Pope Francis speaking at the Presidential Palace in Baghdad, March 5th, 2021. Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0). Any way you look at it, Pope Francis’ March trip to Iraq had the appearances of being rash and even reckless on the surface. This Mideast country has been ravaged by years of war and rocked more recently like…
Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash. When Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule published his article “Beyond Originalism” in The Atlantic last year, his critics saw it as a moment of revelation. The legal right, after decades of hiding behind the mask of proceduralism, had finally reared its true, authoritarian face. Criticism of the article, however,…
Photo by Angelina Kazakova on Unsplash. “Well, I personally think we should scrap the constitution,” current congressional candidate Michael Sisco proclaimed in December 2020 during an episode of his podcast The Michael Sisco Show. During that same episode, titled “The Republic is a Deception,” Sisco mentioned that he favors a form of Byzantine symphonia “where…
Photo by Sajjad Ahmad on Unsplash. Offering a cup of tea to a stranger is universally viewed as an act of hospitality. Except if you are a Baha’i in Iran, where this kindness can result in torture, imprisonment, or death, both for the offeror and the recipient. The danger springs from the recent escalation of a government-led propaganda campaign meant to instigate…
Photo by Alex Vasey on Unsplash. This article is part of our “At Home and Abroad” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. In this volume about the politics of American religion, Shakman Hurd and Sullivan ask readers to consider the differences between “domestic versions of religion and religious freedom”…
Photo by NASA on Unsplash. The Group of Seven nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States — agreed on June 5, 2021 to promote a new global tax system. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) announced on July 1, 2021 that 130 of the 139 countries…
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash. I. According to their nature, ideas, as purely abstract concepts, are radical intrusions into material existence. They are that which drive us to re-examine and potentially upend our lives on the basis of wholly immaterial considerations. Though there may be both conscious and unconscious gains made for a person’s…
Photo by Artem Zhukov on Unsplash. This article is part of our “At Home and Abroad” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. This essay was originally read at Columbia University’s IRCPL event on March 17, 2021. In the American Examples project at the University of Alabama, the idea of American…
Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash. Introduction The coronavirus pandemic has robbed us all of something. My brother works for the state of Texas, and he still hasn’t returned to his office, having been away for more than a year. My elderly parents caught the virus early this year. Even after recovering, they have…
Photo by Joshua Sukoff on Unsplash. This article is part of our “Reflecting on Barth, Bonhoeffer and Modern Politics” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. From his very first line, Joshua Mauldin establishes immediately what is at stake in his new thought-provoking volume Barth, Bonhoeffer, & Modern Politics: “Modern…