Category: Beyond the Revolution

“Priminent [sic] National Education Reformer Making a Home in Nashville,” announced the headline on Google News.  Just in the nick of time, you might think, but when you read the story on Missouri News Horizon’s website, you will find that the great reformer, one Michelle Rhee, is serving . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...

The city-state is the seedbed of civilization, but the concept seems alien to the American tradition.  Nonetheless, our cities did once possess, at least before the Revolution, many of the same rights enjoyed by English and European burgs.  In the Anglo-American world, the liberties of cities were . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...

Visitors to Charleston sometimes take note of the Latin inscriptions on historical plaques: Collegium Carolopolitanum, Diocesis Carolopolitana, and, most commonly, Carolopolis, the Latin version of Charleston’s name, which sounds like one of those Greek cities created by Alexander the Great and his successors somewhere in the hinterlands of . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...

I arrived a few minutes late for the meeting with the hippie roofer.  Two many DUIs had cost him his driver’s license, and I had to take him to the home-improvement store.  “Been to church?” he asked.  Dressed in a suit at 10:30 on Sunday morning . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access...

“There’s something almost un-American about etiquette. . . . For a lot of Americans the idea that there are rules out there about the proper way to behave, rules more elaborate than just common sense, seems pretentious, European, like one more thing we fought the . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the...

When Abraham Lincoln tried to explain the issue between North and South, he said it was a test of the conception on which America had been founded, “a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Lincoln, inadvertently revealing . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...

Gloria is angry.  This is nothing new, of course, but these days her righteous indignation is directed against Hollywood.  She is angry at Hollywood stars who adopt children only to neglect them, and she is outraged by stage parents who prostitute dim-witted girls like Britney and Lindsay and . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...

Lurking just beneath the surface of every revolutionary movement is the same deceitful dream.  Once upon a time, long, long ago, men and women lived in peace and justice and unity, until into this garden entered the snake: the capitalist, the patriarch, the man of war, the bishop.  Come . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...

Atheists have no god to worship.  This is by no means a tautology.  Belief in god is ingrained in our nature, and Anselm’s proof is the nearest thing to an effective rebuttal of atheism.  Put in simple terms, Anselm’s argument is that we know that god exists . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...