The End of the Liberal Tradition?

by Mark Movsesian

A new paper suggests young Americans are giving up on democracy. When we discard our traditions, we can fall for many things, including, apparently, authoritarianism. Continue Reading »

17 Aug 2016

Is Liberalism a Heresy?

by Francesca Aran Murphy

The only viable vehicle of conservatism in modernity is a market-oriented liberalism that regards freedom within law as the means to the common good. Some religiously engaged conservative intellectuals cannot accept this. What drives their animus against the only workable form of conservatism in . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jun 2016

See No Evil

by Samuel D. James

If there’s any good reason to distrust the self-awareness of contemporary progressives, it's the cultural epidemic of pornography. Of all the Sexual Revolution’s fruits, porn is arguably the one that has rotted fastest. It has defied the categorical wisdom of libertines by growing in users and . . . . Continue Reading »

27 Apr 2016

Briefly Noted

by Various

Saint Aldhelm’s Riddlestranslated by a. m. justertoronto, 173 pages, $29.95 The riddle of Samson’s strength, the riddle of the eagle’s way with the sky and the ship’s way with the sea, the riddles in royal dreams of Pharaoh or ­Nebuchadnezzar, the riddle of things hidden since the world . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Mar 2016

Letters

by Various

CATHOLICISMSA demographic question for Ross Douthat regarding his “A Crisis of Conservative Catholicism” (January): If liberal Catholicism is to be alive in twenty years, where will its members come from? Who will be not just self-identifying to pollsters but running its schools and its . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Mar 2016

The Perils of Religious Liberty

by Yuval Levin

On January 24, 1774, the young James Madison, twenty-two years old and two years out of Princeton, wrote an exasperated letter to his college friend William Bradford, who lived in Pennsylvania. In Virginia, Madison wrote, a season of intolerance had dawned. “That diabolical, hell-conceived . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Feb 2016

Free University Orthodoxy

by Richard J. Mouw

During the debate over “biblical inerrancy” that raged among evangelicalism for several years in the late 1970s, I remember someone observing that Harold Lindsell’s 1976 book, The Battle for the Bible, which pretty much got that debate going, was more a theory of institutional change than it . . . . Continue Reading »

5 Jan 2016

Eliot and Liberalism

by R. R. Reno

I‘ve been rereading T.S. Eliot's Idea of a Christian Society. He wrote the book as World War II was beginning. It was a time when many were questioning whether liberal democratic societies had any future. Fascism and Communism seemed the vital new movements that had the upper hand. The gist of . . . . Continue Reading »

4 Jan 2016

Liberalism's Future

by R. R. Reno

When it comes to equality, the rising generation of liberal leaders may talk the talk, but they’re unlikely to walk the walk. At least that’s what a new study recently published in Science suggests. Elite opinion among a younger, left-leaning cohort favors economic efficiency over equality, and . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jan 2016

Liberal Racism Bares Its Fangs

by George Weigel

Given the politically-correct hysteria that typically surrounds any discussion of racism these days, I hesitate to use the term. But it’s hard to find another that fits certain reactions to Synod-2015 from the port side of the Barque of Peter. Exhibit A: Shortly after the Synod concluded, the Web . . . . Continue Reading »

30 Dec 2015