Squandering Moral Capital

by George Weigel

The morality of tyrannicide is not much discussed in today’s kinder, gentler Catholic Church, but the subject once engaged some of Catholicism’s finest minds. Continue Reading »

23 Jan 2019

Lincoln Lost, Douglas Won

by Allen C. Guelzo

Everyone on that hot, dusty August afternoon in 1858 in the square at Ottawa, Illinois, knew who one of the men on the platform was. That man was Stephen ­Arnold ­Douglas, the senior U.S. senator from Illinois whose seat was up for ­re-election that year. Although Douglas stood only . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jan 2019

Russian Jeremiah

by ​Ryszard Legutko

Between Two Millstones, Book 1: Sketches of Exile, 1974–1978 by aleksandr solzhenitsyn notre dame, 480 pages, $35 The first volume of Solzhenitsyn’s memoir of exile, Between Two Millstones, begins with the author’s expulsion from the Soviet Union and closes with him viewing the landscape . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jan 2019

Undoing the Demos

by Darel E. Paul

Globalists:  The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism by quinn slobodian harvard, 400 pages, $35 On April 15, 1994, in Marrakesh, ­Morocco, representatives of 124 countries signed an agreement ­effecting the greatest legal and institutional reform of the world economy in history. The . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jan 2019

Conservative Democracy

by Yoram Hazony

The present moment is one of growing discomfort, both in America and in Europe, with the regnant liberal political theory often described as liberal democracy. It is frequently said that the only genuine alternatives to liberal democracy are Marxism and Fascism, but I don’t believe this is . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jan 2019

Bishops Unbound

by Bronwen McShea

In Before Church and State, Andrew Willard Jones describes a time when Christendom’s lay rulers were leaders in building the City of God. They “wielded the secular, temporal sword . . . bestowed on the Christian people by Christ himself.” In the medieval era, before sharp categorical . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jan 2019

Marcion on the Elbe

by Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger

Accusations of anti-Judaism are flying in Germany. In a 2013 essay, “Die Kirche und das Alte Testament” (The Church and the Old Testament), Notger Slenczka, a Protestant theologian at the Humboldt University of Berlin, argued that the Old Testament “should not have canonical validity in the . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Dec 2018

Letter to an Aspiring Doctor

by Theodore Dalrymple

You tell me you are thinking, my dear Stephen, of medicine as a career, but you wonder whether you have the ability or the temperament for it. You say that you have wanted to be a doctor ever since your family practitioner visited you at home as a child when you had severe tonsillitis. He seemed a . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Dec 2018

Orthodox Origen

by Joseph T. Lienhard

Origen:  On First Principles edited and translated by john behr oxford, 800 pages, $200 In its eleventh canon, the Second Council of ­Constantinople (553) anathematized Arius, ­Eunomius, Macedonius, ­Apollinaris, Nestorius, and ­Origen, along with their impious writings. Adding Origen’s . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Dec 2018

The Forgotten Virtue

by James Hankins

At present there is a great deal of handwringing about civility. On campus, students in screaming packs set upon speakers or professors who have said things that the earnest young have been taught to find offensive. Other students are encouraged by university administrators to act as spies, handing . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Dec 2018