That wacky atheist Michael Newdow is at it again, this time getting a federal judge to declare the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional again, possibly setting the stage for another go round at the Supreme Court. (The court, you’ll recall, dodged a bullet last time around by ruling that Newdow didn’t have standing to bring the…

Philosopher C. Stephen Evans reviews a biography of Wodehouse for Books & Culture (via Thunderstruck), offering some reflections on why Wodehouse is so beloved and seems to be more than a “mere” humorist: According to Kierkegaard, the fundamental contradiction that is human existence can be experienced as either tragic or humorous, depending on our perspective.…

(Via A Conservative Blog for Peace.) Post to the host for May 2001: Mr. Keillor,I’ve been wondering if you picture the Lake Wobegon Lutherans as ELCA Lutherans. If so what do you think of the new communion between the Lutheran and Episcopal churches, and thus what would the good reserved Scandinavian folks there in Minnesota…

This one’s from Anglican theologian Oliver O’donovan, from an interview he did with the Calvin Collge Chimes a few years ago: I think [Stanley Hauerwas’] criticisms of the Christendom idea are partly wrong, first because he dismisses the church as always being a minority. I don’t know on what theological authority one could make that…

An oldie but a goodie from the Bruderhof site: The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one…

Brandon has a good post on the now-common argument that the disaster in New Orleans has somehow discredited libertarianism. I’ve actually read people who say that this shows the bankruptcy of the concept of “limited government.” Should we assume such people are for unlimited government? The problem with the handling of this situation, in my…

Andrew Bacevich* reviews Robert Kaplan’s Imperial Grunts, which Bacevich says is a paean to American soliders who, in Kaplan’s view, are the elite vanguard of a new American empire which is the only hope for pulling the rest of the world out of chaos: Reactionary populists idealize the past because they loathe the present. Kaplan…

Okay, not really (made ya look though, didn’t I?), but Jonathan Rauch has a column comparing the philosophy behind Sen. Santorum’s It Takes a Family and “classic” Goldwater-Reagan conservatism. In Rauch’s view, Santorum represents a principled turn away from the individualist/limited government paradigm (allegedly) represented by Reagan. In Santorum’s view, freedom is not the same…

O.C. premier tonight! Yeah! Forget all your highbrow HBO dramas and PBS documentaries. For sheer entertainment value you just can’t beat beautiful and rich (yet angsty!) teenagers and their equally beautiful and rich parents all set to the background of today’s hippest rock ‘n’ roll tunes! (Incidentally, the O.C. is often called this generation’s 90210.…

Matthew Yglesias makes the important and often-overlooked distinction between intervening militarily to stop ongoing crimes like genocide and intervening for the sake of regime-change toward democracy: Operations of that sort are clearly different from operations aimed at halting an ongoing genocide or preventing an imminent one. There is a huge amount of space, both practical…