Dostoevsky: An author for all seasons

“Conservatism,” wrote Russell Kirk, “is the negation of ideology.” Kirk’s tradition rejects ideology, because “[t]he ideologues who promise the perfection of man and society have converted a great part of the twentieth-century world into a terrestrial hell.” Continue Reading...

NHS forces mentally challenged Catholic woman to have an abortion

If it were possible to localize all the pathologies undermining the West into a single incident, a court ruling handed down on Friday might serve as the one. A British judge has ordered a young Catholic woman with “moderately severe” learning disabilities to have a second-trimester abortion against her will, in a case filed by the publicly funded National Health Service. Continue Reading...

What’s missing from the UK prime minister’s race? A British view

The 313 Conservative MPs held the second round of voting to elect the new leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister of the United Kingdom. Each of the six remaining candidates – Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Dominic Raab, Sajid Javid, and Rory Stewart – had to receive at least 33 votes to advance to the next round. Continue Reading...

A European social democrat critiques Bernie Sanders’ ’21st Century Bill of Rights’

Senator Bernie Sanders has refused to grapple with the fact that socialist governments regularly suppress human rights and devolve into despotism, according to a social democrat from Germany. Even as Sanders proposed an economic “Bill of Rights” this week, he ignored the fact that civil liberties depend on preserving “private economic initiative,” the political scientist said. Continue Reading...