Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America by robert hughes oxford university press, 210 pages, $19.95 This book immerses us in the discontents that derive from our sexual, ethnic, racial, economic, political, moral, and religious differences. Yet again we are taken over the familiar and . . . . Continue Reading »
The only thing deader than dead politics must surely be dead political science. It is thus remarkable to find that after several decades, these essays by Bertrand de Jouvenel (1903–1987) remain surprisingly lively. This is ironic. For Jouvenel, writing during the so-called behavioralist . . . . Continue Reading »
The year 1991 marked the centenary of modern Catholic social teaching—the issuing of the encyclical Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII—and the bicentenary of the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution. It might have come as something of a shock to the (very Protestant) . . . . Continue Reading »
Scandal: The Culture of Mistrust in American Politicsby Suzanne GarmentRandom House, 335 pages, $23 At the end of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the narrator Nick Carraway sums up the inner lives of the rich and self-absorbed Tom and Daisy Buchanan and their indifference to the pain and . . . . Continue Reading »
Why America Doesn’t Workby Chuck Colson and Jack EckerdWord Publishing, 227 pages, $16.99 In Why America Doesn’t Work, Charles Colson and Jack Eckerd retell the Jay Leno joke about a character dressed up as Uncle Sam who can’t linger for an interview because he’s on his way to open . . . . Continue Reading »
There they go again. The presidential election of 1992 is bringing out among politicians and the media the Big Economic Lie. Virtually all editors today allow their reporters to broadcast this lie uncritically: “During the 1980s under Reaganomics the poor and the middle class lost income.” Any . . . . Continue Reading »
Garfield Bromley Oxnam (1891–1963) was a bishop of the Methodist Church, and a cover subject of Time, though it’s hard to imagine the two going together today. Billy Graham can fill the Sheep Meadow of Central Park with listeners, and John Cardinal O’Connor can fill Fifth Avenue in front of . . . . Continue Reading »
Maybe we have been too hard on the editorial page of the most influential of our parish newspapers. Over the years, the New York Times’ editorial writers have been indifferent or hostile to the role of religion in our common life. Any impingement of religion on spheres that . . . . Continue Reading »
The Scattered Voice: Christians at Odds in the Public Square by James W. Skillen Zondervan, 225 pages In the minds of many people, American evangelicalism is closely identified with right-wing politics. In reality, the political beliefs of American evangelicals are far more varied than is evident . . . . Continue Reading »
Under God: Religion and American Politicsby Garry WillsSimon and Schuster, 445 pages, $24.95 Garry Wills is an indefatigable iconoclast, and the icons that have felt the sting of his wit are as diverse in time as in form. They include ideas like the facile notion of Lockean hegemony in the . . . . Continue Reading »
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