It was surreal. President Biden began his State of the Union speech by invoking the Nazi threat. More than eighty years ago, Biden reminded us, Franklin Roosevelt rallied the nation, as “Hitler was on the march,” and “freedom and democracy were under assault.” Today, the president warned, . . . . Continue Reading »
Living within a stone’s throw of the nation’s leading collection of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood art housed at the Delaware Art Museum, I was familiar with Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s art but not his poetry. I therefore appreciate having been enlightened by Brian Patrick Eha’s “Rossetti the . . . . Continue Reading »
Philip Howard’s new book explains why government functions so poorly and bureaucracy and litigiousness have become ubiquitous aspects of American life. Continue Reading »
One of the cruelest marriage penalties in America’s tax and benefits regime is reserved for the most vulnerable—the poor and disabled. Continue Reading »
Christopher Dawson was an English historian in the middle of the last century, one of those intellectuals prominent in his own day—T. S. Eliot called him “the most powerful intellectual influence in England”—but mostly overlooked in ours. Which is the usual treatment posterity gives . . . . Continue Reading »
Josiah Ober joins the podcast to discuss his new book The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives. Continue Reading »
In the 1940s and 1950s, liberalism betrayed itself. Whereas once it had offered an ambitious vision of human perfection, now it began to insist on man’s fallen nature. Rather than propose a bold account of historical progress, it warned that visions of a blissful tomorrow could justify bloody . . . . Continue Reading »
Two pivotal developments will transform the West. One is mass migration, which, in tandem with declining birthrates, is producing demographic change in Europe and North America. The other is the green transition and the massive amount of capital allocated to build a new economy. The first erodes the . . . . Continue Reading »
For Americans, the 1990s are both the most sharply defined and the most fuzzily understood of modern decades. The nineties began on 11/9/1989, with the breaching of the Berlin Wall by East Germans—a symbolic repudiation of communism and a glorious American victory in the Cold War. They ended . . . . Continue Reading »
In effect, the “patriotism” of our current leadership class boils down to the freedom of everyone else to shut up and do what they’re told. Continue Reading »
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