One of the things I like to keep in mind is Ross Douthat’s observation that “There are multiple rights and lefts, and multiple middles as well.” One thing sort of irked about the observations that Romney had gone to the center in his debate with Obama. There was some truth to that . . . . Continue Reading »
Over the past several days we’ve revisited some of Jean Bethke Elshtain’s many fine contributions to First Things . One of her more personal articles is this 1991 reflection on the time a child-rearing expert visited her high school—-and what that experience revealed about the . . . . Continue Reading »
Here’s my effort to answer Jim’s happiness question. . . . . Continue Reading »
So Jim is right that Romney was viewed as a superior LEADER to Obama after the debate. Leadership overcomes partisanship. Leadership gets results. That plays to Romney’s REAL strengths: He’ll be all about mending—not ending—our entitlements, through market-based reforms that . . . . Continue Reading »
Updating C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters (epistles from a veteran demon to his young nephew) for the late twentieth century, Jean Bethke Elshtain published the “Newtape Files” in the pages of First Things in 1993. (This pre- Erasmus Lecture series on her writing began . . . . Continue Reading »
here is an article i did for the standard on the debate. and i have added a question at the end. The highly anticipated debate in Denver was the rarest of all things in American politics: an unspinnable event. Almost all who watched the contest concluded that there was one president on the stage, . . . . Continue Reading »
To continue preparing for Jean Bethke Elshtain’s Erasmus Lecture by revisiting her many contributions to First Things , I recommend her 1992 review of Susan Faludi’s book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women . She deplores the anti-intellectual paranoia of the book and . . . . Continue Reading »
Is America becoming the next France? Is our political system becoming as polarized as that of the French Third and Fourth Republics?According to the late British political scientist, Sir Bernard Crick, politics is the art of conciliating diversity peacefully in a given unit of rule. Some political . . . . Continue Reading »
Messiah College history professor John Fea writes about human depravity and its implications for studying the past on The Anxious Bench : The historian Herbert Butterfield informed us that “if there is any region in which the bright empire of the theologians and the more murky territory of . . . . Continue Reading »
Our friends at the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project have announced a prepublication offer for the special spring 2013 issue of Quaestiones Disputatae dedicated to von Hildebrand’s work. This issue of Quaestiones Disputatae , the philosophical journal of Franciscan . . . . Continue Reading »
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