Pope Francis gave his annual talk to the Vatican diplomatic corps this week. Once more he denounced “nationalism” and promoted multilateralism and international institutions. Like many others, the pope seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of both nationalism and globalism. But let’s take this seriously for a moment and consider that we live in a [...]

Early in Plato’s Republic, Socrates debates a sophist, a teacher of rhetoric named Thrasymachus, about the nature and worth of justice. Thrasymachus’s position, no more unknown to us today than it was in Socrates’s and Plato’s day, is that justice is the advantage of the stronger. Based on this view, justice simply names the rules [...]

January 21, 2019, will be the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Dáil Eireann, the legislature of an independent Irish state. This legislative body consisted of members of the majority elected from Ireland in the December 1918 national election to the British parliament. This event was an act of secession by a legally elected group [...]

A few months ago, at my university, I was on a panel on the topic of evaluating American liberalism and conservatism in light of Catholic social teaching. The panel was asked what that teaching would say about affirmative action—defined by a leading law dictionary as the conferring of special rights, in hiring or advancement, to ethnic [...]

A piece I wrote last month on globalism and nationalism led to some extremely spirited discussion. A few more comments may be useful. Journalists and commentators today use the word “nationalism” very broadly to refer to any resistance to globalization based on attachment to national identity. This usage lines up with current disputes regarding the legitimacy [...]

A couple of months ago, I attended a talk given by Yokota Takuya at a small liberal arts college about an hour northeast of Tokyo. Mr. Yokota’s name is probably unfamiliar to many in the Western hemisphere, but he is very well-known in Japan. In 1977, his older sister, Megumi, was abducted from Niigata, on [...]

Just a few years ago, I was arguing in the comment boxes of a gay blog called Slowly Boiled Frog, a site that had gone after me hammer and tongs for years. I joined the combox conversation under my own name. I did it for fun, to sharpen my arguments, and, strange as it may [...]

On December 11, a Muslim named Cherif Chekatt opened fire at the famed Christmas Market in Strasbourg, killing three and wounding thirteen. There are several important lessons to be learned from the incident. Here are five of them: I. The attack was aimed at Christians. It was no coincidence that the terrorist chose to target [...]

On October 5, 2018, the government admitted they were wrong to persecute the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). The admission came in a settlement in EWTN’s long-drawn-out lawsuit regarding the Contraception Mandate attached to Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA). As a result of the settlement, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated (i.e., withdrew) [...]

Last March, an Islamist terrorist stormed a supermarket in Trèbes, France, shot two people dead and took others hostage. In negotiations with police, the terrorist agreed to accept a police lieutenant’s offer to swap places with the last hostage, a female cashier. The police officer, Arnaud Beltrame, was subsequently killed. In honor of his heroic [...]

It is not hard to see why Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose 100th birthday will be celebrated on December 11, would be such a compelling figure for Jordan Peterson, the Jungian psychologist who has become an international cause célèbre for defying Orwellian speech codes added to Canada’s Human Rights Act. In addition to advocating an ethic of individual [...]

Recently, the American Association of University Professors’ Committees on Academic Freedom and Women in the Academic Profession issued a statement titled “The Assault on Gender and Gender Studies.” While criticizing the Hungarian government for defunding university gender studies programs, its main aim is to derail the Trump administration’s proposed clarification of Title IX’s prohibition of [...]

President Trump’s criticism of globalism and praise of nationalism have drawn scathing criticism. For many, “globalism” suggests universal human solidarity, while “nationalism” suggests aggression, self-seeking, and idolizing a particular state and people. Others say that “nationalism” is right-wing code for white supremacy, and “globalism” for rule by shadowy Jewish financial interests. Such responses obscure real [...]

It might be supposed that it would be usual for major organs of the media to give something along the lines of regular acclaim to a person who has become the first millennial to head a European government, who is the youngest head of government in the world, who is the youngest individual ever to [...]

Today, socialism and Christianity are considered antagonistic movements. Most socialists aren’t Christian and most Christians aren’t socialist. Yet analysis reveals a striking congruence. And the similarities between Christianity and socialism are not coincidences. They are influences. Christianity, after all, is the most powerful intellectual movement the Western world has seen. It furnished the Western mind [...]

Progressivism, the view that modern political tendencies should continually be extended, has deep roots. Its beginnings are closely connected to the rise of modern natural science, which rejects the contemplative ideal of knowledge in favor of prediction and control. This approach, which stresses observation, measurement, and mathematical modeling, has led to modern technology and industry. [...]

An Ohio college professor who refused to comply with a male student’s request to be addressed as “ma’am” instead of “sir,” was ordered by the university to comply with the student’s wishes. When a Florida middle school gym teacher refused to participate in a plan to allow a female student who identifies as a boy [...]

Americans like to think of themselves as living in a classless society, and historically this is largely, but not entirely, true, with a large middle class dominating the country’s economic, political, and social life. In the traditional social model, there was a small and moneyed upper class above the middle class, typically marked by its willingness [...]

At the dawn of systematic political thought, Aristotle conceived of the state as the natural social institution responsible for security and justice—the family and the village being too small to secure its members from the menaces of the wicked. The state guaranteed, above all, the security of a country, its people, and its territory. But [...]

After nine years in prison, a Christian woman was acquitted of blasphemy by the Pakistan Supreme Court in mid-October. Almost immediately, however, massive street rallies and protests organized by Tehreek-e-Labaik—the anti-blasphemy party—forced the government to reconsider. The government agreed to ban Asia Bibi from leaving the country, and it agreed to allow her blasphemy acquittal [...]