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Locke, Darwin, and America

Let me share just one paragraph of my presentation at the APSA with you. More than that would undermine your incentive to get up early on Sunday. It often seems as if America’s Lockean foundation offered our country a kind of stability that was undermined by the Darwinian theory about the . . . . Continue Reading »

Islam and America

Today I weighed in on the Ground Zero mosque controversy , making a case that it’s not a big deal. A major premise of my argument is that Islam is not all that much of a factor in America. It’s something many of us fail to see, because we misread the behavior of the liberal . . . . Continue Reading »

Soul Bigger

As proof that we Christians don’t have exclusive rights to the making of cheesy, religious-oriented videos , I give you the National Jewish Outreach Program’s reimagining of Kanye West’s “Gold Digger.” Who knew Rosh Hashanah was inspired by the movie Pay It Forward ? . . . . Continue Reading »

The American Locomotive

In To Mosque or Not to Mosque , today’s first “On the Square” article, R. R. Reno declares that he doesn’t really care about the controversy over the “9/11 mosque,” and then explains why. “Let’s look at the context,” he writes. America is an . . . . Continue Reading »

Former RNC Chairman Undermines Conservatives

Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, made a shocking confession today in an interview with The Atlantic ’s Marc Ambinger : Privately, in off-the-record conversations with this reporter over the years, Mehlman . . . . Continue Reading »

A Summer of Salinger

Somehow I missed soaking in Salinger as a young adult. In this, if my current students are any indication, I am a rarity. They know Catcher in the Rye the way I knew That Hideous Strength. If I worried about being Mark Studdock, then they worried about being another misunderstood Holden Caulfield. Continue Reading »

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