liberalism – Religion & Liberty Online

November 20, 2024

What Is Liberalism?

“When the enemy is Hitler,” F.H. Buckley writes, “and the world is divided between Schmittian friends and enemies, everything is permitted.” Such divisive contemporary issues as Black Lives Matter, the Israel-Palestine war, and trans rights leave little room for compromise and much for demonization. Continue Reading...

September 05, 2023

When the Church Becomes the State

Until a few years ago, I was not even familiar with the term “integralism,” which refers to the Catholic political doctrine that calls for the subordination of the state to the church. Continue Reading...

June 07, 2023

Is Christianity Special?

Mark David Hall’s Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land: How Christianity Has Advanced Freedom and Equality for All Americans defends the role of Christianity in American history against critics who either deny its influence or assert that its influence was pernicious (e.g., Continue Reading...

June 29, 2022

The ground is shifting under Francis Fukuyama’s feet

In Liberalism and Its Discontents, Francis Fukuyama aims to defend liberal political ideas and institutions against rising and now entrenched detractors from the postliberal left and the right. As he notes, “liberalism is under severe threat around the world … its virtues need to be clearly articulated and celebrated once again.” Continue Reading...

December 07, 2021

The problem of the atheist economist

There is much in the classical liberal economist that I find attractive. By classical liberal, I do not mean the sort of political liberalism that defaults to certain presumptions of big government. Continue Reading...

September 07, 2021

No, Tucker Carlson: The U.S. is not, will not, and never should be like Hungary

Last month, Tucker Carlson replaced Rod Dreher as the latest conservative to take a pilgrimage to Hungary. Carlson praised Hungarian President Viktor Orbán’s pro-family policies, stricter immigration policies, and resistance to progressive views on gender, saying: “If you care about Western civilization and democracy and families and the ferocious assault on all three of those things by the leaders of our global institutions, you should know what is happening here right now.” Continue Reading...

May 06, 2021

John Paul II on work, socialism, and liberalism

This year marks the 30th anniversary of John Paul II’s important encyclical, Centesimus Annus. While the average lay person might not pay attention to formal pronouncements by the Roman Catholic Church, papal encyclicals are significant in their affirmation of the church’s social doctrine. Continue Reading...

December 11, 2019

The Virtue of Liberalism

Today, Law & Liberty published the text of my lecture for the Philadelphia Society in October: “Why Economic Nationalism Fails.” The topic for the panel was “Conservatism and the Coming Economy.” Continue Reading...

July 12, 2019

Rene Girard on the responsible use of language

Those of us who deal with ideas can often throw words around without being sufficiently careful about their meaning or attentive to their impact. We can be tempted to use terms to make a splash or win an argument at the expense of complexity. Continue Reading...

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