Category: Political Theory
The Jedi are Selfless: Nationalism, Identity, the Humanities, and Liberalism
By Paul. D Miller Let me tell you a story. There was once a young man who had a comfortable, loving home. But one day his home was attacked, and everything he held dear was threatened. He was forced to...
The Evangelical Innovators C. S. Lewis Warned Us About
In 1943, C. S. Lewis published The Abolition of Man in an attempt to warn the world about the Innovators, educators who were corrupting the minds of children, turning them into “men without chests.” If Lewis were to write again...
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,...
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...
In Praise of Uncertainty
Imagine that you are a young man and one day your father commands you to find the donkeys that have wandered off, like poor young Saul was commanded to do in 1 Samuel. How will you do this? To find the...
Book Review: The Life of Roman Republicanism by Joy Connolly
By Coyle Neal In some ways, Dr. Joy Connolly’s introduction to the formal study of Rome mirrors my own. “I began to study the republican tradition in earnest in 2001, at a time when the promise of rescue it offered—by...
Debating the Actual Crisis of Liberalism
Now that the dust has settled a bit on the Mortara debate prompted by Fr. Cessario at First Things, I want to ask a more general question about the state of play between the more radical anti-liberals in the religious conservative...
A Consequentialist Theory of Voting
By Stephen Wolfe The Trump and Moore political campaigns raise an important question for Christians: does one endorse the moral life of the candidate he votes for? Surprisingly, there seems to be consensus on this, regardless of one’s willingness to...
On the City and the Gods: A Lost Chapter of Aristotle
By Greg Forster Having considered Socrates’ proposals in the Republic for the community of women and property, and his somewhat modified proposals in the Laws, we now consider his fanciful proposal in the less well-known dialogue Glaucon for a city...