Category: Political Theory
Covid-19, One Year On, Pt II: The Limits of Politics
One year ago today, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the US passed 85,000, surpassing China where the virus had begun, and giving us the unenviable distinction of being #1 in the world. Today, America still holds that...
Called to Judgment: A Critical Review of “Fratelli Tutti”
Like a prophetic denunciation from the days of ancient Israel, the Covid-19 pandemic has come upon our self-absorbed and decadent civilization like a bolt from the blue, throwing into sharp relief the follies and fault-lines in our moral thinking and...
Natural Law in Early Protestantism
The role of natural law in Reformed Protestantism has been a topic of considerable debate since the twentieth century. As early as the debate between Karl Barth and Emil Brunner in 1934, two competing views on natural law emerged: the...
J. Cole’s “For Your Eyez Only” Gives Hope for Change Beyond Elections
In my lessons on Christianity and social justice, I always feature clips from J. Cole’s 2017 HBO documentary For Your Eyez Only. The film, directed by Cole and Scott Lazer, features interviews with residents of small black cities throughout the...
Is the Queen Post-Liberal?
As any number of the modern political “pathologies” that so mystify our ruling classes, from Brexit to Trump and the EU’s slow-burn implosion, testify, liberalism is out of puff. Everywhere, the political, economic, and cultural establishments that have determined our...
The Populists and the Pandemic
Recently the world commemorated VE day, celebrating the vast global effort to defeat fascism, an inhuman ideology which sacrificed life on the altar of materialism. The Queen gave a speech to her quarantined subjects: declaring that ‘our streets are not...
Our Lives or Our Freedoms: The Fear of Tyranny in a Time of Pandemic
There’s a famous scene in the movie, Braveheart, a 1995 film that became something of a classic among embattled Christian conservatives who liked to see our own battle with “Big Government” in the romanticized terms of a Scottish epic. Riding...
Waiting for Conservative Renewal
Estragon: We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist? Vladimir: Yes, yes, we’re magicians. In Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, there is a much promised advent that dominates the lives of the hapless Vladimir and Estragon....
Common Good Constitutionalism Considered
Right. I read it. And by “It” I mean, of course, Adrian Vermeule’s Atlantic piece. Here’s the thing: Vermeule’s “Common good constitutionalism” is not actually that different from, for example, Hadley Arkes’ natural law constitutionalism. That tradition of Finnis-inspired Lincoln-loving...
Nations and Nation-States: A Question for National Conservatives
Early in his book The Fate of Africa Martin Meredith describes the… we’ll call it “unconventional” method by which sub-Saharan Africa was divided in the late 19th century at the Conference of Berlin. Nigeria, for example, contained as many as 250...