Hadley Arkes on Justice Scalia and Fr. Malcolm Kennedy

It was part of Nino’s virtue and charm — and his Christian outlook — that he could find something redeeming and likeable in just about everyone he met, regardless of politics. And so we’d go to dinner at the Scalias’ and find Nina Totenberg, from NPR, along with her husband. Ms. Totenberg has put in her years in the vineyard of covering the Court, and she has cultivated the skills of a workman. But among her skills has never been the knack of concealing her contempt for conservatives. Whoever composed the company at table, everything would end well when Father Malcolm Kennedy, a seasoned New Yorker, took a seat at the piano. We would gather around, and then Nino and I and others would join in belting out those Broadway tunes we grew up with in the ’50s — Rodgers and Hammerstein, South Pacific, Carousel, and all the others. And one could almost believe, at the end of such an evening, that with good will, everything would come out all right. 

— Hadley Arkes is the Ney Professor Emeritus at Amherst College and the founder and director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding.