In Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, Danielle Allen provides an informative, line-by-line, sometimes word-by-word, philosophical interpretation of the founders’ document. Allen offers the case that the Declaration of Independence is a syllogism for political equality, rather than a manifesto of unlinked assertions. “Premise 1,” she writes: Continue Reading »
And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God did not lead them through the land of the Philistines, even though it was nearer. —Exodus 13:17 For many decades now, America’s political life has been divided between people who call themselves “conservatives” and people . . . . Continue Reading »
Democracy will only arrive in the Middle East when families and tribes become much less important than they now are. Continue Reading »
The first century orator Dio Chrysostom narrates a conversation between the famous Cynic Diogenes and a pilgrim on his way to visit the oracle at Delphi. Delayed in his journey because of a runaway slave, the pilgrim runs into Diogenes who then engages him in a lengthy discussion that focuses on the . . . . Continue Reading »
In the wake of the Hobby Lobby decision, argument on the issue has raged with heightened vehemence. Buzzwords abound in the debate—equality, imposition, right, discrimination—and the equivocation at work makes the fallout increasingly polemical. One term that has shared in the general collapse of meaning is “freedom” or “liberty.” Continue Reading »
Sooner or later, every teacher hears the same old joke about the philosophy student and his dad. The dad asks, “Son, what are you going to do with that goofy degree?” And the son says, “I’m going to open a philosophy shop and make big money selling ideas.” I smile every time I hear it, . . . . Continue Reading »
On October 31, 1958, Isaiah Berlin gave his inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford. Entitled “Two Concepts of Liberty,” it was, according to Michael Ignatieff, Berlin’s authorized biographer, “the most influential lecture he ever delivered.” . . . . Continue Reading »
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 »
Richard John Neuhaus has joined the chorus of those singing a lament to the death of religious liberty (“Polygamy, Peyote, and the Public Peace,” October 1990). The cause of the choir’s mournful tune is the Supreme Court’s decision in the so-called peyote case, Employment Division v. . . . . Continue Reading »
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