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CHAPEL HILL - A professor's comments on Down syndrome and abortion angered some students on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus this week. Professor Albert Harris told students in his embryology class Monday that he thinks fetuses with Down syndrome should be aborted. In his lecture notes, he wrote: "In my opinion, the moral thing for older mothers to do is to have amniocentesis, as soon during pregnancy as is safe for the fetus, test whether placental cells have a third chromosome #21, and abort the fetus if it does. The brain is the last organ to become functional." Harris, who has...

Now, What If…? Now, what if our ideals destroy our sense of reality and lead us down the wrong path? What if Bush is really a great president? By Mogens Rukow What if Bush…? What if Islam…? Think, what if the intelligentsia…? What if multicultural…? Think, what if Arafat…? What if my a.. was…? What if you could go on forever? Now, what if there existed the equivalent of contrafactual history writing? What if there were the equivalent of hypothesizing what the world would be like out if history hadn’t turned out the way it did? What if Hitler had...

Francisco Nava '09 was physically attacked by two men in Princeton Township yesterday evening, sustaining a concussion but no other serious injuries. The assault comes on the heels of several threatening messages recently sent to Nava, apparently in connection with his involvement with the socially conservative Anscombe Society. Nava was walking from a borrowed car to the house of a boy he is mentoring when he was stopped by a man dressed in black and wearing a ski cap. According to Nava, the man said that someone was hurt and asked for his help. A second assailant, who was waiting...

Last week every Republican presidential candidate with hopes of emerging as "The True Conservative" in the race--Mitt Romney, Sam Brownback, Duncan Hunter, and Ron Paul--traveled to Kansas City to speak to the National Right to Life Convention (NRLC). And then there was Fred Thompson. Although he's not yet an official candidate, Thompson clearly plans to run--and he plans to run as the Truest of True Conservatives. So it seemed that a sojourn to Kansas City to stoke an important segment of the conservative base would be in order. But Thompson skipped the trip, choosing instead to address the NRLC by...

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP ADDRESS TO THE QUADRANT MAGAZINE 50TH ANNIVERSARY DINNER, FOUR SEASONS HOTEL, SYDNEY Thank you very much Paddy McGuinness, Chief Justice, Justices, Your Eminence, Your Grace, my Parliamentary colleagues and ladies and gentlemen. I’m finally succumbing to Peter Garrett’s advice and its great to embrace an evening of culture and poetry and all of that after overdosing on my Philistine sporting pursuits over the weekend in almost the four corners of the Earth, from one side of the country to the other. But it really is an enormous pleasure for Janette...

The catastrophe, termed the Russian Revolution, through all the degradations, tribulations and disappointments, has to lead to a new and better awareness. Such an experience in the life of a people cannot but enrich and sharpen our perceptiveness. But a crisis of soul will have to precede this perceptiveness with a readiness for repentance and humility. The light will be begotten after an inward cleansing and ascesis. This -- is a law of spiritual life. And it is needful to be aware, that all the whole thinking portion of Russian society, that which has esteemed itself as the bearer knowingly...

As societies dumb down and reality shows take over, facile pundits now overrule true intellectualsPARIS - Among the striking cultural differences between France and Britain is the way their intellectuals operate in the public arena. While the French expect their thinkers to speak out on matters of conscience and state, Britons view the very idea of an 'intellectual' with suspicion, preferring their 'scholars' to work quietly in elitist circles. But both have added weight to the political debate. And now both, it seems, are becoming endangered species. The waning of the power and status of the intelligentsia is hardly exclusive...

Back to Political · Back to home · EmailThe New StupidityBy Alec Mouhibian(Note: This is a long essay, so it is highly recommended you print and read.) If one wishes to ascertain the force of turpitude that is the most primary and inherent arch-villain of the liberty establishing, capitalist, reason-embracing principles that characterize the foundation and prosperity of the United States of America, one need travel no further than back to kindergarten, where the tell-all question that lies at the philosophical base of the entire boondoggle which is the modern political spectrum, was posed regularly: One plus one equals…?“Two,” would...

CAPITOL IDEASBy Tom BethellCelebrating My 40th Anniversary        I write on August 28, which is the 40th anniversary of my arrival in these United States. It is a date I am always conscious of. The changes since 1962 have been immense, of course, and I won’t hazard any conclusions here. I am inclined to say that the changes have mostly been for the worse, but I am not confident of that. Our lives are so besieged by change that any contemporary judgment is likely to be ill advised. Old-timers in any event are notoriously inclined to look back on a...