The expectations of justice reside deeply within us. Figures in both the Hebraic and Hellenic worlds placed the demand for a just society at the center of their work. Those demands have echoed through the ages and into our streets. At the earliest of ages plain about things we deem unfair and dog our parents over broken promises. Of all the virtues, justice seems most ingrained. And yet it is the one most likely to create havoc and wreak...

With the 2016 presidential election looming, the New York Times published a journalism manifesto that was disguised as a mere mentary. If coverage by “mainstream” media of religion, values, culture, and education seem hostile to the beliefs of many Americans, there’s a reason for that. There’s been a paradigm shift in how journalism is done, and for whom. The candidate’s name was in the headline, but the implications of the August 7, 2016, essay “Trump Is Testing the Norms...

What we mean when we use the word “Black” (and whether or not we capitalize it) causes constant confusion in American life. We are liable to contrast Black with white, and to treat the two terms as though they belong to the same category: race. But this is a mistake. As a matter of historical fact, Black Americans formed separate cultural institutions because they were excluded from white institutions or forced to be subordinate within them on account of...

In a profile for The Guardian from 2012, Kim Kardashian was perplexed. “When I hear people say [what are you famous for], I want to say, ‘what are you talking about?’… I have a hit TV show. We’ve shot more episodes than I Love Lucy!” In the wake of multiple scandals that have rocked the evangelical world, from Mars Hill to Hillsong, the role of the celebrity pastor e in for intense scrutiny. Why be faithful when you can...

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic—well beyond the initial two weeks to flatten the curve, but in August of 2020—the New York Times reported, in an article entitled “Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be,” on scientists’ worries about the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. The means by which public health workers and government officials (not to mention journalists) were assessing the spread of the virus was, some feared, too sensitive. People were testing positive...

Francisco de Vitoria probably isn’t a name that rolls off the lips or even vaguely registers in the minds of most, but he is worth knowing. This highly influential 16th-century Spanish Dominican priest is known as no less than the “father of international law.” What does a late Renaissance Catholic priest have to do with the “liberal tradition”? When you’re also the founder of the “School of Salamanca,” more than you think. Born in Burgos, Spain, in 1483, Vitoria...

Sophocles’ Antigone is a Rorschach test. People see in it whatever they are thinking. To the self-professed and much munist philosopher Slavoj Žižek, Antigone is a “bitch,” though she may also be an admirable figure in her zealous and determined striving against her government. Or perhaps, Žižek suggests alternately, she is a troublemaker creating havoc within an otherwise healthy, well-organized state. In recent versions of the play that he has published with differing endings, Žižek has put forward both...

It is always hard to know where to begin with Thomas Jefferson—or where to end. In that respect, he is not that different from a great many other talented political figures in our history. The politician’s art all but requires a talent for enigma, an ability to draw in disparate followers and factions while remaining mysterious, un-pin-down-able, containing worlds of seeming contradiction within both public image and private life. Think of the tangled plexity of men like Woodrow Wilson,...