A contest of worldviews in our time pits devout Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and other believers against secularist liberals and those who, while remaining within the religious denominations, have adopted essentially secularist liberal ideas about personal and political morality. The contest . . . . Continue Reading »
Lasch concluded that an emphasis upon mercy is perhaps the most difficult virtue for humans generally, and modern man especially, to sustain. And yet it is a message needing repetition and renewal, even in the face of likely failure. Hope demands nothing . . . . Continue Reading »
It is common for religious believers to lament the Supreme Court’s barely concealed hostility to the free exercise of religion, at least since the middle decades of the twentieth century. But in the long term, even more damage is likely to be done by the influence of ideas advocated by a cluster . . . . Continue Reading »
Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case For Classical Liberalismby Richard A. Epstein.University of Chicago Press. 311 pp. $35 We do not lack theoretical “defenses” of liberalism. Indeed, academic political theorists have produced them by the truckload over the past several decades. Restatements . . . . Continue Reading »
The name of Horace Bushnell (1802-1876) was so well known in nineteenth-century America that when residents of Hartford, Connecticut, visited other cities they were often greeted with, “Do you know Horace Bushnell?” Bushnell, pastor of Hartford’s Congregational North Church from 1833 to 1859, . . . . Continue Reading »
launching liberalism: on lockean political philosophy by michael zuckert university press of kansas, 392 pages, $29.95 Paraphrasing the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was One. And the Word brought forth a world.” Can the words of man be equally univocal, and have . . . . Continue Reading »
On good liberal grounds alone, academic liberals should appreciate David Walsh’s powerful new defense of . . . . Continue Reading »
Things are in the saddle and ride mankind,” complained Ralph Waldo Emerson a century and a half ago. Like his disciple and Concord neighbor Henry David Thoreau, Emerson was vexed by the ironies of modern history. Technologies of the kind that had ushered in the industrial revolution were intended . . . . Continue Reading »
Religious Liberty in the Supreme Court: The Cases that Define the Debate over Church and State terry eastland november 1995, eerdmans, $31.50For all their concern about the rise of anti-democrats in post-Soviet Russia, when it comes to the decisive excellence of the American regime our . . . . Continue Reading »
The Anatomy of Antiliberalismby stephen holmes harvard university press, 330 pages, $29.95 As the 1990s bring us the recrudescence of many unfulfilled progressive enthusiasms from the 1970s, we may begin to understand that the intervening Reagan decade was indeed an exceptional period of . . . . Continue Reading »
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