Arts, Culture, & Scholarship

Lessons from Gorsuch's Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ The Supreme Court of the United States. (Credit: Owen Tilman) Jason CaoStaff Writer, The Buckley BeaconPostal routes, while seemingly trivial, were a key point of contention for the United States Congress in late 1791. Seeing that postal routes facilitated communication in the early republic, the question of who could organize them became particularly salient.  As Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch recounts in Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law, then-Massachusetts congressman Theodore Sedgwick floated the follo...

Voltaire once warned, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him." But what happens when we do? A Christian reading of Huxley’s Brave New World offers a prophetic warning for today’s so-called "secular" West. Oscar Miñoso-RendónStaff Writer, The Buckley BeaconIn Brave New World, Aldous Huxley presents readers with a dystopian state, whose organization, though secular, seems predicated on a Freudian, pseudo-religious counterfeit of Eastern and Western religious traditions. By making use of soma (the “opiate of the masses”), pseudo-religious rituals, and desire-based conditioning, the state seeks to suppress religious yearnings and create a world devoid of human suffering. In an age of digital escapism, hook-up...

 Was this Soviet composer’s renowned Symphony No. 5 a poster child for socialist realism, or a jab in the direction of Stalinism? Let’s unpack. Jeth FoggStaff Writer, The Buckley BeaconScholars have long disputed about the interpretation of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony — whether the piece epitomizes Shostakovich as a political dissident or as a Soviet ideologue. Was the subtitle of the piece, “A Soviet Artist’s Response to Just Criticism,” a sardonic jab at Stalin, or an earnest reorientation of Shostakovich’s composing to Soviet standards? Shostakovich was the subject of scathing criticism for his experimental compositions following the premiere of his opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District in 1934. In an edito...

Age gives way to age, but the events of one century are wonderfully like those of another, for they are directed by the province of God, who overrules the course of history in accordance with His purposes in creating the race of man. ~ Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum Jeth FoggStaff Writer, The Buckley BeaconThe Enlightenment’s atomization of truth to human reason delegated ethical questions previously entrusted to the Church to the individual. Ethical behavior was no longer effected through divine grace and human freedom but by individual autonomy. In a Nietzschean estimation, it was no longer in God Whom “we live and move and have our being,” but rather, “God dies; materialized man thinks he can be man or superman only if God ...

 Flannery O’Connor, the American South, and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. Raleigh AdamsAssistant Editor of Campus Life & Administration, The Buckley BeaconThe American South is a region steeped in Christianity’s pervasive influence. From roadside billboards proclaiming the imminent rapture to picturesque little white churches dotting the countryside, the cultural landscape bears the indelible mark of the evangelical fervor ignited by the Second Great Awakening. Dominated socially and culturally by Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, the South has long been considered the stronghold of Protestantism (Schweiger, B. B., and D. G. Mathews, “Religion in the American South: Protestants and Others in History and Cul...

In a small production at Yale’s Off Broadway Theater, the catchy songs of this classic musical receive entertaining treatment. William BarbeeContributing Author, The Buckley BeaconWhen Grease: The Musical first premiered in 1971, it served as an ode by its creators to the culture of 1950s America. The show employed numerous tropes, from drive-in movies to rollerblading waitresses, which harkened back to a gilded age of American life when affluence, effervescence, and inconsequence was the norm. The 1978 film version further encapsulated these sentiments with over-the-top, yet electrifying performances by stars Olivia Newton John and John Travolta. Though never considered a dramatic masterpiece, Grease has always provided its...

A review of Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth. Fiona BultonsheenStaff Writer, The Buckley BeaconIs having a big family irresponsible? Perhaps it is an indulgent choice in the face of climate change or a choice to conspire against one’s career. After all, we Yale women jumped hoops from kindergarten until now to prepare for the most coveted positions in America. Why risk a break in that trajectory?Dr. Catherine Pakaluk, in her book Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth, offers answers to such questions by focusing on the few who challenge the norm in what she dubs a “two-trending-to-one child world.” Her book contains conversations that aim to make sense of the decline in bi...

Patriotism, Morality, and Metaphysical Tension in Lynch’s Eccentric Vision of America Raleigh AdamsAssistant Editor of Campus Life & Administration, The Buckley Beacon“Through the darkness of future past, The magician longs to see. One chants out between two worlds...‘Fire walk with me!’"Straight from the heartland of America, David Lynch came into the artistic scene in the latter half of the twentieth century, stradling being the weirdo’s weirdo and “Jimmy Stewart from Mars” (Hoberman, J., “David Lynch, Maker of Florid and Unnerving Films, Dies at 78”). With a filmography that hypnotically swirls a genuine nostalgic love for America with a keen eye to the fiery truth of her realities, his works invite viewers to walk th...

(A satire.) Max Grinstein Contributing Author, The Buckley Beacon In December, the Sumud Coalition passed a student referendum campaign seeking, among other things, for Yale to divest from weapons manufacturers, “including those arming Israel.” Among the student groups that endorsed Sumud’s campaign was Yale’s very own Dungeons and Dragons club.In response, The Buckley Beacon began a multi-month investigation to learn more about the link between fantasy role playing games and divesting from Lockheed Martin. Below are the minutes of the Dungeons and Dragons club’s November meeting, as leaked to The Beacon.A. Call to OrderThe regular meeting of the Yale Dungeons and Dragons was called to order at 7:00 p.m. on Sunday, November...