Social and political theory is widely and, quite often, grossly misunderstood. What we call conservatism today, at least in several very important ways, was once called federalism, or classical liberalism. A central idea of this federalism was that the state should be built from below, not from above. Numerous orthodox Christian thinkers, both Catholic and Protestant, have explained and defended classical liberalism over the course of the past two or three centuries. It is in this sense that Pope Benedict...

A story over the weekend in Washington Post gives a good overview of the mixed motives behind evangelical campaigning for and against a la carte pricing of cable channels, despite the poorly chosen title, “Evangelicals vs. Christian Cable” (as if Christian broadcasters aren’t largely evangelicals of some sort or another). Just a sign that in the MSM evangelical is ing a term with primarily political rather than theological content. On the one side, lobbyists who want to be able to...

Joe Knippenberg, who blogs at No Left Turns, provides a thoughtful and engaging analysis of the particulars of the recent Iowa court decision finding against InnerChange Freedom Initiative, an outreach of Prison Fellowship Ministries. In “Penitents in the Penitentiary?,” at The American Enterprise Online, Knippenberg writes, “Despite my general support for the faith-based initiative, and for religious efforts to put the penitence back in penitentiaries, I’m inclined for the most part to agree with Judge Pratt. In this particular case,...

On April 3, I reported the story of Texas scientist Eric Pianka, who allegedly argued in a speech that the only hope for the planet was for a mutated Ebola virus to exterminate 90% of the human population. Forrest Mims, who attended the speech, broke the story. Over the next few weeks, there was a media firestorm over the incident, and Mims was accused of misrepresenting Pianka’s speech. As a result, I received several emails telling me that I should...

Yes, I realize that no one likes the current version of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill. But it is possible to make constructive changes without prehensive. Here are a couple of recent examples: 1. Assimilation needs to be a priority. The Administration just formed a Task Force on New Americans to help legal immigrants e more fully Americanized. Whether the Task Force will do anything substantial remains to be seen. But it is encouraging that someone in the Administration understands...

I haven’t been uncritical of American bishops’ statements concerning immigration. But I wouldn’t go *quite* as far as Pastor Ralph Ovadal of Pilgrims Covenant Church, for whom the terms ‘antichrist,’ ‘Romanist,’ and ‘Reconquista’ fairly roll off the tongue. Rick Garnett has an appropriately tongue-in-cheek treatment at Mirror of Justice. ...

“Should I not be concerned about that great city?” asks God of the prophet Jonah about Nineveh, which “has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well.” God is rebuking the recalcitrant prophet, who only carried out his assigned proclamation in Nineveh after a rather harrowing adventure on the high seas. After Jonah delivered his message, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned,” the Bible...

TerraPass is a way to assuage a guilty conscience caused by your car’s CO2 emissions. In the interest of trying to be balanced on the whole CO2 debate, here’s a link to their climate change blog with plenty of GW posts. To each his own. But it sounds like a way for mon folk to buy into what Iain Murray calls “the new aristocracy:” Al Gore justifies his enjoyment of a carbon-intensive lifestyle in a speech in the UK: He...

Here’s a link to the introduction to Frederick Crews’ new book, Follies of the Wise, which includes the following statement: Having made a large intellectual misstep in younger days, I am aware that rationality isn’t an endowment but an achievement that e undone at any moment. And that is just why it is prudent, in my opinion, to distrust sacrosanct authorities, whether academic or psychiatric or ecclesiastic, and to put one’s faith instead in objective procedures that can place a...

John Wilson, editor of Books & Culture, writes up a summary of the proceedings of The Historical Society’s conference, “Globalization, Empire, and Imperialism in Historical Perspective.” “We urgently need an antidote to the journalistic clichés and the even more deplorable pseudo-scholarly discourse surrounding the interlocked themes of globalization, empire, and imperialism. We need the distance—the perspective—that good historical thinking affords. There was plenty of that on display in Chapel Hill, along with some muddle,” reports Wilson. For more on how...