You know President Trump’s politics of disruption is succeeding when political scientists begin paying attention. Aroused from their slumbers, startled profs are even revising the old syllabus and lecture notes. Many political science departments are seeing booming enrollments. What Trump means for the practice of politics has the opportunity of improving the scholarship about politics.
The recent charge that the United States was founded on slavery and racism is nothing new. It is a charge that has been leveled repeatedly—and refuted—ever since the Founding. The most decisive response, of course, was the devastating American Civil War, which freed the slaves on the basis of America’s founding proposition that “all men
President Trump’s furious admonition to four extreme leftist members of Congress to educate themselves in the miseries of their ancestral homelands was met with spiteful indignation. In the media version, innocent ingenues defended their honor and their rights against a predatory, racist president. In truth this fight is about American nationalism or patriotism
Most everyone, critics and supporters alike, who commented on the Fourth of July celebration on the Mall, missed the central point President Trump was making in his hour-long address. More important, they miss something essential about the Declaration of Independence: its nationalism. For nations to become independent, that is to give birth to
American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp last week called for Chief Justice John Roberts’ impeachment over his vote with four liberal justices to deny the Trump Administration a total victory on whether the Census could include a question on citizenship. Schlapp, whose wife Mercedes is the Trump White House communications director, goes too
If it’s true that “natural right is dynamite,” as political philosopher Leo Strauss wrote, then Justice Clarence Thomas just went nuclear on the abortion debate. While Thomas’s concurring opinion in Box v. Planned Parenthood has received considerable commentary, his deepening of the judicial and, hence, the political debate over abortion demands further elaboration.
The revival of reparations talk signals an opportunity for a serious discussion of the revival of republican self-government or strong citizenship. Instead, we get the blithe attitudes of Democrats and the grumbling about handouts from Republicans which signal the bipartisan lack of seriousness—a deficiency also characterizing disputes over immigration and “diversity.” The best
On the one hand, the second part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report reads like a brief opposing presidential powers in a separation of powers dispute. But even more, it reads like a justification for a bill of attainder or an ex post facto law—two forbidden forms of legislation in the Constitution (Article
At the passing of a priest, age 91, who was also a profound scholar and inspiring teacher, one expects to see praise of his dozens of books, hundreds of writings, 60 years’ worth of lectures, and generations of students. In the case of Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., the longtime Georgetown University political
