Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Book Reviews

October 18, 2023

Getting Beyond Right-Wing and Left-Wing

Back in the 1970s, Sixty Minutes had a regular feature called Point/Counterpoint, which came at the end of every show. Each week there would be a different topic. Journalist Shana Alexander would present a standard-issue “liberal” version of the argument while James J. Continue Reading...
October 17, 2023

How Did George Orwell Know?

The collocation in the title captures the thoroughgoing exploration of the topic in a phrase: George Orwell and Russia. Masha Karp is not the first to ponder George Orwell’s relationship to Stalinist Russia—and the relationship of both Stalinist and post-communist Russia to Orwell—but she is the first to frame a comprehensive, well-researched study around them. Continue Reading...
October 10, 2023

Willmoore Kendall and the Meaning of American Conservatism

In our moment, the nature and meaning of conservatism is disputed, sometimes hotly, and it’s unsurprising to observe participants turn to history for wisdom or support. Either in praise or vilification, current schools frequently mention John Courtney Murray, Russell Kirk, Frank Meyer, Irving Kristol, and William F. Continue Reading...
September 27, 2023

Questioning Science after Darwin

I can find no better way to summarize David Berlinski’s book Science After Babel than to say that it is classic Berlinski. The man himself defies a simple summary. He is a polymath and raconteur, as even his bio at the accompanying website explains. Continue Reading...
September 26, 2023

Are the Liberal Arts Elitist?

We have interesting classifications of our institutions of higher learning. The Carnegie classification of major research universities distinguishes between R1 and R2 schools. The well-known U.S. News & World Report Rankings separate national universities from regional ones, and also from national liberal arts colleges. Continue Reading...
September 21, 2023

Pushing Back Against the New Deal in Real Time

The American Institute of Economic Research has published an anthology of critics of the New Deal, New Deal Rebels, complete with more than 50 brief commentaries and excerpts. The book is edited by contemporary economic historian Amity Shlaes, herself a prominent New Deal critic, whose The Forgotten Man is perhaps the most comprehensive work memorializing the mistakes of that era. Continue Reading...
September 07, 2023

Baseball at the Abyss

On June 16, some 2,000 people gathered outside Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium to protest the team’s having chosen to honor, on the field before that night’s game, a group whose core mission and purpose is the open mockery and parody of Catholicism. Continue Reading...
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