Jim Wallis is an intelligent and sincere person, someone worth listening to on serious subjects. But he appears to be politically illiterate. There is simply no engagement with serious conservative political writers—no hint that he knows such people even exist. This is typical of many intelligent and well-informed people on the Left... One of my [...]
I have noticed that my liberal friends have been very depressed lately. I used to think that my conservative pals and I were the ones who were constantly bemoaning the decline of Western civilization, but we just can’t match the moaning of our left-wing acquaintances in the time of Trump. […]
Despite all the unfounded fear on the left and all the equally unfounded euphoria on the right, there will be no wholesale revamping by the Supreme Court of the liberal social order that is now deeply rooted in our culture and among our people. The conservative justices' ethos of evolution over revolution will forestall any [...]
The nation-state, along with a broadly Christian culture, has always been the surest foundation for a classically liberal order. America’s ideals depend not on tribal loyalty to universal propositions but on loyalty to the tribes—and little platoons—from which our ideals arise... How do you gauge the health of a civilization? There are geographic and demographic, [...]
Conservatism is a formal understanding of man. By understanding, I mean a verifiable truth, and by formal, I refer to a distinguishable methodology which permeated the celebrated thoughts of classical antiquity and scholastic medievalism. Conversely, Liberalism is an ideology for man. This is not to say that Conservatism is without its own prescriptions, but only [...]
What has alarmed me most as I moved away from liberalism—or as it moved away from me—was how quick my liberal friends were to renounce and reject our delicate social fabric as oppressive, as exclusionary, or as just plain worthless. Churches? Schools? Communities? Not just anachronisms, according to the New Liberalism, but dangerous threats to [...]
Patrick Deneen has entitled his book Why Liberalism Failed, but by his own analysis, he could have entitled it Why Liberalism Succeeded… Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen (248 pages, Yale University Press, 2018) In his comprehensive condemnation of three hundred years of modern liberalism, Patrick Deneen at one point speaks of “advanced liberalism,” and [...]
Much has been written in recent years about the increasing polarization in American politics. Republicans have moved further to the right, while Democrats have moved further to the left. And seldom do they even attempt to meet anywhere in the middle. The phenomenon is undeniable. It’s observable on a daily basis and confirmed by polling [...]
Two conservative authors have assessed Pope Francis’ pontificate with devastating results… Lost Shepherd: How Pope Francis is Misleading His Flock by Philip Lawler (256 pages, Gateway Editions, 2018) To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism by Ross Douthat (256 pages, Simon & Schuster, 2018) Five years into his papacy and poor Pope Francis is [...]
This “once and future liberal,” Mark Lilla, is actually a progressive in disguise. To be sure, he is also a progressive who doesn’t like some of what progressivism has wrought and some of what progressivism has become; hence, his hope that he has sufficiently camouflaged himself as a liberal… The Once and Future Liberal: After [...]
Patrick Deneen’s “Why Liberalism Failed” is just what the philosophical doctor ordered to address the present disarray within the conservative intellectual movement: It is a prescription that requires going back to the very basics. Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick J. Deneen (Yale University Press, 2018) Patrick J. Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed is just what the philosophical doctor [...]
Since the present meaning of a word is often vaguely swayed by past meanings which have dropped into the subconscious, a knowledge of particular semantic histories can increase our facility and sometimes save us from an inadvertent error. Studies in Words by C.S. Lewis (352 pages, Cambridge University Press, 1960) Anyone reading the literature of modern semantics [...]
Patrick Deneen’s masterful study provides a compelling, clear, and scholarly analysis that helps people understand the failure of liberalism: It has failed because it has wildly succeeded beyond all expectations… Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen (248 pages, Yale University Press, 2017) Many commentators have observed that liberalism is coming apart.[1] The liberal order no longer [...]
The gun control debate has reignited with the recent Florida shooting. Despite the passionate commentaries on all sides, no one seems to be able to answer the question of when the shootings will stop. As much as liberal media want to blame guns, police or government, this is a moral problem. It involves the acts [...]