R. R. Reno

It’s a full-throated endorsement of Donald Trump’s candidacy. Written with pungency, “The Flight 93 Election” was published on the Claremont Review of Books website under the name Publius Decius Mus, a fourth-century b.c. Roman consul whose heroic self-sacrifice in battle saved the day for . . . . Continue Reading »

♦ Early in July, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia issued a set of guidelines for implementing Pope Francis’s ­apostolic exhortation on marriage and family, Amoris Laetitia. The document urges the Church’s pastors to recognize that Catholics ­today are often profoundly misled by the prevailing . . . . Continue Reading »

I don’t think we’ve fully realized how acute feelings of vulnerability have become in twenty-first-century America. At prestigious universities, young people with every reason to believe they’ll land on the top end of society nevertheless feel threatened, so much so that some call for . . . . Continue Reading »

I don’t recall candidates in past debates appealing so directly to the technocratic virtues. I wonder whether ordinary voters found this off-putting. If they did, Trump failed to exploit the opening. Continue Reading »

Were Disraeli reincarnated as a Republican politician, our establishment would very likely find him as distressing as they currently find Trump. Continue Reading »

It is atomized societies that are susceptible to demagogues—not societies that enjoy strong social bonds and organic communal solidarity. Continue Reading »

These days, there are no Christians with currency as intellectuals, which is to say as articulate public voices who interpret present political and cultural trends for a broad, educated audience. Continue Reading »

Congratulations on 35 years of exemplary cultural leadership. A responsible, discerning critic builds culture by extolling the good, the excellent, the beautiful, and the true, as well as by censuring the corrupt, the base, the ugly, and the trivial. Since its founding in 1982, The New Criterion . . . . Continue Reading »

The global system—which is committed to the free flow of labor, goods, and capital—works well for the leadership class in Europe and North America, as it does for striving workers in China, India, and elsewhere. It doesn’t work so well for the middle class in the West. Thus, in the West, the led no longer share the economic interests of their leaders. Continue Reading »

Ted Cruz failed to endorse Donald Trump for president. Snore. It’s a sign of how out-of-touch our political class has become that they speak of Cruz as a possible presidential candidate. In him, see the rotting flesh of Reaganism, a noble political project that no longer speaks to our time. Continue Reading »