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R.R. Reno is editor of First Things.

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More on Solzhenitsyn

From First Thoughts

Last week I reflected on the genius of Solzhenitsyn’s great novel, In the First Circle . Some readers weighed in on other aspects of Solzhenitsyn’s thought, especially his famous Harvard Address, given in 1978, four years after arriving in the United States as an exile from Russia. The . . . . Continue Reading »

Graduate Study and Careers

From First Thoughts

As is often the case, Public Discourse has an interesting article today, this one by Matthew Milliner on the current hand-wringing about the future of humanistic inquiry in American higher education. Milliner, a graduate student in art history at Princeton and a blogger here at First Thoughts, . . . . Continue Reading »

Marriage and the Liberal Empire

From Web Exclusives

The debate about same-sex marriage brings the modern liberal project to a point of clarity. If marriage can be reshaped to accommodate same-sex couples, then there is nothing that the modern liberal state cannot redefine to serve its own purposes. A few weeks ago, Sherif Girgis, Robert P. George, and Ryan T. Anderson published an important article in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy defending the traditional view of marriage … Continue Reading »

Moral Awakening

From First Thoughts

The sun has reached it midday zenith, and I’m still staring at the blank page on my desk. I had promised myself that I would begin writing about Akeksandr Solzhenitsyn’s In The First Circle —a key part of a book project that I’m calling, “The Renewal of the Conservative . . . . Continue Reading »

D’Souza on Obama

From First Thoughts

Some months ago I expressed my skepticism about Dinesh D’Souza’s thesis that the best way to understand Barack Obama involves seeing him as trying to fulfill his father’s anti-colonialist vision. I argued that mainstream American liberalism, especially its hothouse academic forms, . . . . Continue Reading »

Antinomian Redemption

From First Thoughts

I’ve been working on a book off and on for the last year or so. The working title is Renewing the Conservative Imagination . My thesis is that our age is defined by an antinomian conviction. If we will but be free from moral norms, then we will be happy. Put differently, our age is Bohemian. . . . . Continue Reading »

The Next Iranian Revolution?

From First Thoughts

Iran, it seems, is experiencing a textbook case of conflict between the aggressive and absorptive power of the secular state and religious authority. In today’s Financial Times , Najmeh Bozorgmehr reports that Iran’s highest ranking cleric is getting sideways with the officially Islamic . . . . Continue Reading »