Michael Novak

Until 1989, the most underreported fact of the twentieth century was the death of socialism. Socialism as an economic idea had died, in fact, long before the collapse of the Berlin Wall that November. By the late 1970s, no serious national leader in the developing world was leading his country down . . . . Continue Reading »

The brilliant lay philosopher of Judaism, Dennis Prager, has written lucidly about the utter distinctiveness of Judaism among the nations of its time in its understanding of human sexuality. Prager writes: The gods of virtually all civilizations engaged in sexual relations. In the Near East, the . . . . Continue Reading »

According to the conventional narrative, science and religion have been at war for some three hundred years. But the reality is deeper and more complex. The English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote in his Science and the Modern World (1925) that without devotion to the God of Israel, modern . . . . Continue Reading »

Michael Novak, the author of On Two Wings and Washington’s God (with Jana Novak), discusses his new book, No One Sees God , which hits bookstores in August. What is the point of your book? My experience has shown me that self-knowledge has a huge impact on what one thinks about God. If God is . . . . Continue Reading »

A recent Pew Forum Poll of 35,000 respondents found out something fascinating about agnostics and atheists. Half of all agnostics actually believe in God, at least in terms of a universal force or Primal Origin, perhaps “within.” And 21% of those who call themselves “atheists” . . . . Continue Reading »

Anyone traveling to Europe this summer will surely marvel at how different it is from the United States¯and how Europeans have trouble understanding the difference. “Individualists,” they call Americans, but the facts show far more personal social concern in the United . . . . Continue Reading »

We keep pulling¯out of bleak embers¯the objections to the American economic system that were already cold thirty years ago. Recycled from generation to generation, they never seem to pass through the fires of critical thought.For instance:• The people of the United States, 5 percent . . . . Continue Reading »

Many falsely contrived stories have appeared in recent weeks about huge gains in the proportion of national income taken by the top 1 percent of income earners (those earning about $328,000 or more per year).The truth is rather different, as Alan Reynolds has pointed out in a recent analysis for the . . . . Continue Reading »

I keep reading through Rabbi Michael Lerner’s Tikkun, Jim Wallis’ Sojourners, and the parallel writings of the far Catholic left, and I fail to pick up much hankering for the old essential characteristics of socialism: the abolition of private property, the government-managed economy, and at . . . . Continue Reading »

Atheism is back”or so you might imagine from so many writers in recent months, one after another declaring a proud and militant rejection of God and all His works. So, for instance, to his new book, God Is Not Great , Christopher Hitchens appends the insidious subtitle How Religion Poisons . . . . Continue Reading »