By linking it to the great moral issue of slavery, perhaps more people will find their way to the position that abortion too should be put on the road to ultimate extinction. If so, it’s possible that subsequent generations of Americans will come to regard our Stephen Douglas-popular sovereignty Republicans as having been on the [...]
We have the makings of one, and it explains a lot of what’s going on. It is not yet complete. Clearly, a major political realignment is underway in this country. The defection of RFK, Jr. to the Trump campaign and the decision of Dick Cheney to join his daughter in voting for Kamala Harris is [...]
One comes away from reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's book wishing that she might have expressed a doubt or two about the efficacy of this or that New Frontier/Great Society domestic initiative. But it is clear that the author has no doubts about the goodness of her country. An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of [...]
Despite coming close to ruining his life on more than a few occasions, Glenn Loury, Professor of the Social Sciences and Economics at Brown University, has always managed to remain a "Player," both as a professor and as a public intellectual. That dual accomplishment is a testimony to his drive and determination, as well as [...]
It’s entirely possible to imagine Theodore Roosevelt becoming President of the United States, even a Rushmore-eligible president, with an entirely different set of female loves. But it’s much less likely. The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created a President, by Edward F. O’Keefe. (446 pages, Simon and Schuster, 2024) Try as he might, [...]
Working toward the restoration of the original American exceptionalism is a good idea, not to mention a more truly progressive one. Such an effort is still possible. Remember President Barack Obama’s response to a question concerning his thoughts on American exceptionalism? Yes, the president replied, he believed in American exceptionalism—just as a Brit believes in [...]
Mary Ann Glendon has written a very diplomatic account of her service in the courts of three popes. It seems that nothing that she encountered necessarily surprised her, but she felt like a “stranger in a strange land,” at a time in history that Bishop Fulton Sheen not all that long ago labeled the “end [...]
When it comes to the American family, the day is late, and the damage done has been great. In urging men and women to forge strong families, author Brad Wilcox is fighting what amounts to a rear-guard action, but he believes that this is the only way to save civilization. Get Married: Why Americans Must [...]
An artist is precisely what Flannery O’Connor thought she was. As such, she was a maker, but not a creator. As Fr. Damian Ference puts it, she was a maker of things according to right reason. And reason, as O’Connor once put it, had “lost ground among us” as of the mid-twentieth century; hence the [...]
The term “student-athlete” is at best inaccurate and at worst a fiction. Once upon a time college football was organized and run by and for students. Maybe it’s time to return to that by starting all over. Which institution of higher learning in America will one day become the University of Chicago of the twenty-first [...]
Though a self-described "man of the left," Christopher Lasch was once and always a populist. By the end of his life, he was concerned with the rise to power of American elites who, as of the mid-1990s, were already alien to—and divorced from—the masses of ordinary American citizens. The Revolt of the Elites and the [...]
Thomas Sowell is quite content to make his case while he waits for the political tide to turn. The way things are going, this nonagenarian may still be on hand when conservative black politicians are the major American voice of this American minority. If and when that happens, wherever Thomas Sowell is, he will know [...]
Could I ask a small favor? Could we either retire the adjective “progressive” whenever it is used in a political context or, if not, could we apply it more universally? Confused? Stay tuned. To be sure, the word has a lengthy history In American politics. That history stretches back to the early days of the [...]
Theodore Roosevelt was the obvious victor in both of the “battles to transform American capitalism.” He refused to do the bidding of the coal operators and instead helped engineer a compromise. American capitalism was not so much transformed as tamed in the process. The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan and the Battle to [...]