Despite my vocational proximity to politics as a think tank leader and public interest attorney, I must confess: I don’t have much use for it. I’m rather put off by those smitten with the

This summer marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Michael Brown. It is a decade marked far more by heat than light. One could even say that, as time has passed, events have confirmed

Jonathan Leaf is a playwright and novelist. Kirkus Reviews called his new novel, City of Angles, a mystery set in Los Angeles, “light, literary entertainment at its best.” You’re a

According to a still-familiar narrative, European intellectual life before the rise of modern philosophy and science was stagnant, dominated by Scholastics who simply reiterated stale

Transformative is a tired word, maybe, for the kind of thing art does, and not really the right word. When we say that we’re changed by a story, or a poem, or a play, what we mean is that we

Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., was the most influential American Catholic theologian of the 20th century. He was created a cardinal by Pope Saint John Paul II early in the 21st century for

Artificial intelligence (AI) is for the birds. Or at least that’s what the preamble to the “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights” seems to suggest. Prepared in October 2022 under the auspices

It’s easy to forget that the institution of slavery has constituted a social norm in human history. From the grand perspective of time, its supporters and defenders have far outnumbered its

In their learned book, The Wisdom of Our Ancestors : Conservative Humanism and the Western Tradition, Graham James McAleer and Alexander S. Rosenthal-Pubul ask: What is the wisdom of our

Innocent visitors to an Episcopalian or Anglican church are often startled when the congregation blithely proclaim in the creed that they believe in “the holy Catholic Church.” Aren’t they

On the campus of Princeton University, near the chapel and the Firestone Library, there is a statue of the college’s president during the American Revolution, John Witherspoon. Outside a few

When the terrorist army that calls itself “the Islamic state,” or ISIS, captured large parts of Iraq and Syria in the mid-2010s, the world was shocked. Many Muslims around the world were