Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Nationalism and Populism

The Tucker Carlson-Sean Hannity showdown: Who was right?

The underlying tensions between national conservatism and a more pro-business Republican orthodoxy burst into the open during a 24-second, primetime exchange on Fox News Channel. During the hand-off between hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity on Tuesday night, Hannity seemingly rebuked his lead-in for criticizing Jeff Bezos’ fortune. Continue Reading...

‘American Factory’ manufactures a lemon

(Feb. 12, 2020) Update: American Factory wins an Oscar for best feature documentary. In accepting the award, co-director Julia Reichert told attendees at the awards ceremony, “We believe that things will get better when workers of the world unite.” Continue Reading...

Lord Acton and the two types of nationalism

Kai Weiss, Research Fellow at the Austrian Economics Center, has a new essay on Law and Liberty exploring Lord Acton’s thoughts on nationalism: A little-known 1862 work called Nationality by Lord Acton can perhaps shed new light, too, on the topic. Continue Reading...

Can a big bad state deliver us from evil?

Thirty five years ago the American novelist Thomas Pynchon asked the question, “Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite?” The occasion was the then 25th anniversary of C.P. Snow’s Rede Lecture, “The Two Cultures of the Scientific Revolution,” which argued, way back in 1959, that our culture was increasingly polarized into “literary” and “scientific” factions unable to understand each other. Continue Reading...

Italy’s usual political turmoil

I appeared on EWTN News Nightly yesterday to talk about the collapse of the Italian government. Such turmoil is nothing new in Italy. Discontent with the political class is the main reason there was a populist coalition government in the first place. Continue Reading...