Category: Politics
Political Objectives and Policies Are Different Things: On Being Consistently Pro-Life
By Stephen Wolfe It is not enough nowadays to be pro-life; you must be consistently pro-life. If you truly care for life, then you must care for all of life − both in and out of the womb. That is,...
Natural Law and the Prospects of Persuasion
By James Clark When American evangelicals began to earnestly engage in conventional politics in the 1950s, a problem emerged. As David L. Weeks put it in a 2001 article, “Evangelicals have never developed a coherent and compelling political philosophy. Instead,...
Desire, Duty, and Dynamite
As it becomes clearer and clearer that global climate change is dangerous and will require enormous efforts to protect human lives from its effects, the debate about how our individual choices and corporate efforts affect us has only gotten sharper....
Whose Reaganism? Which Republicanism?
In an intriguing document published last week at First Things and signed by a number of prominent dissident conservatives, the drafters called for an end to “warmed-over Reaganism,” and exhorted America’s conservatives to embrace a communal conservatism that values home, small community, and that...
Sealed in Blood: Aristopopulism and the City of Man
You can access a print-friendly copy of this essay using the green button at left. Table of Contents After Liberalism Failed Tankies and Tocquevillians The Critic’s Critics The Ways of Judgment Political Animals Comedies and Common Goods Slave State Liberalism...
Apologies, Power, and Martyrdom in a Decadent Age
For the second time in 18 months Republicans have needed to make use of the distinction between ephebophilia and pedophilia while defending one of their own. The fact that we are here may well say all that needs saying about...
Finding Wisdom in the House of Mourning
By Tim Milosch There is deep significance in how a society treats its dead. If history is to be considered, state funerals have played a significant role in public life. Western history and thought has found some of its most...
Ben Sasse Heightens the Contradictions
In a November 2018 episode of Saturday Night Live, congressman-elect Lt. Cmdr. Dan Crenshaw of Texas appeared with SNL star Pete Davidson. The much-discussed segment came one week after Davidson had made tasteless jokes about Crenshaw’s eye patch, which he...
In Defense of Localism
By Sean O’Hare In a recent piece for Arc Digital, Nicholas Grossman examined the viability of an alliance between left-wing identity politics and right-wing localism. Grossman ultimately concludes that common ground between localism and left-wing identity politics is an impossibility...
What Kuyper Gets Wrong: On the Problem with Denominationalism
By Ruben Alvarado Once upon a time, the state shared the public square with the church. The central location of the church building in every European town is mute testimony to this state of affairs. But those days are long...