Damon Linker

In the summer of 1943, the British Royal Air Force (with support from the Eighth Army Air Force of the United States) flew a series of raids on Hamburg, Germany. Dubbed “Operation Gomorrah,” the bombing missions did not target factories or fuel installations, railway junctions or . . . . Continue Reading »

Conservatives face a daunting challenge today. On the most pressing moral issues confronting the country—many of them having to do with aspects of biotechnological research—the public is deeply divided, and the divisions are far from trivial. Take the issue of embryonic stem cells. Many . . . . Continue Reading »

I’m a new man. I’ve just slept through the night for the first time in weeks because my newborn son has just slept through the night for the first time in his young life. Don’t get me wrong: most nights, he still cries for a feeding at 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. But last Monday he terrified his . . . . Continue Reading »

In the months before his final descent into madness, Friedrich Nietzsche made the following declaration and prediction . . . . . . Continue Reading »

Nothing is more human than discontent with the human condition. And few aspects of human life inspire more discontent than politics. The longing to withdraw from, escape, or transcend the vicissitudes of political life in favor of a more perfect world permeates Western culture from ancient times to . . . . Continue Reading »

I’m angry, and I have been ever since I watched a 767 slam into the North Tower of the World Trade Center while walking to the office on a lovely late-summer morning last September. Sure, like most Americans, I’ve also experienced shock and profound sadness. But the anger came early, and it’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity By Darrin M. McMahon Oxford University Press, 262 pages, $35 As everyone knows, Alexis de Tocque­ville’s Democracy in America is filled with valuable observations about the United States. . . . . Continue Reading »

The tension between philosophy and politics is as old as philosophy . . . . Continue Reading »

America’s culture war is not about culture. It is about religion”Christianity, in particular”and its role in the public life of the nation. On one side, secularists of various stripes insist that religion is the source of our greatest problems”prejudice and bigotry, ignorance . . . . Continue Reading »

It is safe to say that at some point in the not-too-distant future, America will confront the question of whether or not to legalize the use and cultivation of marijuana. A recent poll shows that support for legalization has reached its highest level since the question was first asked thirty years . . . . Continue Reading »