Rod Dreher's "Live Not by Lies" is based on the testimonies of dissidents in Eastern Europe and Russia as to how they survived the hard totalitarianism of communism. Mr. Dreher attempts to apply their lessons to what he claims is our growing American soft totalitarianism. Live Not By Lies, by Rod Dreher (Sentinel, 2020, 256 [...]
The political agenda laid out by Joe Biden’s website together with the 2020 Democratic Platform is lengthy, comprehensive, detailed, and unprecedented. No such agenda has ever been written down by one of the major political parties in American history. It is, in fact, not only socialism but the effective elimination of our already-much-diminished federalist system. [...]
The reality is that no person and no private institution can escape the ceaseless initiatives by legal activists, judicial activists, cities, states, and, depending upon the Administration, the federal government to re-standardize American public as well as private life, and search out and cancel dissenters. In recent years, including this presidential year, cases in the [...]
Can the residents of Seattle whose property and businesses were destroyed, vandalized, or shut down in June, when the city for three weeks allowed and approved of the “autonomous zone,” now sue the city? Two such lawsuits have in fact already been filed in federal court; and in one of them, seventeen different persons and [...]
The release of the police body-camera video confirms what the autopsy reports already showed: The officers had to subdue a large man resisting arrest, whose system was overwhelmed by the kind of drugs that routinely cause violence, and who died of a heart attack, not choking or strangulation. Officers Derek Chauvin and Garrett Rolfe [...]
The very idea that students will suffer any significant loss of educational attainment by losing two months of twelve-plus years of school—less than two percent—is nonsense. Such an argument that every minute of school attendance is irreplaceable can only be made by someone who never attended American elementary and secondary schools. A frequently worried-about consequence [...]
The Catholic order of nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, are apparently not little enough or poor enough to avoid governmental coercion and interference with their works of charity. For almost a decade now, they have been involved in court cases resisting governmental attempts, first federal and now state, to require them to [...]
The contemporary frequency of parents, especially mothers, killing their children—not only newborn babies but toddlers too—is a new phenomenon. Does this have something to do with the relentless loosening of abortion laws in America since Roe v. Wade? We live in an era where we pretend that we do not know when life begins, [...]
Rod Dreher’s book, “The Benedict Option,” has gone on to become an international cultural event. Yet, today, it is not clear whether the book has had any influence on Church institutions and leadership. Has the Benedict Option then been a failure? Should other “options” be considered? Rod Dreher’s book The Benedict Option, a New [...]
This summer saw the resolutions of two high-profile civil lawsuits involving accusations of defamation and libel against two pillars of the media-academic complex. In the suit against hyper-liberal Oberlin College, Ohio state jurors rendered a judgment against their neighbor, the college. In the other case, a lawsuit against The Washington Post, the federal district-court [...]
Presidents of both parties, and houses of Congress controlled by both parties, have for decades tolerated and thus implicitly encouraged and provided an incentive for illegal immigration. What has been sacrificed along the way is the rule of law. Will the federal judiciary not only change central provisions of American immigration statutory law pertaining [...]
Instead of considering contemporary political issues, or politicians, Roger Scruton attempts to rebuild conservatism by looking seriously at its past… Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition, by Roger Scruton (176 pages, All Points Books, 2018) In his Conservatism, An Introduction to the Great Tradition (2017), long-time Anglo-American conservative champion and author Sir Roger Scruton [...]
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Thomas Ascik as he considers three recent books that address the prospects for Christianity in modern American culture. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher In Mere Christianity (1952), the published version of his radio talks delivered in the early 1940’s, C. S. [...]
“Precedence,” as well as following or overturning precedents, is not limited to what is decided in new cases. It is also concerns the adherence to established principles of judicial jurisprudence. Without both kinds of precedence, there is no limit to the power of the judiciary... In the last installment of this survey of the judicial principle [...]