Whence the rugged individualism that is traditionally synonymous with being American? Was it there from the beginning, rooted in our founding documents? Or does the idea represent a later corruption that can be reversed in pursuit of a more religious or egalitarian republic? Read More… Americans are an individualistic bunch. Our popular culture makes heroes of outsiders, loners, and disrupters. Our politicians emphasize their independence of entrenched institutions, party discipline, and special interests. In economic affairs, we assume that success...

In its two film versions, a story about escaped convicts fleeing justice shows that whether you’re naughty or nice, there’s always hope for redemption. Although, at a price. Read More… Michael Curtiz, famed director of Casablanca, made a Christmas movie in 1955, starring Humphrey Bogart, called We’re No Angels, about the power of innocence and moral decency to transform even hardened criminals—of whom Bogart is one, the other two played by the famous British actor-director Peter Ustinov and the American...

An important new addition to Lewis studies explores the influence of the medievals on Lewis the writer. But Lewis the thinker was just as importantly an anti-modernist modern. Read More… When es to evaluating C.S. Lewis’ engagement with medieval authors, Jason Baxter performs the heavy lifting with ease, almost with wings. The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great prises, in effect, a sequence of primers on major and minor figures—Boethius, Pseudo-Dionysius, Calcidius, Dante, Nicholas...

The passing of Joseph Ratzinger, pope emeritus, offers an opportunity to reflect on his legacy as a teacher, not only within the Church but for the world. Read More… With the December 31 passing of Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church, Christianity, and the world lost one of the most significant and insightful minds of the last century. Certainly, within the Church, Joseph Ratzinger was among the most influential and esteemed theologians of the second half of the 20th century,...

Spend some time on social media or in mixed pany at the office and language inevitably es (euphemism alert) heated. Is there a better way to disagree, because disagree we must if we are to preserve liberty for thee and for me. Read More… In his classic The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, Michael Novak offers an observation about an ongoing struggle in a pluralistic society: the absence of a unified vision of the good. His passing observation regarding the psychology...

A debate about whether a Christian landlord should ever evict a delinquent tenant offers a “teachable moment” about what Christians can bring to this particular business, and what such a business needs to be a blessing to everyone, including the poorest among us. Read More… Until a recent online debate, I hadn’t known about Kevin Nye, who has almost 15,000 followers on Twitter and a “housing first” plan to end homelessness. The man is clearly a deeply sincere, theologically progressive...

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI—scholar, teacher, theologian, prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, and finally supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church until his resignation in 2013—has died at age 95. We are republishing this short reflection from 2019, with a new introduction, as just one of many ways in which Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger will be remembered. Read More… “I would like to ask you all for a special prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict, who is supporting...

Will 2023 be one more year of gaudy daydreams and alternate realities, another misguided escape from reality? Or will we wake up before we’re facedown in history’s pool of spoiled lives? Read More… Last New Year’s Eve, I wrote about Billy Wilder’s The Apartment. It’s the best movie on the ambivalence with which we e the end of one year and ing of a new one, worrying whether it promises that our dreams e true, whether we will live up...

A new book asks us to consider what exactly the Gospel calls us to be and to do as citizens in a fractious, contentious, confusing time. Spoiler alert: It looks a lot like the cross. Read More… Our current political reshuffling has been dizzying, perhaps even more in the munity than among Americans in general. The conservative shift toward populism under Trump empowered both a push for real nationalism—blood, soil, industrial policy—as well as even more fringe movements such as...

In part 2 of an 8-part series, Marvin Olasky describes what it was like to try and reform welfare and poverty-fighting efforts when Republicans held both houses of Congress for the first time in over 40 years. Read More… ’Tis the song, the sigh of the weary, Hard Times, hard e again no more. Many days you have lingered around my cabin door; Oh! Hard e again no more. —Stephen Foster, 1854 Atlanta Journal and Constitution columnist Colin Campbell, on...