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It’s the Culture, Stupid!

What really happened in the 1992 presidential election? And what does it tell us about American politics at the turn of the century? Although postmortems are always a tricky business, interpreting the 1992 election is particularly so. The defeat of an incumbent President, the election of the first . . . . Continue Reading »

The Homosexual Movement

I. The New Thing Homosexual behavior is a phenomenon with a long history, to which there have been various cultural and moral responses. But today in our public life there is something new, a novum, which demands our attention and deserves a careful moral response.The new thing is a movement that . . . . Continue Reading »

Evil: Back in Bad Company

Most Christian thinkers have viewed evil as a privation, a derivative reality, like a shadow. Shadows are privations of light; they are real things, but dependent on the bodies that cast the shadows. They are darkness where light should have been. Similarly evil, a secondary reality, is only the . . . . Continue Reading »

Rites of Spring

Office of WellnessCalifornia State University at PocoTo: The Poco CommunityFrom: Chelsea Rabinowitz-Hakamoto, Wellness CoordinatorRe: DatingAs spring approaches and with it, in all likelihood, an increase in dating activity, the Office of Wellness has been asked by the President to coordinate all . . . . Continue Reading »

War in the Classroom

Battleground: One Mother's Crusade, The Religious Right, and the Struggle for Control of our Classrooms  by stephen bates  poseidon press, 365 pages, $24 The 1983 protest by a group of parents in Hawkins County, Tennessee, against certain stories and themes in the public school reading . . . . Continue Reading »

Illusory Compromise

Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education by gerald graff norton, 214 pages, $19.95 Although he does not mention James Davison Hunter’s book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America , Gerald Graff might be taking up the challenge of Hunter’s final . . . . Continue Reading »

Editorial: Abortion and a Nation at War

Surely, one may devoutly hope, Justice Scalia exaggerates. In his dissent from Planned Parenthood v. Casey (joined by Rehnquist, Thomas, and White), he develops the analogy between this case and the infamous  Dred Scott decision of 1857. What happened then is, in ways . . . . Continue Reading »

The American Battlefield

On first reading of Culture Wars, James Hunter’s study of America’s social divisions, I was greatly impressed. On reading it again, I am still impressed, but there are points at which I wanted Hunter to go a bit further, to push home his central theme with a bit more fervor, and to . . . . Continue Reading »

Editorial: Redefining Abortion Politics

Beginning with the Supreme Court’s Webster decision of last July, Americans were delighted, distressed, or simply puzzled to discover that abortion was back in the political arena. It had been abruptly “removed from politics” by the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, when it became a question . . . . Continue Reading »

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