As of late, many on the right have been filled with dread that the recent assassination of Osama bin Laden will increase Barack Obama’s chances of being re-elected.  On the one hand, this concern is legitimate enough, for bin Laden’s is the face of  the world’s most infamous terrorist, a monster that, in spite of…

Ours is a generation obsessed with “principles.”  That the morality of the age is centered in principles accounts for why we tend to characterize the morally admirable person as a man or woman of principle.  Principles are critical to any morality, for sure, but it is just as critical for us to recognize that these…

Contrary to atheistic boilerplate, Christianity is anything but a crutch for the weak minded and timid hearted.  Christians have gone to great lengths over the centuries to show that, while reason is no substitute for faith, and while it can never occupy anything other than a subordinate position with respect to the latter, reason can…

From Michel Montaigne and Blaise Pascal to David Hume and Edmund Burke, some of Western civilization’s most insightful philosophers have long noted the ease with which people mistake the longevity and stubbornness of habit with nature itself.  While the expression “second nature” as a characterization of habit is common enough, the great difficulty of severing…

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