Stone relief depicting Wilberforce and the freedom from slavery in Strasbourg, France (Philip Bird LRPS CPAGB / Shutterstock.com).Being Realistic—but Hopeful—about Iran
March in support of Iranian protesters, January 6, 2018. livethemoment / Shutterstock.comContesting the Re-Primitivism of the West
Does Catholicism expand civilization? Thinking of Thomas Aquinas, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and Gregor Johann Mendel, and the Gothic, Baroque, and Rococo, the answer seems an obvious “yes.” However, it is also undoubtedly true that a snap survey on any street in the West would find a decent number of respondents either angered by the suggestion or just clueless. John M. Rist thinks the answer certainly “yes.” What’s more, he thinks that re-primitivism (to borrow a term Aurel Kolnai used in his 1938 War Against the West) threatens our civilization, and only Catholicism has the theoretical heft to ward it off. It is…
Squandering the Post-Cold War Peace Dividend
US Marines withdraw from the Camp Bastion-Leatherneck complex at Lashkar Gah in Helmand province on October 26, 2014. (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP/Getty Images)The Truth is Marching On
Conference leaders at Church services during the Atlantic Charter Conference.The universal human rights régime, under which we live, originated in response to the racial and other atrocities committed by Nazi Germany and its allies. The architects of the post-War system intended to institutionalize the liberal and egalitarian vision that had animated the Allied war effort. Drawing from the constitutional practices of liberal Western societies, they placed the rights-bearing individual at the center of the new global order. They thus refashioned the pre-War states system in four major ways.
Can German Law Professor Holm Putzke really be such a Putzke?
A medical doctor was recently acquitted of an assault charge by a German court for having circumcised a four-year old boy at the behest of his two Muslim parents.
From the Nation State to the New Church
In response to: Prospects for the Democratic Nation-State: What State Are We In?
Mankind is not easily rid of theology once it gets the bug. The nation-state tried to erase the distinction between earthly power and absolute right, but the attempt failed, with the result that the modern nation-state, its professed secularism notwithstanding, is once more coming under the tutelage of a clerisy. Almost since its beginning the nation-state has implied self-government in matters spiritual as well as temporal. It aspired to be an integral unit within whose borders a people were fully sovereign, answerable only to God—and perhaps not even to God, for what power could gainsay the people’s interpretation of His commands?…
More Responses
Ralph Hancock begins his interesting essay[i] be reminding us that, despite its internal contradictions and failures, the modern state has become the only conceivable political form in our post-modern world. This should be puzzling since the record is far from being a convincing successful story. At its best, the modern state has allowed us to…
Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum
Point of Law is hosting a debate between Professor Julian Ku of Hofstra Law School and Professor David Weissbrodt, the Regents Professor and Fredrikson & Byron Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, that is focused on the extent to which companies can be sued by foreigners in U.S. courts for alleged human rights abuses abroad, at issue in the Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum (link no longer available) case currently before the Supreme Court. Arguments are scheduled to be heard before the Supreme Court tomorrow.
