By the incomparable EJ Hill: Although AWOL a lot in the last week or so--I had a cluster of Uncommon Knowledge shoots for which to research, and not one but two graduations (one from high school, the other from college) and the associated festivities for which to prepare--but may I just say thanks to everyone?  The friends I've made here on Ricochet!  A […]

Readers and listeners to President Obama’s speech today at the National Defense University, billed as a major address on terrorism policy, could be forgiven for thinking the speech just a re-hash of old policies. Believe me, Obama seemed to repeat, I really, really want to close Guantanamo Bay.  It’s true, he stressed, I really want to capture, interroga […]

From Michael Isikoff at NBC News: Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on a controversial search warrant that identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act and authorized seizure of his private emails, a law enforcement official told NBC News on Thursday.The disclosure of the attorney genera […]

I do believe there's an anniversary coming up very soon. How will you celebrate?Here is the Facebook posting: Congratulations Peter, Rob and George!  This is just excellent. […]

Now, we're finding out what's in it: Some employers are avoiding Obamacare penalties by offering “skinny” insurance plans that provide workers with minimum coverage like preventive care but little else, including benefits to help cover hospitals stays.The minimum coverage qualifies as acceptable under the new healthcare reform law, so benefit a […]

After a devastating tornado in Oklahoma killed several children at an elementary school, Reformed Baptist minister and author John Piper tweeted this: He later followed it with another tweet: “Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped” Job. 1:20.Piper thought he was being comforting. He assumed other people […]

In a sign of more to come, former CIA Director David Petraeus is being set up to take the blame for the “controversy” surrounding the Obama administration’s preposterous attempt to explain the Benghazi attack on Muslim outrage over a shoddy YouTube video.  The Washington Post has pitched the tent for this latest White House sideshow. Purporting to pres […]

This week on Uncommon Knowledge, Economist and journalist Dr. Thomas Sowell discusses his book, "Intellectuals and Race," and highlights the pervasive racist views of the Progressive era. Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson is produced by the Hoover Institution for the Wall Street Journal. […]

Back in 2004 or so, I was visiting Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. I was checking out some interfaith worship spaces there for research and attended a Sunday morning worship service. It was ... interesting. If I recall correctly, the text was Matthew 15, with the story of the Canaanite woman. The sermon, as has become a trend in recent years, was all about […]

The great Kyle Smith of the New York Post (and Ricochet) used the Twitter machine this morning to point us all toward the results of an awesome recent poll.Public Policy Polling finally got around to asking: Do Republicans and Democrats like the same music?Apparently not. PPP found "a partisan divide" in the favorability ratings of the biggest musi […]

Seems like kind of a big story that isn't being reported much: You've read the stories about Sweden's excellent health care system, innovative gender-neutral day care centers, and generous parental leave policies. But here's a story that those who would like to portray Sweden as a socialist paradise are less eager to tell: For three conse […]

Glenn Greenwald has a typically lengthy item arguing that we shouldn't describe the unspeakably violent attack on a soldier as "terrorism."An example: The US, the UK and its allies have repeatedly killed Muslim civilians over the past decade (and before that), but defenders of those governments insist that this cannot be "terrorism" […]

This technology gets more astounding by the day.Six-week-old Kaiba Gionfriddo suffered from a rare lung obstruction called bronchial malacia that made it impossible for him to breathe: With hopes dimming that Kaiba would survive, doctors tried the medical equivalent of a “Hail Mary” pass. Using an experimental technique never before tried on a human, the […]

One of the attackers had this to say after hacking a British soldier to death in broad daylight on a south London street yesterday: We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. There are a host of breathtaki […]

Direct link to MP3 file James Delingpole, voted Britain's most dangerous podcaster, returns for another edition of Radio Free Delingpole. This week, fellow Daily Telegraph blogger and educator Toby Young joins for a rousing conversation covering James' jelly wrestling critics; the Oklahoma tornadoes and global warming; the last best hope for Britai […]

Lanny Davis, the former Clinton aide -- no stranger to scandals he -- thinks that the recent surge in bad news for Democrats could have implications for 2016. Here's what he told Andrea Tantaros on her radio show, according to the Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard: The growing IRS-Tea Party scandal, which has robbed Democrats of the so-called […]

Remember when, in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack, there was a dustup over the fact that none of the culpable parties at the State Department seemed to have lost their jobs? Despite the fact that it was announced that four of them would be leaving? Given the current atmosphere in Washington, you can be forgiven if it's not the outrage at the forefr […]

Reports are emerging out of a London about a gruesome attack earlier today in which a British soldier appears to have been hacked to death with machetes in broad daylight by two men shouting "Allahu Akbar." Early details are here from theTelegraph.A news video has already been posted to YouTube as well. While the video does not show any violence or […]

Tatum Raetz' daddy couldn't make it to her kindergarten graduation. So hundreds of her adoptive daddies did.Her father, Phoenix Police Officer Daryl Raetz, was struck down in the line of duty over the weekend. While investigating a possible DUI, another driver killed him and fled the scene.As his daughter Tatum drove up to her elementary school, sh […]

So on Monday, as we all know, a tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma, destroying communities and leading to widespread fatalities. To say that this is horrifying is to understate matters.The calamity led blogger and public policy professor Michael O’Hare to write this post at the “Reality-Based Community” (try not to laugh). In its entirety, the orig […]

Naturally I appreciate the kind and intelligent attention to my ideas from Peter Lawler, Richard Reinsch, and Carl Scott.  (I would not be dismayed in the unlikely event that the term “Ralphism” caught on, though I might have suggested a term more along the lines of “the Hancockian wisdom.”  But be that as it may…) […]

Finally, as an example of such vision of substantive goods (as evoked by Roger Scruton, above), let me share a tidbit from an important essay against same-sex marriage (made world famous by the Pope’s high praise) authored by France’s chief Rabbi Gilles Bernheim.  I have just finished translating this essay, very soon to appear in […]

(This is a continuation of a post from yesterday; it will make most sense in that context.) When Maggie Gallagher answers John Corvino’s individualist argument for “gay marriage” (in Debating Same-Sex Marriage), she relies mainly on a good and important argument for man-woman marriage based upon universal human and social necessities: “Marriage is a word [.. […]

Tom West – who, I want to make clear at the outset, can easily run circles around me in his knowledge of Locke’s writings – does well to remind us of the (now) conservative, pro-family conclusions that Locke draws from his very modern philosophical premises.  And these conclusions are (or should be) still relevant to […]

(Please read my previous post first, if you haven’t.) Try to follow me here: Christianity, I was arguing, necessarily implies an ambivalence towards any moral-political culture. On the one hand, it reinforces much conventional moral content by declaring it to be the object of a divine command: Thou shalt not steal, commit adultery, etc. At […]

The essence of Christianity is to love one another, to have compassion, not to judge, but to forgive, to accept – no? Applied to politics, the implication seems obvious: unlimited tolerance, equality of lifestyles, etc: in a word, extreme liberalism. What’s wrong with this picture? Everything, conservatives will say, and they will have a point, […]

The outrage in Arizona has sparked another cycle of mutual recriminations between liberals and conservatives that points up what seems to be a growing chasm running through our political culture.   Each side sees itself as faithful to good old American principles, and sees the other side as tending (at least) towards a dangerous extremism. It […]

[The following is the preface to my forthcoming The Responsibility of Reason: Theory and Practice in a Liberal-Democratic Age (Rowman & Littlefield)] Propadeutic to a Thumotic and Erotic Ontology. This is the fanciful and facetious subtitle I used to try out on friends when asked about the book I was writing.  It was a serious […]

17-20 November 2010 A Conference Hosted by the Tocqueville Project of Brigham Young University, with Funding from The John Adams Center for the Study of Faith, Philosophy and Public Affairs and The Sutherland Institute. Is the Constitution as understood by the Founders at risk?  If so, then how so, and what caused this?  And would […]

[Conclusion of the astute synopsis by Mr. Entel, followed by his even more astute questions:] Plato, Hancock contends, enacts this yoke between being and knowing by seemingly affirming the simple superiority of theory to practice, thus suppressing the question of the relation between the good of thinking and the common good by appearing to answer […]