Duncan G. Stroik, The Church Building as a Sacred Place: Beauty, Transcendence and the Eternal. Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2012. 182 pages, 170 photographs and drawings. Notre Dame’s Duncan Stroik has led the field of Catholic architecture for the last twenty years with unrivaled unity of purpose. He has designed and built churches as an architect [...]
Book of the Day: Hailed as the guide to capitalism when it first appeared in 1981, Wealth & Poverty is one of the most famous economics books of modern times. In it Mr. George F. Gilder argues that supply side economics and free market policies are the answer to decreasing America’s poverty rate and increasing her prosperity. He also [...]
How to revive the flagging fortunes of the Republican Party might matter to some people, but it’s not a question that should concern principled conservatives. Crypto-conservatives aplenty stand ready to shoulder that demeaning task. Tune in Fox News or pick up the latest issue of National Review or the Weekly Standard and you’ll find them, [...]
An audience of more than a thousand, mostly young people, came to the London School of Economics on February 18th to hear Professor Eamonn Butler deliver a talk entitled “What Would Hayek Do to Sort Out This Mess.” In context, Butler’s talk is part of a recent series of LSE lectures and debates between Keynesians [...]
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. Friends and Citizens: The period for a [...]
The parallels between the Mumford & Sons song “The Cave” and the Platonic story are impossible to miss. I am not someone who should ever review music, my tastes being without pattern when they exist at all. But, my students and an old friend have recently introduced me to a very intriguing band who released their second [...]
The rise of techno-capitalism has signaled the triumph of the “bourgeois family” and the demise of the “traditional” family. Christian theologian Stanley Hauerwas said that economist Adam Smith was well aware that the “weakening of familial ties would increase the necessity of sympathy between strangers and result in cooperative forms of behavior that had not [...]
“Second Term Begins With a Sweeping Agenda for Equality,” ran the eight-column banner in which The Washington Post captured the essence of President Obama’s second inaugural. There he declared: “What binds this nation together … what makes us–what makes us American–is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries [...]
Founding Fathers: Brief Lives of the Framers of the United States Constitution M.E. Bradford’s brief lives of the Founding Fathers, free of ideological prejudices, tell us the sort of delegates those fifty-five were: gentlemen, with few exceptions, attached to precedent and custom, prescription and “ancient constitutions.” Those colonial gentlemen, so very British, were not in [...]
Michael Bauman “The department of defense is a sinecure, a massive, unfathomable, black hole for taxpayer dollars that has never been, and perhaps never can be, plumbed to its hellish depths.” If Chuck Hagel really were qualified to be Secretary of Defense, and if he had the insight and courage necessary for the [...]
Garry Wills has continued to serve as the “go-to” guy for secular media types who need some spleen to pour on the Catholic Church. This past week, he admitted to NY Times readers that he finally had given up hope that the pope would stop being Catholic. (One wonders if he’s still trying to talk [...]
With The Essential Russell Kirk, literary critic George A. Panichas captures the breadth and depth of Kirk’s intellectual project by gathering together forty-four of the most masterful of Kirk’s essays, along with a unique chronology told in Kirk’s own words and a substantial introduction that articulates the deep humanism that animated Kirk’s philosophy. The result is [...]
Dr. Himmelman dumped her files onto the common-room table, made a cup of Earl Gray and sat down heavily. It didn’t take a world-famous clinician to see that she was having a bad day. “Looks like you’re having a bad day,” observed Barbara D’Angelo, a world-famous clinician. “Is it Charles again?” Janet shook her head [...]
Though written in the early twentieth century, Douglas Southall Freeman’s biography of Robert E. Lee contains a vital message for the young men and women of today. Lee, especially as presented by Freeman, provides an excellent model for young people to emulate. “Teach him he must deny himself,” said Lee. That was the general’s advice [...]