Jean Bethke Elshtain

If you visit Edinburgh, you can visit the famous statue of Bobby that sits near the south entrance to Greyfriars Kirkyard at the southern end of the George IV Bridge. When his master died, the Skye Terrier continued to make their daily rounds, visiting the pub on the way, and then entering the . . . . Continue Reading »

Over three decades ago, the phone rang in my office at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where I was then teaching in the department of political science. A powerful, resonant baritone voice introduced the caller as Richard Neuhaus. He was calling, he said, to invite me to a meeting in New . . . . Continue Reading »

In the great cathedrals in Europe, a few people”usually elderly women”can be found at worship. Everybody else is a tourist, cameras hanging around their necks, meandering through. I was recently in Scotland, and I read a newspaper story commenting on three hundred deserted churches . . . . Continue Reading »

American Providence: A Nation with a Mission by Stephen H. Webb Continuum. 173 pp. $22.95 Perhaps Stephen Webb should have added a question mark after the word “mission” in the subtitle of his brisk and engaging book, American Providence: A Nation with a Mission . But perhaps he did not . . . . Continue Reading »

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and death are powerful witness to what it means to “put first things first.” Although it was never his overriding theological concern to work out the connections between the City of Man and the Kingdom of God, he never confused the two, as became clear . . . . Continue Reading »

Abraham Lincoln & the Last Best Hope Jean Bethke Elshtain Copyright (c) 1999 First Things 97 (November 1999): 43-47. The beginning of the ninth century of the millennium now almost past was promising enough. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 marked, at long last, the end of the Napoleonic wars and . . . . Continue Reading »

Raymond Aron: The Recovery of The Political By Brian C. Anderson Rowman & Littlefield. 215 pages, $58 cloth, $19.95 There has been a resurgence of interest in Raymond Aron in France, though the English-speaking world takes less notice of him than it ought. Brian C. Anderson attributes the new . . . . Continue Reading »

The decision to attempt the assassination of Hitler, to “cut off the head of the snake,” was difficult for many of the conspirators involved in the 1945 “July 20th Plot.” But it was particularly tormenting for the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had long felt the . . . . Continue Reading »

Books about Hannah Arendt have been proliferating at a brisk pace. Now there is a new book by Arendt herself, a collection of pieces that span the tumultuous twenty-five year period from 1930 to the mid-fifties. It does boggle the mind. Nazism, fascism, Stalinism, the beginning of the Cold War, the . . . . Continue Reading »

We are a society awash in exculpatory strategies. We’ve devised lots of fascinating ways to let ourselves or others off the hook: all one need do is think of recent, well-publicized trials to appreciate the truth of this. We Americans are at present being bombarded with sensationalistic tales . . . . Continue Reading »