The cover of the New Republic picture this big thick book titled The Constitution of the United States. The real Constitution makes a very thin pamphlet, but with all that some folk have discovered in the Constitution in recent decades, maybe it looks to them like a big thick book. Anyway, the book . . . . Continue Reading »
The importance of Christianity in the formation of Western civilization can hardly be denied. That importance is not simply a matter of the past. In the process of secularization Western culture did emancipate itself from its religious roots, but that emancipation was by no means complete. A . . . . Continue Reading »
Immigration and Immigrants:Setting the Record Straightby michael fix and jeffrey s. passel urban institute, 104 pages, $10 paperPostwar Immigrant America: A Social Historyby reed ueda bedford/st. martin's press, 182 pages, $10 paperWhen Gov. Lawton Chiles of Florida announced his plans earlier this . . . . Continue Reading »
Modernity and Crises of Identity: Culture and Society in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna by jacques le rider translated by rosemary morris continuum, 380 pages, $34.95 To the best of my knowledge, no one has yet compared the Vienna of Freud’s time with Periclean Athens; but if it ever happens, I will . . . . Continue Reading »
Jack:A Life of C.S. Lewis by george sayer crossway, 423 pages, $13.99 paper Most biographies of C. S. Lewis so far have been hagiographical chronicles, the great exception being A. N. Wilson’s notorious warts-and-all treatment, which, though it has unfairly been called a hatchet job, would rather . . . . Continue Reading »
The Real Story I read with interest and agreement Edward S. Shapiro’s “Blacks and Jews Entangled” (August/September). While there exist shared experiences of oppression, Shapiro notes quite correctly that a black-Jewish relationship should not be based on fanciful notions derived from . . . . Continue Reading »
In February of 1994, in what was its March issue, First Things published a statement on the homosexual movement signed by twenty-one people, of whom I was one. An excerpt from that statement was published in the Wall Street Journal on February 24. I do not intend here to rehearse the argument of . . . . Continue Reading »
“But why do you have to be so polemical?” It’s a not unfamiliar complaint (see, for example, this month’s correspondence), and one that I—and the other editors of First Things—take seriously, any possible appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. We live, by choice and . . . . Continue Reading »
Jean-Paul Sartre is not, to put it mildly, very high on the reading list of those seeking to grow in Christian piety. Indeed, most would express mild shock at the suggestion that his writings could ever make such a list. His atheism would unsettle the tremulous soul, his contradictions would both . . . . Continue Reading »
There is by now a well-established conventional view about the eruptions of ethnic hatred in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet empire. This view holds that these are the result of age-old enmities, which were held under control by the various Communist regimes and thus for a time, at least in . . . . Continue Reading »
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