Though millions of Americans will go to the polls today to vote, midterm elections generally draw only 30 percent of eligible voters to the polls. (Presidential races draw around 50 percent.) These numbers put the U.S. in 139th place among 194 nations in a ranking of voter turnouts. Numerous reasons are offered for this low number. One may be the partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts that mean most House seats are “safe.” Political scientist Michael McDonald says “Just as sports...

Forbes passes along a ranking of the fifty states (plus the District) on the friendliness of fiscal policy toward small business (HT: The Entrepreneurial Mind), provided by the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (PDF). Michigan ranked 10th in the list, which examines 29 governmentally-influenced factors such as personal e tax, capital gains tax, corporate e tax, property tax, death tax, electricity costs, and number of bureaucrats. Michigan was in the top half of most categories (it did rank 47th in...

This post sketches out the rough outline of Jerome Zanchi’s understanding of natural law. An interesting difference between Zanchi and Martyr is that Thomistic elements are far more important in Zanchi’s theology than in Martyr’s theology. The historian John Patrick Donnelly thinks Zanchi is the best example of “Calvinist Thomism,” meaning a theologian who was Reformed in theology and Thomistic in philosophy and methodology. Zanchi was born and raised near Bergamo where he entered the Augustinian Canons and received a...

Following the recent Medico-Legal Society of Ireland’s Golden Jubilee Conference in Dublin, the Irish Medical Times provides a timeline of the history of genetics, beginning in 1859 with the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of the Species. Other more recent highlights include the year 2003, in which “scientists at the University of Shanghai successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs, reportedly the first human-animal chimeras (a mixture of two or more species in one body) created.” Earlier this year,...

On this eve of the mid-term elections in the United States, it’s worthwhile to reflect a bit on the impetus in North American evangelical Christianity to emphasize the importance of politics. Indeed, it is apparent that the term “evangelical” is ing to have primarily political significance, rather than theological or ecclesiastical, such that Time magazine could include two Roman Catholics (Richard John Neuhaus and Rick Santorum) among its list of the 25 most influential “evangelicals” in America. When the accusations...

I saw the most fascinating and lively exchange between two political conservatives on C-Span Book TV last weekend. It featured Andrew Sullivan, the homosexual activist who is actually a libertarian politically, and David Brooks, the Jewish columnist for The New York Times. Brooks has an unusually keen insight into evangelicalism, as can be seen in his frequently thoughtful references to it. He is also a wonderfully nuanced political conservative of the very best sort. The televised event was sponsored by...

First Francis Beckwith and now this: Indiana Jones has been denied tenure (HT: Urban Onramps). This is outrageous. I note especially mittee’s disregard for Jones’ work in discovering the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail. Sounds like mittee was made up of a bunch of secularists who don’t believe in that kind of thing. What does this say about Marshall College? Let’s hope Indy’s case ends up as well as Dr. Beckwith’s. ...

Solzhenitsyn One word of truth shall outweigh the world. — Russian proverb ISI Books has released The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005 (650 pages; $30). This single pilation includes some of the Russian author’s most significant works, including poems, stories and miniatures (prose poems), essays and speeches in their entirety. There are also excerpts from the novels, memoirs and the extensive political and historical writings. You can order the book online here. In their introduction to the reader,...

Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. –U.S. Book of Common Prayer, “Of the Reign of Christ,” (1979), p. 254 “My kingdom...

In my previous article, Part One, I showed how a conservative political and social movement has evolved over the past fifty years in America and how the evangelical church began to get involved in this movement. This movement led to what has monly called the “Christian Right.” This abused, and misused word, is now used to disparage almost everything conservatives attempt to do in the larger culture. The result of this political debate over the past thirty years has been...