In American Creation Joseph Ellis, a prominent scholar of the American Revolution known for his embrace of the Sally Hemings myth (see “Tom and Sally and Joe and Fawn,” by Egon Richard Tausch, Views, March 1999), shows how serendipitously the American founding actually unfolded, hardly in accordance with the godlike clarity of vision suggested by...

Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek, portrays Andrew Jackson as one of America’s transformational presidents, including him in the company of Lincoln and the two Roosevelts.  He highlights the crucial events that took place during the 17th president’s two terms in office (1829-37), maintaining that three of those incidents effectively define him.  The first (and foremost)...

Seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) believed that God moderates reason.  That is to say, faith prevents man from falling deeply into error.  Yet the writing of this brilliant man of faith—in particular, his Discourse on Method (1637)—has encouraged a separation of faith and reason that has tended to divide human beings from the very...

John G. West is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a nonpartisan public-policy think tank that conducts research on technology, science and culture, economics, and foreign affairs.  The Institute’s Center for Science and Culture is notable for challenging various aspects of evolutionary theory—maintaining, for instance, that evolutionary biology has failed to answer many salient...

In the Catholic Church, apologetics—explaining the Faith—was on its way to becoming a lost art during the post-Vatican II era.  But thanks to Mother Angelica’s efforts on EWTN and the many classic publications emanating from Ignatius Press, this important form of evangelization has not been completely lost.  However, the uproar caused last summer by the...

Debby Applegate’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, treats a wide range of subjects: religion, politics, social upheaval, war, and clerical sex scandals.  And, while such a list might sound as if it were referring to contemporary America, the events recounted here occurred a century-and-a-half ago. ...

The appellation “monstre sacré” for Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. (1877-1964), was coined by François Mauriac, an influential Catholic litterateur and contemporary of Garrigou, suggesting the ill feelings harbored by those who found their theological or philosophical positions contradicted by Garrigou.  In this book, Fr. Richard Peddicord, O.P., associate professor of systematic theology at the Aquinas Institute,...

Gordon S. Wood’s Americanization of Benjamin Franklin is a welcome testimony to the renewed interest in America’s Founding Fathers.  Although most Americans have a clear idea as to the importance of Washington’s military role and Jefferson’s contribution in writing the Declaration of Independence, few appreciate the pivotal part Franklin played in legitimizing the Revolution among...

This book was occasioned by former Illinois Gov. George Ryan’s blanket commutation of all death sentences imposed in his state to life imprisonment without parole.  Philosopher Hugo Bedau and U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell have compiled a collection of outstanding point-counterpoint essays from leading members of the academic, legal, and political communities, discussing the validity...

Even under a “conservative” President, government entitlements continue to grow.  President George W. Bush’s expansion of Medicare to include prescription drugs will add billions to the already overinflated budget.  And, despite warnings from Alan Greenspan that Social Security is on the verge of default, neither political party is willing to address the issue.  Americans have...

The problem of evil has confounded humans throughout history.  Philosophers and theologians have perennially constructed systems and myths to assuage the perception of the contingency of life.  Religious belief, at least in Western civilization, usually filled in the gaps between the “ought” and the “is” that conflicted in the minds of those affected by the...

The recent battle over the removal of a 5,280-pound monument to the Ten Commandments placed in the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court by Chief Justice Roy Moore has deep religious and civil roots stemming from the Protestant Reformation and provides an excellent historical study of religion, law, and public policy in America. Two recent...

There will always be tension between America’s experiment with democracy and hierarchically structured Roman Catholicism, because the two proclaim different concepts of freedom.  While the former is grounded in the individualism of Protestantism and, more recently, of secularism, the latter regards true freedom as being circumscribed by claims imposed by considerations of the common good...