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The Right Right

The Neoconservative Mind: Politics, Culture, and the War of Ideology by gary dorrien temple university press, 500 pages, $34.95 In a sense, modern American political thought is a battle for the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy. With the exception of the most committed . . . . Continue Reading »

Democracy’s Discontents

Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America by robert hughes oxford university press, 210 pages, $19.95 This book immerses us in the discontents that derive from our sexual, ethnic, racial, economic, political, moral, and religious differences. Yet again we are taken over the familiar and . . . . Continue Reading »

The Problem of Power

The Nature of Politics: Selected Essays of Bertrand de Jouvenel edited by dennis hale and marc landy transaction, 306 pages, $21.95 The only thing deader than dead politics must surely be dead political science. It is thus remarkable to find that after several decades, these essays by Bertrand de . . . . Continue Reading »

Catholicism and the American Proposition

The year 1991 marked the centenary of modern Catholic social teaching—the issuing of the encyclical Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII—and the bicentenary of the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution. It might have come as something of a shock to the (very Protestant) . . . . Continue Reading »

Nothing But Muck

Scandal: The Culture of Mistrust in American Politicsby Suzanne GarmentRandom House, 335 pages, $23 At the end of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the narrator Nick Carraway sums up the inner lives of the rich and self-absorbed Tom and Daisy Buchanan and their indifference to the pain and . . . . Continue Reading »

Declinism—and Fall?

Why America Doesn’t Workby Chuck Colson and Jack EckerdWord Publishing, 227 pages, $16.99 In Why America Doesn’t Work, Charles Colson and Jack Eckerd retell the Jay Leno joke about a character dressed up as Uncle Sam who can’t linger for an interview because he’s on his way to open . . . . Continue Reading »

The Big Economic Lie

There they go again. The presidential election of 1992 is bringing out among politicians and the media the Big Economic Lie. Virtually all editors today allow their reporters to broadcast this lie uncritically: “During the 1980s under Reaganomics the poor and the middle class lost income.” Any . . . . Continue Reading »

The Earnest Methodist

Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam: Paladin of Liberal Protestantismby Robert Moats MillerAbingdon Press, 624 pages, $29.95 Garfield Bromley Oxnam (1891-1963) was a bishop of the Methodist Church, and a cover subject of Time, though it’s hard to imagine the two going together today. Billy Graham can . . . . Continue Reading »

Religion and Public Life

Under God: Religion and American Politicsby Garry WillsSimon and Schuster, 445 pages, $24.95 Garry Wills is an indefatigable iconoclast, and the icons that have felt the sting of his wit are as diverse in time as in form. They include ideas like the facile notion of Lockean hegemony in the . . . . Continue Reading »

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