Revolt against Destiny: An Intellectual History of the United States by paul a. carter columbia university press, 331 pages, $24.95 The only thing really wrong about this thought-provoking book is its subtitle. Whatever else it may be —and it is actually several fine things — it is not . . . . Continue Reading »
Trust and Obedience First Things has done me the favor of asking Professor Gilbert Meilaender to review my book, The Giving and Taking of Life: Essays Ethical (April). May I dialogue briefly with some of his remarks? He attends, in the first place, to my central argument: that the moral import of . . . . Continue Reading »
At the last rock of the last ledge of the last climb, retreat blocked, he went to the edge to look over his days and ways. The earth lay below in colors. He watched it with desire, but it was spread out far far below, and was unobtainable. At his foot was a green thing—a leaf, slick and . . . . Continue Reading »
The drumbeat for apocalypse can once again be heard in the media. Almost two decades after the publication of The Limits to Growth, the Club of Rome scenario that predicted ecological catastrophe, the WorldWatch Institute has picked up the mantle of leadership in the discredited field of what I . . . . Continue Reading »
Ordinary Time by a. g. mojtabai doubleday, 223 pages, $17.95 A.G. Mojtabai’s nonfiction work, Blessed Assurance, won the 1986 Lillian Smith Award for the best book about the American South. Now, in her fifth novel, Ordinary Time, in prose as clean and spare as the landscape which is its setting, . . . . Continue Reading »
Liberal Arts and Community: The Feeding of the Larger Body by marion montgomery louisiana state university press, 170 pages, $27.50 Graceful and erudite essays aimed at recovering the liberal arts for the sustaining of community that is formed by an understanding of the good. As for subjects . . . . Continue Reading »
Easy to forget, how shadows are light’s creatures, out of dark, out of thinning dark come delicately, then sharply. Sun puts them there. True to the last frond, bole, blowing crest, bush’s perimeter, by light shaped from darkness their elegant black duplications silent, accurate. On the hot . . . . Continue Reading »
No sooner had George Bush declared a “war on drugs” and appointed William Bennett to lead the charge than voices were raised to question the entire enterprise. To be fair, some of those voices—such as economist Milton Friedman and, with less assurance, William F. Buckley, Jr.—have . . . . Continue Reading »
At a conference last fall on “Christians, Jews, and the Free Exercise of Religion” sponsored by the Institute on Religion and Public Life, one of the Jewish participants accused the major Jewish agencies of being anti-religious. After being sharply challenged, he retracted this grave accusation . . . . Continue Reading »
In American political rhetoric–stump speeches, newspaper editorials, party propaganda–the terms “left wing” and “right wing” are used as epithets. They are terms of opprobrium. We employ them on our opponents, hoping to persuade voters to turn away from such dangerous ideologues. When . . . . Continue Reading »
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