September 18, 2014
September 18, 2014 EPPC Briefly: George Weigel on an Ominous ‘Intermission’ in Ukraine
Featured Publication
EPPC Distinguished Senior Fellow George Weigel surveys the “ominous historical resonances” of the state of affairs in Ukraine, where “the fall of 2014 is looking ominously like the late months of 1938 and the first months of 1939.” Mr. Weigel explains the growing threat posed by Vladimir Putin and outlines “what might be done in this interim period so that 1938–39 doesn’t repeat itself.”
How to Be a Conservative: A Conversation with Roger Scruton
In an interview with Prospect magazine about his new book How to Be a Conservative, EPPC Senior Fellow Roger Scruton commends a conservatism that “distances itself always from abstract conceptions and tries to find the concrete reality…the good in the present.” Mr. Scruton argues that, for conservatives, “the most important question is what have we got, rather than what we’ve lost, and how do we keep it?”
See also Mr. Scruton’s essay explaining why conservatism “does not fit easily with abstract ideals,” and how conservatives can better articulate what they stand for.
New Publications
On the Slaughter Bench of History
In the Claremont Review of Books, EPPC Fellow Algis Valiunas surveys recent books about World War I that attempt to make sense of “the fateful qualities of character of the epoch’s leading men, the military deadlock on the Western Front, the unexampled and unimagined carnage, and the responsibility for the war’s inception and its murderous great length.”
Obama’s Diplomatic Malpractice
President Obama’s response to critics of his failed Iraq policy “betrays a prickly narcissism that precludes honest self-assessment,” observes EPPC Senior Fellow Mona Charen.
Why the College Board Demoted the Founders
EPPC Senior Fellow Stanley Kurtz explains that “the creators and defenders of the College Board’s new AP U.S. History Framework are adherents of a radically revisionist approach” in which “the Framers and the principles of our Constitutional system receive short shrift.”
Pope Benedict XVI’s 2006 Regensburg Lecture was rejected by critics, writes EPPC Distinguished Senior Fellow George Weigel, but “the results of that misunderstanding and that ignorance…are now on grisly display throughout the Middle East.”
A new book by Fox News journalist Bret Baier tells of finding joy and comfort in the face of “unexpected turns, trials, and shattered expectations,” writes EPPC Senior Fellow Peter Wehner.
Why Sweden’s Election Matters for American Conservatives
EPPC Senior Fellow Henry Olsen argues that “the rise of working-class populism is the defining feature of politics worldwide,” and that conservatives hoping to form a center-right majority should pay attention.
EPPC Senior Fellow James C. Capretta and EPPC Hertog Fellow Yuval Levin explain that Obamacare “still can be displaced by an appealing conservative alternative,” but “a replacement will need to include a transition – a bridge from Obamacare’s broken architecture to a working health financing system.”
EPPC Resident Scholar James Bowman reviews a memoir about reading Middlemarch that doesn’t contain “much original wisdom,” but nonetheless benefits from the author’s assumption “that we might have something to learn from the past.”
