“I am obliged to confess,” wrote William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1963, “that I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand people on the faculty of Harvard University.” A similar sentiment seems to now be shared by a majority of the American people. A recent survey by Pew Research finds that 55 percent of the public believes “ordinary Americans” would...

As debates about the Syrian refugee crisis bubble and brim, we continue to see a tension among Christians between a longingto help and a desire to protect. As is readily apparentin BreakPoint’s wonderful symposium on the topic, Christians of goodwill and sincere Biblical belief can and will disagree on the policy particulars of an issue such as this.(SeeJoe Carter’s explainerfor the backstory) Indeed, although we have heard plenty of rash and strident grandstanding among Christians — not to mention byPresident...

Recently more than half the nation’s governors—27 states—have expressed opposition to letting Syrian refugees into their states. Many lawmakers in Congress are also considering legislation that would suspend the Syrian refugee program. Here is what you should know about the current controversy: Why is there a new concern about allowing Syrian refugees into the U.S.? According to the French government, at least one of the terrorists in the recent attack on Paris is believed to have entered the country by...

We’re having an intense, often heated, debate about the reception of Syrian refugees in the United States. How do Eastern Christians see it? The Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, an Archdiocese of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East, has issued a balanced and unflinchingly critical statement on the crisis. This is a church that traces its history to apostolic times in Syria and other parts of the Middle East. Many North American Antiochians are themselves...

When Americans think of corruption, we tend to think of third world countries where getting anything done often requires bribing local government officials. We tend not to have such problems here; our corruption is more subtle and sophisticated, and often involves state level lawmakers. For instance, over the past few years there have seen corruption-related charges or convictions of the house or assembly speakers ofAlabama (bribery, misuse of campaign funds),Rhode Island (bribery, misuse of campaign funds),South Carolina (misuse of campaign...

Today marks the 152nd anniversary of the Gettsyburg Address, the speech given by Abraham Lincoln after the battle which left 7,000 American soldiers dead and 40,000 wounded. Given its power and permanence, it may seem strange to memorialize it by pointing to an edy film from the 1930s. But it’s one that stirs all the right sentiments. In Ruggles of Red Gap, the great Charles Laughton plays Marmaduke Ruggles, an English manservant who has been gambled away by his master...

The recent terrorist attacks in Paris have again brought to the forefront discussions aboutproblems of culture faced by both Europe and the United States. The attacks plicated western responses to the Syrian refugee crisis, with concerns about the stated intentions of groups like ISIS to smuggle operatives into western nations among the legitimate refugees in order to carry out terror operations. And of course, the questions of patibility of Islam with western political and economic values, as well as questions...

Today marks the 152nd year anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Here are five facts about one of history’s most famous — and famously brief — speeches: 1. The Gettysburg Address was not written on the back of an envelope. Despite the popular legend that Lincoln wrote the speech on the train while traveling to Pennsylvania, he probably wrote about half of it before leaving the White House on November 18. 2. Much of the language and thematic content of...

“Mockingjay — Part 2,” the last film based on Suzanne Collins’ bestselling Hunger Games trilogy, opened this past weekend to high sales that, nevertheless, fell short of the other films in the series and industry expectations. In addition, with a thematically confused ending, the story itself doesn’t live up to the quality of previous installments. Regarding sales, Brent Lang reported for Variety, The final film in the “Hunger Games” series debuted to numbers that few pictures in history have ever...

Despite a decline in the number of individuals attending Mass, Catholicism in France is ing more self-confident and, surprisingly, more orthodox. Writing for the Catholic World Report, Samuel Gregg discusses the Catholic Church in France. He says that France’s néocatholiques are leading change in the European nation: Perhaps the most evident sign of this sea-change in French Catholicism is what’s called La Manif pour tous. This movement of hundreds of thousands of French citizens emerged in 2012 to contest changes...