Politics & Power

I lived much of my adult life under Terry Branstad’s multiple tenures as governor of Iowa, and I think he did a “pretty fair...

It's already an amazon dot hell best-seller in political theory.

One side has dominated the story while the other has tried to dominate the politics. But separating culture and politics is a self-defeating strategy.

We are presented with a complex and even contradictory task. In the name of subsidiarity, we must work to undermine liberal capitalism and create alternative spaces for production and exchange, art and leisure, community and independence. But in the name of solidarity, we must work to ameliorate the system and socialize such common goods as health care, unemployment insurance, education, etc.

MF: Mr. Chesterton, I know you have not received any training in economics at the University level.  So, I will keep this simple.  The...

It’s true that we don’t yet have a colony on Mars. But countless people are living very ordinary lives and doing very ordinary things that are true, good, and beautiful.

It was the reaction I had seen so often in public school classrooms from teacher's pets: Conformity is always the right course. Rocking the boat is disruptive. Teachers and principals know what's best.

What would be helpful is a book that acknowledge both sets of trends and moves beyond name-calling to begin the hard work of engaging in the tensions and trade-offs between them. Beneficial too would be a clear-eyed encounter with the fact that measures of human happiness and fulfillment have not skyrocketed along with our greater health and wealth. People need more than just more stuff.

One of the spiritual dangers of Trump is that he can come to be seen as the only danger. Such “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic then leads to the temptation to overlook the problems posed by the other side.