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All civilizations, like all individuals, have flaws. The Christian civilization of Church and empire had flaws. America, which began as a refuge from the religious wars of Europe, has...

Hegel: The Philosopher of Freedom by klaus vieweg stanford university, 488 pages, $40 Klaus Vieweg’s eight-hundred-page biography of Hegel made something of a sensation when the German original appeared in...

The political philosopher Angelo Codevilla was taken from us on September 21, at a time when America has particular need of him. No one I have known combined such...

There recur in the work of ­T. S. Eliot two obsessions that make one cringe: his Jew-­hatred and his contempt for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The first is sometimes excused as...

Hong Kong is a British city that happens to have an ethnic Chinese majority. It never wanted to be Chinese, still does not want to be Chinese, and never...

How to Fight Anti-Semitismby bari weiss crown, 224 pages, $20 Hate: The Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism in Franceby marc weitzmann houghton mifflin harcourt, 320 pages, $26 No one views...

For every complex problem,” H. L. Mencken said, “there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.” Then there are answers that aren’t even wrong, but merely irrelevant—for...

Soon after Sir Roger Scruton was appointed to advise the UK’s Ministry of Housing as chair of the new Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, certain Labour MPs accused him...

A Brezhnev-era joke asked whether it was a crime to say that the party chairman was an idiot. The answer was yes, because it’s a state secret. For those who...

Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reichby eric kurlanderyale, 448 pages, $35 That Hitler and his inner circle were mad is not a matter of controversy. The...

The Ring of Truth: The Wisdom of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungby roger scrutonallen lane, 368 pages, $19.99 Of all the personalities that produced enduring art, Richard Wagner’s was...

Under the title “Rotting-Flesh Reaganism,” R. R. Reno argues that Reagan’s campaign for economic freedom “made sense in 1980, a great deal of sense. But we’re in 2016 now,...

It’s Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemiesby mary eberstadtharper, 158 pages, $25.99 Members of traditional religions became moral outlaws in the United States once equal rights for...

Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition? by David Nirenberg Norton, 624 pages, $35 n World history is the history of Israel, averred Franz ?Rosenzweig, meaning that the nations of the West...

It is consoling to think that the emotions that music arouses in us have something to do with the makeup of the universe. The eternal relation of math and...