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Machiavelli

The Master of Machiavelli

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Mansfield’s Machiavelli’s primary goal is to subvert and overturn Christianity. It is important to note, as Professor Mansfield does himself, that this reading of a secular, indeed anti-Christian, Machiavelli is not the only reading of the Italian philosopher.
Public Discourse reading list

C. S. Lewis and the Populists: A Birthday Appreciation

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At a moment when the values Lewis cherished often seem endangered as much by their supposed friends as by their proclaimed enemies, we would do well to remember his prescriptions.
War in Ukraine

War in Ukraine and “Reasonable Hope for Success”

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The war in Ukraine is tragically costly to the Ukrainian nation. And success has not been, and will not be, within easy reach for Kyiv. But there is no reason to think that this defensive war does not satisfy the principles of just war tradition, and, in particular, the complicated principle of reasonable success.
Ideas vs. people

Ideas vs. People?

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I am not sure a commitment to ideas or “ideologies” as such is at the root of our problem. If anything, public debate today has little patience with ideas, directed instead toward the very motives and character of the people one likes or dislikes.
Max Weber, Germany

The Use and Abuse of Max Weber

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Surely one way of fending off the Right, a way that does not involve waiting for a charismatic savior, is to reject policies that are destroying American cities. There is not an iota of criticism of such tendencies of the contemporary Left in Brown’s book; yet she would like to assure us that the next leftist charismatic leader will be animated by an ethic of responsibility.
theism

Sinners in the Hands of a Beautiful God

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In this new book—intended to bring Edwards “into the twenty-first century”—Marsden has returned to the Edwards he first discovered in his twenties. The New England thinker’s “invigorating emphasis on the dynamic beauty of God at the heart of reality” grabbed him then and has not let him go. As Marsden says, “You don’t get tired of beauty.”  
The Iliad

A New Iliad

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The first word of Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Iliad signals that this is not quite the Homer we’re used to. You may well ask whether anyone today can be used to an epic, conventionally attributed to a blind bard named Homer, that was composed some 2,750 years ago in a stylized form of Greek that no one spoke natively. But surprisingly, there have been more than a dozen translations into English in the past thirty-five years alone.
Franciscan Education

The Merits of a Franciscan Liberal Arts Education

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The point of a Christian liberal education is to take on the mind of God and to be conformed to Christ, or at least to begin to do so, for such a project is endless. This means that a Christian liberal arts school will seek to impart to its students some measure of wisdom and holiness.
The study of theology

In Defense of the Liberal Arts and the “Queen of the Sciences”

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The problem with the way that discussions surrounding university education are often framed is that they seem to accept as inevitable a pernicious anthropology that presumes students are autonomous subjects, consuming in order to be consumed. But we are more than what we achieve, more than we produce, more than our billable hours.
Christian conventions

Christians Need Stronger Conventions, Not State Power, to Influence Culture

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Deep, broad cultural change often results not primarily from government imposition or propagation of ideas, but from committed social entrepreneurs who pilot alternative conventions. Public pronouncement of Christian values, absent change in underlying social conventions, is a poor substitute for deeply rooted change internal to the church.
desert

The Hidden Riches of the Desert

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In her new book A Philosopher Looks at the Religious Life, Zena Hitz situates her philosophical ponderings within the context of her own life, here spotlighting a crisis precipitated by her conversion to the Catholic faith. Like Abraham about to sacrifice his son Isaac at the Lord’s behest, Hitz realizes that unconditional love of God, “wholehearted commitment without compromise,” might demand the renunciation even of what she has held most dear.
Ronald Regan

Ronald Reagan: An Imperfect, Indispensable Leader

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In his new book, William Inboden clearly regards Reagan as indispensable to something coming close to a miraculous chain of events surrounding the peaceful end of the Cold War. He rejects the popular notions of Reagan as clueless, all form and no substance, gullible, or hopelessly and sentimentally patriotic. This is a sympathetic biography, but one that is copiously researched and laden with fresh and insightful nuances that treat Reagan as a complex figure, a man with limitations, paradoxes, and weaknesses.
Technology

The Psychology of Digital Dehumanization

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A Web of Our Own Making overflows with disquieting observations about the ways digital technology is reshaping human nature. Antón Barba-Kay puts into haunting words the anxiety, exhaustion, and emptiness that most of us feel but cannot put into words because we are too busy scrolling and ogling.
Image of Barbie

Barbie’s Quiet Rebuke of Transhumanism

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The movie’s most profound insight is its distillation of pop feminism: a praise of women so unceasing that we no longer feel comfortable being normal human beings with blemishes, weakness, and fertility.
Three golden domes of a Russian orthodox Christian church

“Traditional Values” Are Russia’s Geopolitical Weapons

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The militant Russian religious conservatism of the twenty-first century, paradoxically, mirrors the Soviet anti-religious socialism of the twentieth century. Their common feature is a shameless instrumentalization of religion, with the consent of the latter.
Rural Church with American Flag

The Right Has Become Post-Religious

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Trump—and more broadly, the style of politics he represents—did not rise to power on the shoulders of the religious right, but rather the post-religious right. Indeed, his presidency was made possible by the very process of secularization that the religious right has long sought to combat.
old books row background

The Bookshelf: Editions and Subtractions

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A book in its entirety, once given to the world, is a kind of integer, a whole from which nothing should be subtracted if it is to remain what it is.
Loving young African mom and her cute little daughter eating a healthy fruit snack together in their kitchen at home

When Moms Lean Out, Government Should Lean In

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Prioritizing support to homemakers who care for children and the elderly is not only the right thing to do—it’s also a smart economic decision for the federal government.
closeup of a man showing an intersex-inclusive progress pride flag peeping out from a bush

What the Surge in LGBTQ Self-Identity Means

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People of all faiths have heard enough talk about children’s “bodily autonomy,” or their supposed ability to express informed consent. As we are witnessing, mothers and fathers remain a powerful bastion of reason in our new post-gender turn, because they display with and in and through their bodies the reality that Roe sought to hide or ignore.
Little girl portrait monochrome

Realists Unite! New Documentary on Gender-Affirming Care Presents “Pro-Reality” Position in Response to Trans Ideology

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We align with people who are pro-reality, who respect core community values such as truth and honesty, and who see the human being as a whole: body and soul. There is no metaphysical “gendered soul” separate from the body. Teaching body dissociation to kids (“born in the wrong body”) has led to a tidal wave of self-hatred, body dysmorphia, depression, anxiety, and self-harm.
Founding

Is the American Founding Christian, Secular—Or Something Else?

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In The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics, Kody Cooper and Justin Dyer successfully refute the still (somehow) influential interpretation of the American Founding as a secular-not-Christian project. However, they do so without successfully establishing their preferred alternative, the Christian-not-secular interpretation. There is a vast middle between these two extremes whose existence slips through the authors’ fingers again and again like a well-greased elephant.
Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson, America’s Writer

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Fred Kaplan’s new biography of Thomas Jefferson, His Masterly Pen, gives us the Jefferson we deserve: Jefferson the writer, the listener, and the aesthete.
Georgia O'Keeffe

Art, Beauty, and the Soul of the University

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Art is a convening point for many different avenues of pursuing beauty. It is the bridge between chemistry and history and between theology and engineering. Beauty is something every specialist cares about, even in the fields that seem most technical.
Reflection of architecture on modern office building

America’s Commercial Republic, and Its Detractors: An Interview with Samuel Gregg

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Key Founders believed that America’s future was to be a polity in which free and dynamic commerce would play a powerful role in defining society, as opposed to, say, the priorities of aristocratic or feudal societies. The “republic” side of this political economy equation is that this commercial society would operate within the context of institutions and sets of virtues that draw upon classical, religious, and moderate Enlightenment sources.
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