The Lippmann “Gap”: The Great Society & the Good Society

By |2024-01-11T19:19:11-06:00January 11th, 2024|Categories: Books, Journalism, Natural Rights Tradition, Philosophy|

Walter Lippmann believed that Natural Laws are the principles of right reason and behavior in the good society governed by Western traditions of civility. It is possible to organize a state and conduct a government on quite different principles, but the outcome will not be freedom and the good life. Thus the environment with which [...]

National Review: An Appreciation

By |2023-09-20T18:30:50-05:00September 20th, 2023|Categories: Conservatism, Journalism, William F. Buckley Jr.|

What National Review has always been for is limited government, authentic federalism, limited spending, a strong national defense, a respect for cultural pieties, civility and civil order, religious freedom, the Constitution properly construed, and mostly just leaving people alone, as well an understanding that to be free first you have to be born. William [...]

G.K. Chesterton, the Jolly Journalist

By |2021-06-26T10:29:43-05:00June 25th, 2021|Categories: G.K. Chesterton, Joseph Pearce, Journalism, Senior Contributors|

Though known to posterity as a wit, a controversialist, and a Christian apologist, G.K. Chesterton considered himself primarily to be merely a “jolly journalist” and it was through the writing of essays for newspapers and magazines that he made both his reputation and his living. G.K. Chesterton is known to posterity as a wit, a [...]

Pilate’s Landslide

By |2020-10-31T09:57:50-05:00October 31st, 2020|Categories: Donald Trump, Glenn Arbery, Journalism, Politics, Presidency, Senior Contributors, Truth, Wyoming Catholic College|

Editorializing in news stories, once verboten, has now become de rigueur. Journalism, never perfect at any moment of its history, but full of aspiration to be objective and balanced, has now conceded entirely to Nietzsche’s critique of empiricism: “There are no facts, only interpretations.” Many years ago, in an earlier contentious era of American politics, [...]

We’re All Muckrakers Now

By |2020-10-20T16:37:31-05:00October 20th, 2020|Categories: American Republic, Information Age, Journalism, Modernity, Politics, Technology, Teddy Roosevelt, Truth|

Today, Theodore Roosevelt prompts us to ask the same question he raised over a century ago in his speech “The Man with the Muck-Rake”: How do we devote our attention to society’s problems without allowing them to devour us? Our survival in the Information Age hinges upon on our ability to address this problem. In [...]

We’re From the Government—and We’re Here to Help the Workers!

By |2020-01-23T12:01:53-06:00January 23rd, 2020|Categories: American Republic, David Deavel, Economics, Government, Journalism, Politics, Senior Contributors|

California’s AB-5 law severely limits the type of freelance work that people can do. Several other blue states, including New York and New Jersey, are considering some variation on this unintentionally harmful law. It would be nice if legislators aiming to help workers would recall the adage, “First, do no harm.” Is schadenfreude, the phenomenon [...]

Why America Is in Decline… and What to Do About It

By |2019-12-15T20:40:41-06:00December 15th, 2019|Categories: American Republic, Community, Education, Journalism, Western Civilization|

A nation-state as old, and as large in territory, as the United States will experience in its old-age problems we associate with the elderly: loss of memory, preference for the past, reliance on creaky institutions that no longer work, limited income, and questions about the future. Our Constitution has logged 230 years since it was [...]

The Coming Decline of Fox News

By |2019-03-17T14:45:32-05:00January 1st, 2019|Categories: Conservatism, Culture War, Journalism, Republicans|

Rupert Murdoch In August of last year, I published my observations under the header “FoxNews Moving Leftward” about what we can now call the “maturing” of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.[1] Even earlier, on January 27, 2017, I observed that “the octogenarian Rupert Murdoch and sons, Lachlan and James, have achieved a balance of authority [...]

The Saudi Crown Prince Starring in the Role of Henry II

By |2024-03-15T16:42:30-05:00October 21st, 2018|Categories: Ethics, Joseph Mussomeli, Journalism, Middle East, Monarchy, Politics, Tyranny|

We have all seen the scene at least once, although some of us have savored it perhaps dozens of times. The handsome, dynamic, misunderstood, modernizing young king, with his slender physique, slender beard, and even more slender morals, strutting about the banquet hall knocking the plates and goblets off the table in a drunken frenzy. [...]

Bob Woodward: Journalist or Gossip Columnist?

By |2018-10-09T09:43:15-05:00October 9th, 2018|Categories: Government, Journalism, Politics|

So the Bob Woodward has done it again. He has concocted yet another tell-all account of the mostly forgettable doings of yet another set of temporarily memorable Washington figures. And once again he has done so on the basis of unnamed sources. It’s all so tiresome and predictable. What was neither tiresome nor predictable was the work of [...]

Photographing the Lost World of Rural America

By |2019-10-03T14:58:10-05:00July 4th, 2018|Categories: American West, Civilization, Culture, Economics, Journalism|

Today America is on its third economic upswing, even as the places I visit have continued to fade away… For 23 years I have been driving country roads, photographing the ruins of rural America for a documentary I call “Lost Americana.” As population decline claims town after town, I have been talking to those who [...]

From Fake News to Rude Awakening

By |2017-05-03T14:50:36-05:00March 13th, 2017|Categories: Culture, Featured, John Horvat, Journalism, Truth|

When politicians succumb to the temptation of turning policy into spectacle—even if it is good policy—it makes the show more important than the policy… It has become trendy to call everything fake. This is helped by the fact that so many things are fake. The world is awash in “fake news.” So much of what [...]

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