Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Individual Liberty

October 16, 2014

Purple Penguins, Womyn’s Rights, And Semantic Silliness

In 1994, a clever man named James Finn Garner published Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. Garner did fabulous send-ups of familiar stories, with a twist: all of them were carefully constructed so as to offend NO ONE: There once was a young person named Red Riding Hood who lived with her mother on the edge of a large wood. Continue Reading...
October 10, 2014

WiFi and Other Inalienable Human Rights

When you think about basic human rights, what is the first thing that comes to mind? The right to life? The right to liberty? The right to WiFi? If that last one wasn’t on your list it may be a sign that you’re old. Continue Reading...
September 22, 2014

Reverend Robert Sirico: Why Liberty?

The Cato Institute, as part of this year’s recognition of Constitution Day, offers a series of videos featuring prominent scholars, educators and entrepreneurs answering the question, “Why Liberty?” Each has a different and personal perspective on the meaning and importance of liberty, both in the U.S. Continue Reading...
September 19, 2014

Russell Moore on Why Religious Liberty Matters

One of the most profound ironies in our current debates over religious liberty is the Left’s persistent decrying of business as short-sighted and materialistic even as it attempts to prevent the Hobby Lobbys of the world from heeding their consciences and convictions. Continue Reading...
September 16, 2014

A Lithuanian Mother’s Testimony of Survival

Recently I read Leave Your Tears in Moscow, a harrowing and ultimately triumphant account of Barbara Armonas’s time in a Soviet Siberian prison camp. Armonas, who passed away at the age of 99 in 2008, was separated from her American husband and daughter in Lithuania at the outbreak of World War II. Continue Reading...
September 10, 2014

A Constitutional Amendment Against Little Platoons

The great British statesman Edmund Burke claimed that “to love the little platoon we belong to in society is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections.” Burke was referring to the mediating social institutions that that lie between the individual and the state. Continue Reading...
September 03, 2014

Orthodoxy and Economic Liberty

In the most recent issue of The City, I have an essay on Orthodoxy and ordered liberty. I argue that Orthodox theological anthropology, which distinguishes between the image and likeness of God and two forms of freedom corresponding to them, fits well with the classical understanding of ordered liberty. Continue Reading...