It is the year 2040. You are sitting with your granddaughter. What will you tell her about the early 2010s, when you lost your job? You will say that we had the Great Recession, and that bad policies played a role. But will you be able to add that we elected politicians who rose to the challenge and forged a new social compact—one with fewer billionaires but more decent jobs, one with less unsustainable welfare but more family and community... Read more

The settlements are a red herring. The amount of territory they sit on is miniscule—only 1.9 percent of the West Bank. If you’re talking about 1.9 percent, and then somebody adds a few houses, you’re not undercutting the negotiations; you’re just addressing the needs of the people. Meanwhile, the Palestinians want to build a whole new city, called Rawabi, near Ramallah. Why not? They have needs; let them do it! Is that called a settlement? http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/intelligence_squared/2012/01/palestine_in_u_n_why_dore_gold_will_argue_against_its_recognition_as_a_state_at_the_slate_intelligence_squared_debate_on_jan_10.single.html Read more

Joy was expressed in the U.S. this week, at the return of remaining American troops from Iraq (except those guarding extensive diplomatic enclaves), “in time for Christmas.” Promptly upon their departure, all the democratic arrangements for which these troops had fought, began to unravel. http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?id=1364 Read more

Herman Cain’s remarks concerning Planned Parenthood’s promotion of abortion to blacks thrust the organization and its founder once more into the spotlight. Congressional attempts to defund Planned Parenthood had already generated publicity. When Hillary Clinton received Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award in 2009, she was prompted to make an apologia for accepting the award because of questions raised at a House committee hearing. In each of these cases, the controversy centered on the eugenic http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/01/4445   Read more

Throughout their varied chapters, and especially in the conclusion, they present Edwards as a major “global theologian for twenty-first-century Christianity” (pp. 725-28), much more useful than the more frequently studied Karl Barth as a resource for contemporary theology. Edwards bridges East and West, they argue, Protestantism, Orthodoxy, and even Roman Catholicism, conservatism and liberalism, charismatic and non-charismatic Christian churches. Indeed, “[h]is thought,” they suggest, “may have more linkages and more points of reference to various constituencies within world Christianity than... Read more

As a young Hindu boy I was fascinated with people who claimed to be holy. I often visited one such holy man. He was my uncle. It was common knowledge that shortly after the conception of their only child, he took a vow of silence and celibacy and entered a trance-like state through meditation and the practice of yoga. His silence amazed me. I remember how his son (my cousin, Rabi) and I would gaze into his face hoping for... Read more

  “The Talmud was written in exile, and it was the thread that kept Jews together,” he said. “It had no punctuation, no paragraphs. It was a book that was to be transmitted orally from father to son.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/nyregion/an-index-for-the-talmud-after-1500-years.html?hpw   Read more

You may have noted from my short description in the program that I teach at the University of Notre Dame, and one of the occupational hazards of being a political scientist is that occasionally you’re asked to speak on various round tables about elections and such things. And so a few years ago, it was actually during the 2004 presidential election cycle, I was asked to participate on a round table at Notre Dame about Catholics and American politics. It’s... Read more

One hundred and eighty years have passed since Tocqueville wrote these words, but until very recently intellectuals have been making the same mistake. In America today, for example, a higher percentage of the population attends a house of worship weekly than is the case in the theocratic state of Iran: 40 per cent in the US, 39 per cent in Iran. Furthermore, in China today, half a century after Chairman Mao declared China to be religion-free, there are more practising... Read more

It was barely mentioned in the Israeli and global media, but the following event pertains to the whole of Western civilization: Last Saturday, violent groups of Islamic-Salafi radicals burned the famous scientific institute established by Napoleon in Egypt after its first encounter with the West. Some historians consider it the start of modern times in the Middle East. The site, L’Institut d’Egypte, held some 200,000 original and rare books, exhibits, maps, archeological findings and studies from Egypt and the entire... Read more