In this age of multiculturalism and sensitivity, there is one bigotry still tolerated: anti-Catholicism. As Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., Peter Viereck, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan have all observed, anti-Catholicism remains our nation’s deepest bias, and the only one found respectable by intellectuals. The anti-Catholicism that marked our nation’s founding was directed at both individual Catholics and...
In Pursuit is a philosophical exegesis on what is wrong with contemporary social policy analysis. In some ways it is a sequel to Murray’s Losing Ground, having much in common with Part IV (Rethinking Social Policy) of that influential book. Though this is a more enterprising work, it is also a less successful one, leaving...
“The triumph of demagogies is short-lived. But the ruins are eternal.” —Charles Peguy Jeane Kirkpatrick has given us two useful ways to think about that segment of the American intelligentsia that continuously finds fault with virtually everything this country does: they are the “blame America first” crowd and the believers in “moral equivalency.” After reading...
When I undertook a study of the ACLU, I had no idea that the politics surrounding my investigation would prove to be as revealing as the research itself. Maybe more so. My first taste of the politics of the ACLU came during an interview with Aryeh Neier, past executive director of the ACLU. The interview...
“It is better that some should be unhappy, than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.” —Samuel Johnson The best way to corrupt a value is to maximize it. That is one of the fundamental lessons of liberalism in the postwar period. Take rights. Push one...