We are either human beings, created in the image and likeness of God and endowed with moral agency and free will, or we are merely machines, programmed through laws and regulations, mere code written by the programmers.

“The American narrative of a hard-luck individual working hard, doing the right thing, and finding success for it is so deep in me, my life story so tempting as potential evidence for that narrative’s validity,” Sarah Smarsh writes of her own upwardly mobile economic and intellectual trajectory, “that I probably sometimes err on the side of conveying a story in which I’m an individual beating the odds with her own determination.”

William F. Buckley Jr. was more than a prolific writer: He was the brains and coalescing force of a post-World War II philosophy that gradually became known as “conservatism” and which culminated with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan as president.

Is it conceit or coincidence that a saint who was conceived without sin is the patron of a country that believes the same about itself?

Shining a light on the truth, followed by some sort of atonement, seemed the right thing to do, especially at a time of rising and relegitimized white supremacy in the United States.

The impending arrival of e-retail behemoth Amazon on East River shores has one L.I.C. resident yearning for real community and contemplating the next New York City ZIP code he will inhabit.