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1619 Rightly Understood

From the June/July 2023 Print Edition

One of the most important things to be said about the New York Times’ loud but intellectually threadbare effort to recast the year 1619 as the date of the American nation’s “true founding” is that it was a missed opportunity. The year 2019, which was the four hundredth anniversary of . . . . Continue Reading »

The Claims of Memory

From the January 2022 Print Edition

I write in defense of memory. Not Memory in her gaudy mythological form, the Titan goddess Mnemosyne, mother of the nine Muses—but memory as the glue that holds our lives together and imposes order and continuity amid the blooming buzzing confusion of sensations, thoughts, and activities that . . . . Continue Reading »

Hebraism Redoubled

From the January 2014 Print Edition

The blow to Christian egos may not be such a bad thing. Christians, particularly those in the West who are heirs to many centuries of political and cultural dominance, must learn to contend with shrinking influence and growing marginalization, even vilification, where they once enjoyed a high, even . . . . Continue Reading »

Liberalism After Liberalism

From the May 2012 Print Edition

Liberalism After Liberalism” is one of three addresses given to a symposium on “After Liberalism,” put on in late February with the support of the Simon/Hertog Fund for Policy Analysis and of Fieldstead and Company. Yuval Levin and James Rogers responded to this paper. The other two addresses . . . . Continue Reading »

The Living City

From the December 2011 Print Edition

Works of social criticism often do not wear well, and even the best of them tend to fade in interest by their fiftieth birthday. Either the tools of analysis change, or the conditions being analyzed, and very often both. Once-essential works become strictly historical documents, artifacts giving . . . . Continue Reading »