If our liberal arts colleges are to survive, they should try to instill an appreciation for rather than attempt the destruction of our cultural heritage. Read More… 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. Alongside the state university system, the Selective Liberal Arts...

The highly successful series of fantasy novels is slowly being adapted into TV entertainment. Is it heroic fantasy intended to instill moral courage in the face of evil, or merely more streaming content? Read More… 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. (The Bible is well short of...

Are we predestined to debate the free will vs. determinism question forever? Or can we shed light on the nature of the human person such that this vexing question of why we do what we can finally be answered? Read More… 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? A recent book by philosopher Paul Herrick,...

A new anthology of economists mentators pushing back against the New Deal in the 1930s sheds fresh light not only on what was going wrong then but what’s still wrong with our economic policy now. Read More… The American Institute of Economic Research has published an anthology of critics of the New Deal, New Deal plete with more than 50 mentaries and excerpts. The book is edited by contemporary economic historian Amity Shlaes, herself a prominent New Deal critic, whose...

Attacks on the Constitution are popular these days, but a look at the original debates pro and con should reassure us as to what a gift it was and remains to the Republic. Read More… Constitutional questions used to be intellectually serious, steeped peting traditions, and shaped by schools of thought often rooted in divergent interpretations of the American past. No more. Now we get pressing questions like, “Can Trump run for president from prison?,” Congressmen asserting that “the Electoral...

It never has to be faith versus reason. Centuries of Christian philosophical and scientific inquiry attest to this. Read More… “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth.” Twenty-five years ago today, Pope John Paul II (JPII) opened his 13th papal encyclical, Fides et Ratio, with these profound, beautiful, and now familiar words. The missive launches...

No matter how scary the economy may look today, you have more control over your economic future than you think. Get back to basics: both principle and habits. Read More… The need for economic education has never been more apparent. In an inflationary economy with housing costs outpacing first-time homebuyer budgets, banking collapses, and a popping tech bubble, the need for sound economics is self-evident. St. Thomas Aquinas defined self-evident as that which the intellect clearly apprehends; today, it is...

When we think of cultural invention, human flourishing, and technological innovation, we tend also to think of great cities. A look at 40 of them proves instructive as to what makes true progress possible. Read More… 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. “Whig history,” for example, relates the story of humanity as one of a...

Did conservatives betray their ideals? Or were they never ideal to begin with? Read More… “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. The negative side is that there are...

David Berlinski has been provoking debate on a variety of subjects for decades. His new book is a sampler of his challenges to Darwinism, materialism, and the hubris of scientism. Read More… 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 panying website explains. His Ph.D. in philosophy...