating culture would be a good thing to foster, and finally offer some practical solutions to my fellow men that might help bring it about.
(02/29/00 11:00am)
This political season has perhaps been the most interesting in our short lives. The hard fight for the Republican nomination and the possibility (as two well-known political analysts suggest) that it won't be decided until the GOP convention have provided the greatest dose of excitement. This excitement has hurt Bill Bradley and helped Al Gore by drawing both independents and press away from Bradley. However, all the excitement has helped Vice-President Gore in a much larger way as well. It has drawn attention away from the plain and simple fact that he, Al Gore, is a deceitful liar.
(02/01/00 11:00am)
One of the truths held by traditional conservatives is that men and women are different, very different. They believe these differences are more than socially constructed; they believe they are rooted in nature. As a result, traditionalists often have a great difficulty separating mere human traditions from nature. This difficulty frequently makes them unable to positively embrace authentic change especially concerning the role and place of women in society. I believe this is a mistake and one which I recently fell victim to.
(01/19/00 11:00am)
Pope John Paul II is perhaps the most known and visible man alive today. And as George Weigel, papal biographer, has argued, he is perhaps the most misunderstood. He is painted as a "liberal" on economics while being "conservative" on personal morality. By extreme detractors he is labeled a misogynist and puritan, as rigid and authoritarian, as a throw-back to medieval Catholicism, and the litany goes on and on. Both the political descriptions and the extremely negative criticisms show an extreme lack of understanding of the man John Paul is. In truth John Paul has given Catholics, non-Catholics, and non-Christians an example of heroism and holiness while at the same time offering a profound body of thought which offers a solution to the crises of secular humanism. Both his personal example and teaching legacy have been an effort to answer the question of how one must live and how society should order itself.
(11/18/99 11:00am)
What are the ends of a liberal arts education? This is a good question. The term is bandied around by Dartmouth and other schools of like character. However, I wonder if these schools have paused to contemplate the actual definition of a liberal arts education. Dartmouth's mission statement states that Dartmouth "combines the best features of the undergraduate liberal arts college with those of the research university." Nowhere within the statement do we find a definition of a liberal arts education. It does state that Dartmouth is a "vital learning environment rooted in the liberal arts tradition" and that this environment "depends upon: a faculty dedicated to outstanding teaching, scholarship, and research; a talented, highly motivated, and intellectually curious student body; and a staff committed to the institution and its purposes." In this column I propose to argue that Dartmouth is not imparting a liberals arts education to its students and then to propose a possible manner in which it could remedy this situation.
(11/02/99 11:00am)
Within pro-life circles voters often face a supposed dilemma. They (the pro-life voters) can vote for a Republican candidate who might be 'right' on the issue of abortion but woefully wrong on other issues. In my interactions with fellow pro-lifers especially Catholic pro-lifers I have heard that Republicans are pro-life on abortion but anti-life on other issues; they hate the poor.
(10/20/99 9:00am)
A paradox of the present day is that technology is drawing us closer and closer together while we seem to be growing further and further apart. Faxes, long-distance phone communication, digital cell phones, e-mail, AOL Instant Messenger, and much more are the products of the Information Age. And though much good has come from the facile manner in which we are able to communicate with each other, in another sense much bad has also resulted. In the place of communication between hearts and souls has come a superficial communication. We are tired out by all the information technology, awash in a sea of options which prevent us from even attempting to put our selves into our communication.
(10/06/99 9:00am)
Well, as this right-wing, 12th century, fascist columnist -- that is, according to one of his most ardent fans -- was ruminating on the topic of his next column a little flap in NY arose which he could hardly resist commenting upon. Of course I speak of the whole Brooklyn Museum of Art imbroglio. It seems that real art was in short supply and so the museum had to settle for second best, a show entitled Sensation. And boy, what a sensation it is! From a Virgin Mary covered with pornographic pictures to the picture of a child-murderer painted with a child's handprints to a rotting cow's head complete with maggots, the exhibit has much to tease and tingle the senses. Then entered the bad-guy, party-pooper, Mayor Giuliani. The Museum gets funds from NY City. Mayor Giuliani was not amused. He thinks the stuff is not art and argues that the portrait of the Virgin Mary is offensive. So he threatened to cut city funding to the museum if the exhibit went on. The museum refused to stop the exhibit. Giuliani didn't balk and stopped the funding. Though in fairness to Giuliani he argues that the real reason the funding is being cut is because the museum violated terms of an agreement with the city by hosting an exhibit which charges an entrance fee.
(09/21/99 9:00am)
The culture we live in often seems marked by a dearth of heroes. It has role models, mentors, and stars but no one noted for nobility or courage. Might this possibly be because society has forgotten what a hero is? Or have things become so bad that true heroes simply no longer exist?
(05/25/99 9:00am)
Written into the script of American history is the game, the institution of baseball. For too long I had forgotten about the great game that is so peculiarly American. I had not been to a major league baseball game since before the 1994 baseball strike. That strike left me feeling as if the players and owners had sucker-punched me. But that old animosity and bitterness faded away with a recent trip to the ballpark which refreshed my memory of baseball's beauty.
(05/11/99 9:00am)
Sweat, diesel fuel and tedious repetitious work. Those were the major components of my summer after freshman year. I worked in a fuel-injector remanufacturing plant while paying dues to the local UAW. It certainly was not easy or fun in a pleasurable sense but I might dare say that I learned more than I have in some terms here at Dartmouth.
(04/27/99 9:00am)
Last year at this time I was moved to write a column concerning a school shooting. The same horror has been repeated again this year. And yet again each of us is left trying to make some sense of such an evil. We are left asking how teenagers can murder fellow teenagers, how the human heart can become so callous as to laugh at the sight of fellow humans being mowed down. I, too, am left horrified and confused. But I wonder if the shootings of recent years should really surprise us that much. A provocative but I think important question is whether these shootings are not in actuality the logical manifestation of a nihilistic culture which denies all meaning and truth -- except to affirm the ultimate right to self-autonomy.
(02/16/99 11:00am)
Opening up The D last week, I thought I was reading the joke issue. How could something so abrupt and surprising be anything but a sick joke? I am unaffiliated. I believe that a lot of bad baggage goes along with the fraternity system. In my two and half years at Dartmouth I have set foot in fraternities a little more than a dozen times. So why should it be that I find the recent developments to be so disturbing? I would like to offer my thoughts on why an unaffiliated junior thinks the president and the trustees should cease and desist.
(02/03/99 11:00am)
I sometimes remark to people that I think I might be called to the Catholic priesthood or that if I were to be blessed with a wife that I would love to have six to eight children. These two things are sure to elicit pause, shock, a gaping-mouth, snickers, or a combination of all these things. Within the reactions to both these things I think we can see several very deadly symptoms within our culture. In no way am I blaming friends who might exhibit such reactions; I do myself. But, nevertheless, they are symptoms of certain negative attitudes we hold.
(01/19/99 11:00am)
I raise these questions because it seems that the promises of sexual liberation given to our parents' generation and thus passed on to us have hardly been fulfilled. Rather, as concretized by our own experiences they have been shown to be false. Our everyday experiences might give us pause to reflect on a new sexual ethic to replace today's present one. But first let us examine our actual experiences.