46% of Americans are Young Earth Creationists, 58% of Republicans: From Charles Johnson: Most Americans are not scientists, of course, and cannot be expected to understand all of the latest evidence and competing viewpoints on the development of the human species. Still, it would be hard to dispute that most scientists who study humans agree that the species evolved over millions of years, and that relatively few scientists believe that humans began in their current form only 10,000 years ago... Read more

Toby Young: What a contrast last night’s Inaugural Address was compared to the one President Obama gave four years ago. Gone was any attempt to reach out to his Republican opponents. In its place was an aggressive assertion of modern liberalism, with the emphasis on gay rights, gun control, gender equality, combating climate change and – if his remarks about Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and income inequality are anything to go by – redistributive taxation. This is a fully-fledged socialist agenda that... Read more

William Faulkner famously said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” This is the argument of Brad Gregory in his monumental and erudite volume, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. This 600 page ramble of Western history traces interlocking themes that affect us today but which gained their fresh life in the Reformation. I’d say the book is a critique of modernity as much as the Reformation while it is also a strong apologetic for the... Read more

John Winthrop’s famous speech, given on a boat crossing the Atlantic in the hope of forming a new kind of community, rooted in (Puritan) faith but also radically committed to “charity,” drew Tom Geogeghan into a bit of a rant about America’s self-perception: As Obama and his staff thumbed through the great American political speeches in advance of his second Inaugural address, I wonder if it occurred to them to go back to the first attempt to express the American... Read more

My experience is that most editors could be writers; that many editors didn’t get the final degree in a subject and so would find it hard to get an academic post but are not a sliver less intelligent or informed. I found this list by Deborah Franklin accurate: An editor: Is good at puzzles, at seeing the flecks of green in several scattered puzzle pieces and understanding that they fit together to form the green hillside at the top of... Read more