Richard John Neuhaus

The Public Square Liberalism Without the Left, Conservatism Without DelusionsIn the view of conservatives, liberals are in the saddle. In the view of liberals, conservatives are in the saddle, or at least threaten to take things over. There is no “us” without a “them,” and it’s hard to . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square Minding the Mind The word-mavens—William Safire, for instance—routinely complain about the use of “intriguing” when “engaging,” “fascinating,” or just plain “interesting” would do as well. The complaint is justified. But intriguing is the right word to . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square The Future of Once Protestant Britain The British media let it all hang out for the funeral of Basil Cardinal Hume, Archbishop of Westminster. But then, as we learned from the lachrymose sensationalism surrounding Princess Di’s death, something dreadfully embarrassing seems to . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square Dropping Bombs into Tangled HistoryThe U.S.-NATO attack on Serbia was a good occasion to go back and read Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia. A big book of more than a thousand pages, it was first published in 1941 and is available in Penguin . . . . Continue Reading »

Almost everybody agrees that progress is a good thing. But most self-evidently good things, when examined more closely, have a way of generating disagreements. And so it is with the idea of progress, of which the idea of moral progress is part. Thinkers arguing from the most diverse perspectives . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square Bill Clinton and the American CharacterThis is the long promised reflection on what “the Clinton affair” does or does not mean for the state of the republic. It is of course an interim reflection, since people will be trying to sort this out for many years to come. But for now . . . . Continue Reading »

November 1916 is the second big volume of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s historical epic The Red Wheel, recounting in relentless detail the events leading up to the Bolshevik takeover in 1917 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1,014 pages, $35) It is a strange and engrossing work, written in a manner that many . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square The long history of colleges and universities betraying their founding purposes is well told in Father James Burtchaell’s doleful and instructive The Dying of the Light: The Disengagement of Colleges and Universities from Their Christian Churches (Eerdmans). It is a complex . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square The Gods of Left and RightWe are regularly cautioned against stereotypes, and rightly so. A stereotype is a type or image that is unchangeable, as though carved in stone (from the Greek stereos, meaning solid). On the other hand, stereotypes exist because certain images or . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square Almost everything short of the Kingdom of God can be improved, but some things are so very good that it seems churlish to wish they were better. Such a thing is the statement adopted by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), “Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to . . . . Continue Reading »