Category Archives: State

A very enjoyable talk with Jay Dyer

Well worth listening to. We also talk about the deep roots of grievance-based, anarchical thinking in Western civilization and about my 2006 book Eight Ways to Run the Country. Trigger warning: Both very old and very new thinking here.

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Lord Sumption on Our “Empire of Fear”

Interviewed for LockdownTV by Freddie Sayers of UnHerd, Lord Sumption, a retired justice of Britain’s Supreme Court, reveals himself to be not just a jurist but a philosopher and a Christian. Here are highlights of his comments: We are living … Continue reading

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10 Things You Need to Know about Syria

It surprises me that many of my usually reasonable friends are so eager to bomb Syria over the recent gas attack and are perplexed by the unwillingness of others to “hold Syria accountable.” I have to remind myself that few … Continue reading

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Byzantine Empire — or Republic?

The textbooks say the Byzantine Empire was a theocratic autocracy uniting church and state under an all-powerful emperor believed by the Byzantines to be God’s viceroy and vicar. Nonsense, says Anthony Kaldellis, professor of classics at Ohio State University. The … Continue reading

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Christian Anarchists? How politics corrupts our conception of God

More and more often, one hears one’s friends on the Right describe themselves as “anarchists.” “Christian anarchist,” says one. “Tory anarchist,” says another. “Anarcho-capitalist,” say quite a few. But the most daring increasingly call themselves “anarcho-monarchists”—inspired, I suspect, by J.R.R. … Continue reading

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What is ‘Ethical Conservatism’?

You know you’ve hit a nerve when what you write brings a barrage of criticism from people who never should have noticed it. That’s what’s happened since The American Conservative posted my manifesto of Ethical Conservatism. In less than a week, … Continue reading

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Stray Praise for “Eight Ways”

When Eight Ways to Run the Country was published in November 2006, I missed the chance to do much publicity. Shortly after the book appeared, I took a new and very demanding job that didn’t leave time for media interviews or … Continue reading

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Religious Freedom & the Sculptors of Sirmium

Elsewhere I’ve written about a very unfortunate unintended consequence of anti-discrimination laws: They take away much of our freedom of association and with it much of our freedom of speech, because in mixed company, people must watch what they say. … Continue reading

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Good Germans, Bad Germans, and the Folly of Democratic Revolution

For more than a decade now, the United States has worked to promote democratic revolution in the Muslim world — overthrowing otherwise stable regimes to make way for democratic governments presumably better able to satisfy and thereby pacify the restless … Continue reading

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“Our present business is general woe.”

I had planned not to blog about the recent tragedy in Newtown, Conn., for two reasons: One is that I’m finishing another book and don’t have much time for much else; the other is that what one is expected to … Continue reading

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