William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal and George Weigel, my colleague at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, have intelligent columns (here and here) about Representative Paul Ryan’s address at Georgetown University last week. There are two elements to the speech worth drawing attention to. The first is a commendable modesty in Ryan’s remarks. While Ryan,

It’s widely reported that Charles Colson once said he’d walk over his grandmother to get Richard Nixon elected to a second term. In the Nixon White House he was considered smart, effective, and ruthless—Nixon’s “hatchet man.” Then came Watergate, a prison sentence, and a conversion nearly as dramatic as St. Augustine’s or St. Paul’s. Mr.

Shortly after first arriving in Washington, D.C., I had conversations with friends in which I made this observation: Assume that they and I hold completely different views on an issue. Assume, too, that we engaged in a debate on the issue and that they pulverized me based on their superior knowledge and logic. And let’s

In 2008, Barack Obama promised he would put an end to the type of politics that “breeds division and conflict and cynicism” and he would help us “rediscover our bonds to each other and get out of this constant, petty bickering that’s come to characterize our politics.” As president, Obama has not only discarded this

Late last week I heard from a theologian of liberal leanings, someone with whom I have been in (often friendly) correspondence for years. He wrote me to voice his objections to my recent “diatribes” against President Obama. That didn’t particularly surprise me. What did surprise me is how he framed his objections. He didn’t take

The true philosopher is always pursuing death and dying, Socrates said. It is at the core of philosophy because it is an inescapable part of the human experience. And throughout the ages, different faiths have dealt with death in different ways. For those of the Christian faith, death is not something to view with apathy

In his Weekly Standard cover story on Allan Bloom’s book “The Closing of the American Mind” 25 years later, Andrew Ferguson writes of Bloom, “As well as anyone then or now, he understood that the intellectual fashion of materialism of explaining all life, human or animal, mental or otherwise, by means of physical processes alone had

The issue of income inequality has never before been central to American politics. Though concern for the poor, disputes over welfare programs, and complaints about “the rich” have of course featured prominently in our public debates, Americans have generally avoided open class warfare, to the nation’s great credit and benefit. But in the 2012 presidential

The fear many soon-to-be parents face is the question, “What if?” What if my child is born with a learning disability? What if my hopes for having a “normal” child are shattered? What if I find I can’t love my special needs child as I should? And what if my marriage and faith are broken