Arts & Culture

I cannot sufficiently praise and recommend American Mythos In its supple mining of data and its perspicacity about American culture and institutions it ranks with Robert Bellah rsquo s Habits of the Heart and Robert Putnam rsquo s Bowling Alone as ground-breaking interpretative social science I s

It may well be a curse rather than a blessing to be described as a religious or spiritual poet todaynot simply because in a secular or post-secular age such labels are anathema but because such designations may raise expectations of simple-minded pious jingles that are a far cry from the real thi

Baghdad is burning when Paul Bremer arrives in May 2003 It is still burning when he leaves 14 months later The fires of looters have been replaced by attacks from an insurgency that intensified during his tour of duty as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority Things get so hot in the land Br

Did the founding fathers have in mind today rsquo s roughly 500 billion-a-year federal social programs when they penned the constitutional pledge to promote the general Welfare What is the general welfare anyway and who should be its caretaker These are some of the questions Charles Murray raise

Feelings regarding race run deep in the history of New Orleans At the close of World War II returning black G I rsquo s were no longer willing to accept the many unjust racial laws or observe the many petty laws and regulations that made up daily life in the southern states A new and different c

Emilie Griffin was in her 20 rsquo s when she was received into the Catholic Church in August 1963 after what she describes as a passionate choice an upheaval and a homecoming She was drawn to the church in part because it offered the possibility of an interior life a realm in which I would be s

Some of my best friends yes I know it rsquo s a clich are labor organizers We tend to talk about the prospects of the labor movement and the conversations quickly turn gloomy The A F L -C I O now that its leader Andrew Stern and his brethren are leaving is in tatters The percentage of un

What exactly is the conservative intellectual tradition in America More troubling still what can be said who can be cited to counter Lionel Trilling rsquo s pronouncement in his preface to The Liberal Imagination 1950 that In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant

Can great artists be holy Should they even try to be holy This question has troubled many painters poets and composers for centuries Tormented by the world rsquo s imperfections uniquely susceptible to the sensual and necessarily hardened to criticism artists may be more vulnerable to particula

Some people would characterize the past five years of the Bush administration as inconceivably distasteful and disastrous For others the administration rsquo s policies are long awaited perfectly logical and admired Why such a discrepancy In American Theocracy which reads like a cross between a