Along with the thinkers like Russell Kirk and Robert Nisbet, Richard Weaver (1910-1963) was one of the leading intellectual lights of the conservative movement that emerged after the Second World War. Weaver might best be classified as a “Christian humanist” or maybe “Christian Platonist”; he believed that there was an intelligible order to reality, and…

Anti-war conservative Robert Novak has some good things (well, I think they’re good things) to say about John Bolton in his most recent column: If being a neoconservative means embracing a Wilsonian vision of bringing democracy to the world, Bolton is surely not one. He may be the last important foe of nation-building inside the…

An interesting interview with New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano. Napolitano is a staunch advocate of procedural checks on government, especially in areas of law enforcement. Some excerpts: Reason: What’s your case against the USA PATRIOT Act? Napolitano: Let’s put aside all of the procedural problems with enacting it. Forget about the fact that…

Here’s a write-up from this Sunday’s Inquirer on Ron Sider’s new book the Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience. Sider calls for Christians to recommit to living as a “countercultural community” that resists the values of the surrounding society: The drift from biblical norms toward mass-culture values of individualism and entertainment is widespread, Sider says in…

I’ve been reading a very interesting little book called Christian Anarchy: Jesus’ Primacy over the Powers by Vernard Eller (you can access the entire book online here). Eller is a theologian of the Church of the Brethren, a radical reformation church similar to the Mennonites. By “anarchy” Eller doesn’t mean political anarchy – i.e. striving…

Lots of predictable hand-wringing over President Bush’s appointment of John Bolton to the post of UN ambassador. Bolton has, after all, said things like this: “If the UN Secretariat building in New York lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” Well! In more temperate moods, Bolton has written things like this (via…

Now, how are we supposed to believe those conservatives when they tell us they are underrepresented in academia when we now have two conservative philosphy blogs? (In fairness, there does seem to be some considerable overlap in contributors – including friend of VI Bill Vallicella.) But seriously folks, the lineup at Right Reason looks good.…

Here’s a piece John Lukacs wrote last year on the increasing “militarization” of the image of the presidency. Catch anyone at the Heritage foundation writing something like this: Like the boy soldier salute, the sentimentalization of the military is juvenile. Television depictions of modern technological warfare, for example, make it seem as if a military…

John Lukacs is a grouchy European-style conservative who doesn’t go in for what he deems the populist demagoguery of the American Right. Read a profile of him here.

A debate in the American Conservative between Robert Locke and Daniel McCarthy. Locke: Libertarianism’s abstract and absolutist view of freedom leads to bizarre conclusions. Like slavery, libertarianism would have to allow one to sell oneself into it. (It has been possible at certain times in history to do just that by assuming debts one could…