“Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever?” —Zechariah Most nations know all too clearly what they believe about Jews. Americans are less sure. This beneficial uncertainty inheres in the two major traditions that shape American souls: Christianity and modern political philosophy. Peter Grose writes that the Puritans “identified with...
“The head rules the belly through the chest,” C. S. Lewis writes. Reason cannot rule appetites directly; it needs what the Greeks called thymos, the soul’s “spirited element,” to rule the appetites so that reason can go free. Spiritedness cares for oneself and for those like oneself. Refined, it animates patriotism, courage, honor; at its...
Bernard Malamud: The Stories of Bernard Malamud; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; New York. Isaac Bashevis Singer: The Penitent; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; New York. Morality is religion’s province. Contemporary secularists do not see this, averting their eyes from the religious sources of their own moralities. Such aversion makes a kind of sense; deprived of any...
Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin: Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism; Simon & Schuster; New York. The authors identify “the first recorded reference to Jews in non-Jewish sources” as a report an Egyptian king caused to be written 1200 years before Christ. “Israel is no more,” it boasts. Israel has proved somewhat more resilient...
Years before many Americans noticed him, France’s socialist president made a career while provoking contrary sentiments. He evidently prefers not to be understood. Conservatives governing America must nonetheless decide what to think about a ruler who supports us and opposes the Soviets in Europe while opposing us and supporting Soviet allies in Latin America. This biography...