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In 2000, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D., N.Y.) was asked to identify the biggest change he had seen in his 40-year political career. Moynihan, a man of unusual wisdom, experience, and perspective, responded this way: “The biggest change, in my judgment, is that family structure has come apart all over the North Atlantic world.” This
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Sometimes the death of a person is expected, the final act after a long, slow decline that finally frees an individual from misery. Other times death is a jolt, something that stuns us because we cannot imagine a person of great vitality, zest and life-affirming energy is taken from us before his time. Even if
Read MoreWhile reading Gregory Weiner’s fascinating book American Burke, I came across this comment: “(Daniel Patrick) Moynihan’s intellectual curiosity was such that he gravitated toward thinkers with whom he disagree precisely because he disagreed with them and could consequently learn from them.” This observation reminded me of an incident in 1948 involving C.S. Lewis and Elizabeth
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Beginning with Ronald Reagan, I have voted Republican in every presidential election since I first became eligible to vote in 1980. I worked in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations and in the White House for George W. Bush as a speechwriter and adviser. I have also worked for Republican presidential campaigns, although
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Because the Christmas story has been told so often for so long, it’s easy even for Christians to forget how revolutionary Jesus’ birth was. The idea that God would become human and dwell among us, in circumstances both humble and humiliating, shattered previous assumptions. It was through this story of divine enfleshment that much of our
Read MoreIf you want to witness an adamantine mind at work, you could do a whole lot worse that observe the 44th president of the United States. Barack Obama is the most rigidly ideological president of my lifetime, a man who has a nearly blind adherence to a particular ideology (progressivism). It’s a disturbing, if at
Read MoreThe Republican party has traditionally been the predictable party when it comes to nominating a presidential nominee. But for 2016 everything has been tossed on its head. Donald Trump has a double-digit lead over his closest rival, according to a poll published Wednesday, leaving establishment figures trailing. The former reality television star in whom many are investing
Read MoreThe debate about whether the United States ought to accept at least 10,000 Syrian refugees, as President Obama has proposed, is typical of many issues in public life in which there are legitimate arguments on both sides. As a result, they need to be carefully weighed and balanced. (Most of the time we speak as
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In 2008, Barack Obama won the presidency promising that he would heal our political divisions. Instead, Mr. Obama has been as polarizing as any president in the history of modern polling. The debate over the Syrian refugee crisis illustrates why. The civil war in Syria has created one of the worst refugee crises since World
Read MoreWe all know people of towering arrogance and we all know people of staggering incompetence, but Barack Obama is quite possibly the perfect package. No one on the scene today combines these two qualities in quite the same way as Mr. Obama. On the incompetence side, and sticking just with the president’s policies and record in
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