Godly Republic: A Centrist Blueprint for America's Faith-Based Futureby John J. DiIulio, Jr., University of California. 326 pp. $24.95. In a Republican primary debate in December 1999, the six GOP candidates for President were asked to state their favorite political philosopher. Orrin Hatch named Abraham Lincoln. Steve Forbes chose John Locke. George W. Bush answered:

They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neoconsby Jacob Heilbrunn, Doubleday, 336 pages, $26.00. In They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, Jacob Heilbrunn writes that he was “once attracted to neoconservatism.” Clearly, he's gotten over it. Heilbrunn's new book is both a history of the neoconservative movement and the

Some of us — in my case, a political conservative and evangelical Christian — are getting a queasy feeling when it comes to the presidential campaign of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, and much of it has to do with his use of faith in this political campaign. Many who don’t know Huckabee were initially

Former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee has written an article for Foreign Affairs magazine, the first two paragraphs of which are stunningly silly, misguided, and, unfortunately for Huckabee, deeply revealing. The two opening paragraphs read this way: The United States, as the world's only superpower, is less vulnerable to military defeat. But it

We haven't reached the point where the wheels are coming off the Clinton campaign. But we're getting close. The last few weeks have been very bad ones for her, from her contradictory answers (within two minutes) on whether illegal aliens should get drivers licenses, to Bill Clinton's (false) claim that he opposed the Iraq war

Fifteen years ago, a deep pessimism seemed to be stalking the American landscape. It arose from diverse quarters, took different forms, and cited a congeries of different symptoms–military, economic, social, cultural, and spiritual–in support of its dark diagnosis. For some, like the Yale historian Paul Kennedy, America's commitments abroad–dubbed by Kennedy a species of “imperial

The man who authored The Death of the West has now turned his considerable spirit of despair to America. Patrick J. Buchanan has written Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart. According to excerpts posted on The Drudge Report Monday, Buchanan writes, “America is coming apart, decomposing, and …. The

Two and a half years ago–in the wake of elections in Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories, and especially Iraq (as well as the fall of Lebanon's pro-Syrian government) — we were witness to what became known as the “Arab Spring.” Commentators were declaring President Bush's “freedom agenda” a success. In February 2005, New York Times columnist

Since the rise of the religious New Right two generations ago, the religion-and-politics battle in America has been fought on many fronts. The most obvious one involves electoral politics, although even here the story is not so straightforward as often depicted. As Richard John Neuhaus showed two decades ago, the new activism of evangelical and

Much of the political class is talking about Senator Larry Craig, who pleaded guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct in an airport restroom. What has garnered so much attention in this case is that Craig, a conservative Republican who is married, was arrested because he was attempting to engage in “lewd conduct” with another