Power gathers people. Some arrive through competence, some through devotion, some through accident, and some through the gravitational pull of a leader’s personality. In the modern presidency, aides often serve as extensions of the president’s habits, anxieties and information needs….
Farewell, Three Amigos
While I disagreed with Sen. Lindsey Graham on his support of what has been called “endless wars,” I found his presence and usually his comments on television news to be insightful and moving. My wife and I gave money to…
Two parallels and an outlier: Graham Platner, Roy Moore and Donald Trump
The stories of Graham Platner and Roy Moore, although unfolding in different parties and different eras, trace the same institutional pattern: Modern political parties elevate outsiders when they are useful and abandon them when they become inconvenient. Platner and Moore…
Order, mystery and the proper use of Occam’s razor
Every so often, I hear a character in a movie or a television series attempt to solve a complex problem by merely stating, “Occam’s razor!” This usually occurs without context, but like the wave of a magic wand, problem solved!…
On telling a brother he is going to hell
There is a peculiar tragedy in American Christianity today: We have become far more confident in declaring who is going to hell than in proclaiming the good news that Christ came to save sinners. The latest example comes from Texas…
How a ‘good kid’ makes a catastrophic choice
There is a particular kind of grief that settles over a community when a young person kills another young person. It is not only the grief of a life lost, but the grief of a life ruined. It is the…
The Saint Ives Riddle and the work of moral imagination
There are moments when a simple riddle reveals more about our moral life than a shelf of political theory. The old puzzle about the traveler going to Saint Ives is one of those small, durable stories that has survived precisely…
A constitutional republic, if you can keep it
Too often, when I hear or read political pundits, both conservative and liberal, refer to the United States as a “democracy,” I want to scream, “We are a constitutional republic, not a democracy!” and a few choice other words directed…
How Left and Right misuse Scripture in an age of moral confusion
Editor’s note: It is BNG’s practice, when possible, to present diverse viewpoints in our opinion section. The piece below was written at the editor’s request to represent a conservative viewpoint that will resonate with readers who consider themselves centrists and…
Witness, resolve and purpose — from the founding to MLK
History is not a tidy procession of events. It is a drama of human beings — morally mixed, hopeful and fearful, capable of courage and compromise — acting in a world that resists their intentions. To read history well is…
Pondering David Foster Wallace, lobsters and The Twilight Zone
I did not expect David Foster Wallace to unsettle my dinner plate. I have read enough of him to know he rarely leaves the reader unchanged, but Consider the Lobster struck me in a way I did not anticipate. It…
Little platoons and voluntary associations: Burke, Tocqueville and the moral architecture of belonging
There are moments in the history of political thought when two thinkers, separated by time and temperament, nevertheless circle the same human truth. Edmund Burke and Alexis de Tocqueville lived in separate centuries — Burke, 18th; Tocqueville, 19th — but…