A recent commentary suggests that American exceptionalism has been shattered by the COVID-19 crisis. If we are indeed left “shattered” and “battered” by a mere virus and our response to it, the rest of the world may one day wish that an exceptional America was still on hand to deal with forces seeking to do [...]
We’re blocking traffic in the city street Because we’re sick of inactivity Relating to the environment; it would be meet To see a bit of positivity Regarding rights of bison, bird, and bee; And yet among our governments we see no sign of urgency Concerning falling glaciers and rising sea – About the weather there’s [...]
Nostalgia for the smaller face-to-face societies of the past is common to both progressives and conservatives. There was a time, whether it was 100 years ago or 10,000, when relationships between people were more meaningful, families lived more in harmony with nature, and communities worked together to care for the young and the needy. The [...]
Many of us who work in higher education are aware that we are working on boats that are not only “academically adrift,” but which have been leaking furiously for years. Given the demographics and the broader economic devastation wrought by our foolish response to the Coronavirus, it is unlikely that even a bailout will allow [...]
The recent failures of American foreign policy are not simply errors in prudential judgment. There is something deeper bubbling underneath American culture that led our elites to launch misguided military crusades to promote democracy in the Middle East and to engage in other imperial adventures. Writing recently in Spectator USA, the estimable Dan McCarthy pointed [...]
How does religion act as a driving force of politics and culture? Christoper Dawson argued that “we cannot understand the inner form of a society unless we understand its religion,” and we cannot make sense of any culture or its achievements without knowing the religious inspiration from which its creativity flowed. Imagine a diagram consisting [...]
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 [...]
Is our nation witnessing a soft form of religious persecution beneath the cloak of public health? I pray and hope that this is not the case and that governments, preventing the free exercise of religion, will reverse course and allow church leaders to reopen their doors to once again proceed with the most essential task [...]
Those of us who bemoan the “death of the liberal arts” do not do so simply because the jobs of professors are at stake, but because we believe that liberal learning is the only fit preparation for any portion of life—especially one that involves responsibility for the common good. Those of us who have become [...]
On China, Donald Trump is the first realist we have had in the Oval Office in decades. But both parties colluded in the buildup of China. The mighty malevolent China we face today was made in the USA. Under fire for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump, his campaign and his party [...]
The end of history concept—the belief that there will be an endpoint to social, intellectual, and political progress—is a powerful idea that pervades modern-day secular thought. The spread of gay rights, the rise of universal government-run health insurance, and environmental awareness has hubristically led “progressive” secularists to describe a coming “Age of Enlightenment” when Americans [...]
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 incorporate [...]
What is perhaps most distressing of all the revelations of frailty and incompetence beneath the former veneer of progress, is the recognition that mankind has very little idea of how to solve problems apart from throwing money at them. The past few months have turned the world as we knew it upside-down. Civil liberties, which [...]
The worry is that Joe Biden is suffering from mental decline and could be destroyed by Donald Trump in a presidential debate. Mr. Biden forgets, mumbles, misspeaks, loses his train of thought and appears, at times, confused. Where Barack Obama achieved notoriety for "leading from behind," Joe Biden, these last two months, has been leading [...]