Any discussion of the nature and ends of liberty and justice inevitably touches upon the role of government and law in society. A good place to begin reflecting upon natural law’s approach to these questions is Aquinas’ understanding of law. Continue Reading...
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August 18, 2022
How Americans lost their schools and how to take them back
In a commencement speech at Kenton College, American writer David Foster Wallace started with an anecdote, “There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. Continue Reading...
August 17, 2022
The two lives of Steve McQueen
Someone once said of Steve McQueen (1930–80) that his range as an actor was deep but not very broad. All right, I admit it—I said it in my 2001 biography of the all-American star who still looms over Hollywood like a sort of male equivalent of the Statue of Liberty, more than 40 years after his untimely death. Continue Reading...
August 16, 2022
Finding wisdom in Barack Obama fanfiction
This diatribe was inspired by the most amusing book I’ve ever encountered. While perusing the wares of a D.C. bookstore, I came across a tome entitled Hope Never Dies by New York Times bestselling author Andrew Shaffer, released in 2018. Continue Reading...
August 12, 2022
The Sandman is a lesson in natural law
On August 5, The Sandman dropped on Netflix. For Neil Gaiman’s existing fanbase, this show was the fulfillment of decades of longing to see a beloved story brought to life. Rumors have circulated over the years that Gaiman’s 75-issue comic series (variously collected in 10 graphic novels and the three-volume Absolute Sandman) would come to the screen, but such projects never materialized. Continue Reading...
August 11, 2022
Is ‘diversity’ the new religion of American universities?
As American universities worked tirelessly over the past couple of centuries to purge religion from institutional education, their success left a conceptual void. Without religion, the western university was in need of some of sort of metanarrative or ontological justification for its existence. Continue Reading...
August 10, 2022
Father Stu shows us strength in weakness
This past spring, movie theatres saw the premier of Father Stu, a Sony Pictures film starring Mark Wahlberg as Father Stu and co-starring Mel Gibson as his father. The film is based on the true story of Stuart Long, an amateur boxer from Montana who found God after a near-death experience and eventually became a priest. Continue Reading...
August 09, 2022
The union movement was anti-black from the beginning
The process of industrialization upended traditional ways of life that undoubtedly caused fear and doubt. It’s no surprise that some workers destroyed machinery in fear of lost work (the Luddites) or that workers banded together to negotiate for wages (the unions). Continue Reading...
August 05, 2022
Expanding the welfare state in Africa is a threat, not a help
While bilateral and multilateral talks are hitting impasses around much of the globe, “Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want” is a continental agreement that breaks the mold. For all its lofty ambitions, this blueprint aiming at “transforming Africa into the global powerhouse of the future” is paradoxically both a celebration of and a threat to the family. Continue Reading...
August 04, 2022
Betsy DeVos wants to shut down the Department of Education
Betsy DeVos thinks the Department of Education “should not exist.” She’s not the first secretary of education we’ve had who understood her central purpose to be the dissolution of the agency of which she was in charge (until she resigned on January 7, 2021). Continue Reading...