It is common for religious believers to lament the Supreme Court’s barely concealed hostility to the free exercise of religion, at least since the middle decades of the twentieth century. But in the long term, even more damage is likely to be done by the influence of ideas advocated by a cluster . . . . Continue Reading »
Who will guard the guardians? That question, variously expressed, is among the oldest in political theory and practice. Jeremy Rabkin, professor of government at Cornell, has written an important book, Why Sovereignty Matters (1998), that addresses that old question in a way both thoughtful and . . . . Continue Reading »
Some years ago, in October 1991, we published C. John Sommerville's “How the News Makes Us Dumb,” and I still think it one of the most winsomely wise pieces we have run. Sommerville, professor of history at the University of Florida, has now expanded that essay into a book by the same title, . . . . Continue Reading »
The cover of the New Republic picture this big thick book titled The Constitution of the United States. The real Constitution makes a very thin pamphlet, but with all that some folk have discovered in the Constitution in recent decades, maybe it looks to them like a big thick book. Anyway, the book . . . . Continue Reading »
More Americans attend church or synagogue each week of the year than attend professional sports events in an entire year. Think about it. The legendary man from Mars who read our prestige press and watched network news for a year would think Americans are obsessed with sports and politics, with a . . . . Continue Reading »
Books on Islam, we are told, are enjoying brisk sales. For reasons related to the imperialist past of those countries, intellectuals in England and France have generally paid more attention to Islam than have Americans. Apart from academic specialists, American interest in Islam has been limited . . . . Continue Reading »
The editorial in our May 1991 issue was titled “Christian Mission and the Third Millennium.” It described the complicated connections between the Christian missionary enterprise and the future of an essentially Western civilization that is, in however ambiguous a manner, a product of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Maybe we have been too hard on the editorial page of the most influential of our parish newspapers. Over the years, the New York Times’ editorial writers have been indifferent or hostile to the role of religion in our common life. Any impingement of religion on spheres that . . . . Continue Reading »
We made a mistake in a recent public symposium by saying, in response to a question, that we had not listened to enough rock music to have an intelligent opinion about it. A journalist reporting on the meeting cited this as evidence certain that this writer is entirely out of touch with the culture . . . . Continue Reading »
Surveys provide additional evidence that Americans are returning to “traditional values.” Traditional values is usually a synonym for common sense or moral platitudes. Such sense is common and such morality is platitudinous because they are powerfully confirmed and reconfirmed by human . . . . Continue Reading »
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