Politics & Power

The Lincoln that Schaff puts forth cultivated liberal democracy by placing limits and crafting public consensus. In order to see Lincoln in a new light, Schaff applies Aristotle’s ideas of moderation and prudence as his lens. It is not simply that Lincoln knew the good, but, as a good steward of liberal democracy, he embodied the good.

Who wins in a contest between Woke Soft Totalitarians and Fringe Right Conspiracists? Nobody. But there will be many losers, not least among them Christians who fail to stand for the truth.

We justify our choices as the price of innovation, of progress, of efficiency. We tell ourselves we can’t afford to do anything else. We even tell ourselves it’s for the children. And so we bankrupt our posterity so we can eat, drink, and be merry. It’s a nice life for those who get to live it, but it’s not reproducible.

Corporate rights was not a spontaneous development but the result of a sort of corporate civil-rights movement. Through litigation (generally well-financed) over two centuries, various corporations won decisions by which corporations evolved from government-created artificial persons, not even mentioned by name in the Constitution, into entities possessed of many of the same constitutional rights as flesh-and-blood human beings.

Michael Knowles: “Free speech cannot be an open plain; nor can it be a jungle; it must be a delicately manicured garden."

In Lost Cause debates, President Biden should be wary of casting the first stone: his own history demonstrates the complicated relationship the country has with its deadliest war and the men who led it.