“Vatican II,” George Weigel writes in Freedom and Its Discontents, “posed a basic challenge to the many monisms, religious and secular, ancient and modern, that continue to beset human life and the cause of human freedom.” The Council mounted this challenge to the monistic cast of . . . . Continue Reading »
The Democracy Reader: Classic And Modern Speeches, Essays, Poems, Declarations And Documents On Freedom And Human Rights Worldwide edited by Diane Ravitch and Abigail Thernstrom HarperCollins, 330 pages, $35 A very useful anthology of almost a hundred readings. Regrettably, the . . . . Continue Reading »
A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society by Donald L. Horowitz University of California Press, 312 pages, $24.95 Just over 200 years ago, the United States was in a position arguably more critical than that of South Africa today. It had recently fought a war with . . . . Continue Reading »
Catholics must take their place in defending the American . . . . Continue Reading »
The Good Societyby Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen,William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Stephen M. TiptonKnopf, 333 pages, $25 The Good Society is a sequel to these authors’ celebrated book, Habits of the Heart. Habits was a cultural event—an “academic” book that became . . . . Continue Reading »
Democracy is still very much a minority phenomenon among the nations of the world, but it is hard to deny that there appears to be something like a democratic revolution afoot. According to Samuel Huntington of Harvard University (writing in The National Interest ), there have been three . . . . Continue Reading »
From time to time, a most unlikely book strikes the public imagination and becomes something of a best seller. A case in point is Donald Kagan’s Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy (Free Press). The book’s reception was undoubtedly aided by the triumph of democratic ideas so . . . . Continue Reading »
Since Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, the prospects for peaceful change in South Africa have seemingly improved. Whether those prospects are realized, and whether South Africa will join the family of democratic nations, will depend in important ways on a factor almost always overlooked by . . . . Continue Reading »
The question is: What are the theological resources of the Christian tradition for understanding the production of wealth? The answer is: Apparently there are none. Apparently. That is, were one to run through a hypothetical index of two millennia of Christian theology looking for entries under the . . . . Continue Reading »
The nation braces itself for yet another round of moral indignation against moral indignation. The first indignation is that of publishers, booksellers, and sundry civil libertarians in a state of alarm about the second group of indignants who are doing battle against smut. The first indignants howl . . . . Continue Reading »
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