Anna Sutherland

John Willson, professor emeritus of history at Hillsdale College, reflects at the Imaginative Conservative on “the chief cruelty of our profession: assigning our students to paradise, purgatory, or the inferno with the stroke of a pen.” He reminds us : Grades as we know them are a . . . . Continue Reading »

Austin Ruse’s post  last week on the wealth and political power of gays and lesbians left me uneasy. That’s not because I thought his point was entirely illegitimate (it’s fair to point out that the situation of non-straight people today is not exactly comparable to that of . . . . Continue Reading »

This week’s Economist has a nice story on the revival of traditionalism in the Catholic Church, entitled “A traditionalist avant-garde: It’s trendy to be a traditionalist in the Catholic church.” The usual tropes are there—-the “church hierarchy in Western . . . . Continue Reading »

Even those who are more fond of G. K. Chesterton than Elliot Milco is  may enjoy Max Beerbohm’s parody of the prince of paradox. Here’s an excerpt: It is always in reference to those things which arouse in us the most human of all our emotions—I mean the emotion of . . . . Continue Reading »

The debate  at Public Discourse over whether and how we can sustain the American liberal tradition continues with a contribution from Nathan Schlueter (a Hillsdale College professor whose classes I enjoyed). Criticizing Vincent Phillip Muñoz for over-emphasizing the Lockean . . . . Continue Reading »

The principle of subsidiarity—-which the budget plans and vice-presidential run of Paul Ryan put in the spotlight  this year—-is easily misunderstood. It is sometimes characterized simply as the idea that problems should be solved at the lowest possible level, by (say) the family . . . . Continue Reading »

Is the common law an obsolete relic of our history as an English colony, or is it still a principle of sound constitutional interpretation? Does it protect citizens’ liberty, or undermine it? How does common law interact with the evolution of our culture and legal system? The Library of Law . . . . Continue Reading »

At our annual Erasmus Lecture in October, Jean Bethke Elshtain named Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a Protestant village in France famous for hiding thousands of Jews  and other refugees from Nazi and Vichy authorities during World War II, as an exemplar of loyalty. Margaret Paxson writes about Le . . . . Continue Reading »

We Americans believe that slavery is wrong, and we’re appalled that anyone ever believed otherwise. We’re even inclined to tell ourselves that, if we lived a couple centuries ago, we would have been abolitionists. Yet as historian Jay Case writes, we shouldn’t be so smug : You and . . . . Continue Reading »

On Public Discourse, Vincent Phillip Muñoz responds to his colleague Patrick Deneen’s critique of liberalism (” Unsustainable Liberalism ,” which appeared in our August/September issue). He says he’s “largely sympathetic” to Deneen’s views, yet . . . . Continue Reading »