Gregory and Martine Millman did not set out to homeschool their children, at least not consciously. When they became parents in the mid-1980s, their plan to was to lead “a normal yuppie life,” upwardly mobile, working their way into a neighborhood with good schools which of course their . . . . Continue Reading »
This semester I’m teaching a really fun course: Foundations of the Christian Intellectual Tradition. Last week we began a two-week-long segment on Greek tragedy.“What makes a tragedy tragic?” I asked. I have a group of really sharp freshman, and they opined about this or that movie, . . . . Continue Reading »
The argument of these last several Friday postings is that the no-establishment provision of the first freedom of the First Amendment is entirely in the service of the free exercise provision. I should note, at least in passing, that those devoted to the “original meaning” of the First . . . . Continue Reading »
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of an influential yet little known manifesto. In the December 1968 issue of Science magazine, within months of San Francisco’s “summer of love,” University of California biologist Garrett Hardin published his revolutionary essay, “The . . . . Continue Reading »
For decades, it seems, bold problem solvers have been congratulating themselves for having the vision to change a controversial “either-or” situation into a “both-and” situation. But sometimes their solutions amount to nothing more than the clever gimmick of saying yes to . . . . Continue Reading »
Michael Novak, the author of On Two Wings and Washington’s God (with Jana Novak), discusses his new book, No One Sees God , which hits bookstores in August. What is the point of your book? My experience has shown me that self-knowledge has a huge impact on what one thinks about God. If God is . . . . Continue Reading »
In November 2007, the National Endowment for the Arts published a report titled To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence . Building on its earlier research, in Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America (2004), the 2007 report provided, in the words of NEA chairman . . . . Continue Reading »
Conjuring images of the old American West is not hard to do: the empty plain and the big sky, the wagon train, cowboys versus Indians, the gold-crazed forty-niner or the oil baron, probably corrupt, in search of a financial bonanza. And of course we cannot forget the rugged individualist on . . . . Continue Reading »
As I write late on Thursday evening, some conservative Republican senators and representatives are opposing the Paulson bailout plan because they think that the government should not intervene in the market¯that it is better to let financial institutions that took risks that turned out badly . . . . Continue Reading »
The argument is that religious freedom is itself an achievement of religious freedom. Then too, protecting the rights of those with whom we disagree is in the self-interest of all. On most controverted issues in our public life, there is no stable majority, only ever shifting convergences and . . . . Continue Reading »
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