If there is anything we have learned about Pope Francis’ commentaries on issues ranging from economics to the environment, it is that they invariably add up to a by-now predictable mixture. Continue Reading...
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October 04, 2023
The Constitution of the Fifth Republic at 65
Nearly 20 people were killed in Paris during and immediately following the Islamist attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. Then, in November of that same year, terrorists killed 130 and injured hundreds more in a series of coordinated attacks across Paris that included suicide bombers detonating explosives outside the Stade de France, indiscriminate shootings at crowded restaurants, and the storming of the Bataclan concert hall, where an American rock band played for a sold-out crowd of 1,500. Continue Reading...
October 03, 2023
Sr. Mary Kenneth Keller: Computer Programming Innovator
Emerging from the vibrant and innovative postwar years, the nascent discipline of computer science in America was attracting top talent in mathematics, engineering, and computational linguistics. Several schools were creating “computer science” programs by the 1950s and early ’60s. Continue Reading...
September 29, 2023
Are We Free to Think About Free Will?
Does God exist, or are we the mere by-products of evolution, simple accidents of the Big Bang? Do we have free will, or is everything predetermined, robbing us of true moral agency? Continue Reading...
September 28, 2023
The Right’s Racial Suicide
“To be conservative,” wrote Michael Oakeshott, “is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery.” His definition of conservatism, not as a set of policy aspirations but as a deeper sensibility, explains the conservative respect for tradition and view of history as a source of norms—that’s the positive side. 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 20, 2023
The Wheel of Time: A Postmodern LOTR?
The Wheel of Time is a series of 14 novels by Robert Jordan, which debuted in 1990. You may never have heard of them, but they’ve sold 100 million copies and add up to more than 4 million words. Continue Reading...
September 19, 2023
Cities: An Engine of Progress and Civilization
What is progress? How and where does it occur? Such questions are not easy to answer. Debates about the nature of progress have given rise to entire theories of historical development. Continue Reading...