What’s the Supreme Court Supposed to Do?

The Supreme Court and the American Elite, 1789–2008 by Lucas A Powe, Jr. Harvard University Press (Cambridge and London), 432 pages, paper $19.95, 2011. Sometime in 2012 the United States Supreme Court will issue its most important opinion in the twenty-first century...

Pressing On

This summer saw the passing of Otto von Habsburg, a living embodiment—perhaps the last such—of the European order swept away by the Great War. We have included a fitting tribute to the Archduke—whose son, Karl, studied with Russell Kirk as a Wilbur Fellow—by Denis...

Individual and Community—and God

The Difference God Makes: A Catholic Vision of Faith, Communion, and Culture by Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2009.This collection of essays by Chicago Archbishop Francis Cardinal George brings the resources of the Catholic...

Ancient Virtues in a Postmodern World

Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Twenty-First Century by Howard Gardner. Basic Books, 2011, 244 pp., $26. As author of Multiple Intelligences, Harvard professor Howard Gardner stands as perhaps the most celebrated, and misapplied,...

When free trade is not fair exchange

How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly—and the Stark Choices Ahead by Dambisa Moyo. London: Allen Lane, 2011, paper, 226 pages In 2009, when Zambian-born economist Dambisa Moyo published Dead Aid, her devastating analysis of the inefficacy of Western...