Benedict XVI left us with countless theological insights. But he also left us with an important lesson about the very foundations of democratic society and culture that we often take for granted. The recent death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI reminds us of an essential and historic connection between religion and Western civilization. Religious belief and [...]
Local governmental bodies, and particularly school boards, have always provided a forum for direct democracy, in which citizens can openly voice their opinions. To restrict access to or participation in these forums is not only to curtail speech and political association rights, but also to substantially restrict the very nature of democracy and federalism in [...]
The erosion of history is the first necessary step to the left’s transformation of the foundations of culture and society—a transformation that sees an ahistorical all-powerful government replacing all other traditional civic institutions. A recent report of the National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed a dramatic fall in history test scores among eighth graders. Given [...]
A history of the transformation of American liberalism over the past half-century could well be told with just a focus on free speech and censorship. But this story of changed attitudes toward censorship yields lessons far beyond just the liberal attitude toward free speech. Aside from the inevitability of death and taxes, there is another [...]
The assault on religious freedom is not occurring in a vacuum. Freedoms of speech and association have also come under siege. These attacks prove a more general truth: that freedom is interconnected; when one basic freedom is undermined, all freedoms are undermined. On the culture-and-religion front, so much has changed over the past three and [...]
The left has mischaracterized conservatism for nearly a century, and the left’s hold on the media has entrenched this distortion. But conservatism now possesses a prime opportunity to break free of this mischaracterization. In contrast to the left’s creed of division and anger, conservatism can become the voice of joy and gratitude. Populism has acquired [...]
Anger has come to characterize our polarized political environment. And in recent years, conservatives and Republicans have seemingly been injected with anger. But this angry identity is not compatible with the central meaning of conservatism. An admirable trait of conservatives is their willingness to openly reexamine their policies and prescriptions. Then again, the troubling trait [...]
The concerns of common-good conservatives about the harms caused by globalism and corporate wokeness are real. And to the extent that their calls for reform in the conservative outlook reflect those real concerns, then such calls are to be taken seriously. A spirited debate is occurring within American conservatism. The debate generally involves traditional conservatives [...]
Debate and battles over the health and vitality of our democracy are somewhat normal occurrences in our highly partisan political arena. But those debates and battles should not spill over into the constitutional realm, which serves as the steadying foundation for the U.S. political system. Over the past several years, a steady drumbeat of warnings [...]
To assess accurately the state of Western Civilization, one needs to understand how the Western tradition, standing at the peak of its influence and popularity at the turn of the twentieth century, ended up in such a state of siege a century later. The reports of the death of Western Civilization are neither premature nor [...]
Big government often hurts the very people it purports to help—the poor, the working class, and the middle class. Actually, the problem is worse than that: Big government frequently props up the rich, the powerful, and the politically connected… Since the New Deal, advocates for a stronger federal government have used poor, working-class, and middle-class Americans to [...]