Publications

The collapse of communism in central and eastern Europe–the Revolution of 1989–was a singularly stunning event in a century already known for the unexpected. How did people divided for two generations by an Iron Curtain come so suddenly to dance together atop the Berlin Wall? Why did people who had once seemed resigned to their fate suddenly take their future into their hands? Some analysts have explained the Revolution in economic terms, arguing that the Warsaw Part countries could no longer compete with the West. But as George Weigel argues in this thought-provoking volume, people don’t put their lives, and their children’s future, in harm’s way simply for better cars, refrigerators, and TVs. Something else–something more–had to happen behind the Iron Curtain before the Wall came tumbling down.

My task is to serve as a springboard for discussion of the economic thought of John Paul II. Even apart…

President George Bush said yes; some bishops said no; even Doonesbury touched on the question. But what does is mean, in any case, to say that a war is just?  What are the yard-sticks of justice that support President Bush’s claim that is was just to reverse Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait?  And how does on evaluate the justness of stopping the war when the allies did?  And what of our fierce bombing of the fleeting Iraqi troops on the road from Kuwait?  The threat to Israel?  The value of oil in weighing whether to fight or not?

Government reports of dropping GNP confirm what most forecasters a year ago said wouldn’t happen: a mild recession.  Ignoring the…

In his highly controversial 1988 book Peace and Revolution, political scientist Guenter Lewy charged that since the Vietnam era the four major American pacifist organizations—American Friends Service Committee, Fellowship of Reconciliation, War Resisters League, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom—have moved from singleminded devotion to the principles of non-violence and reconciliation to a defense of “the moral legitimacy of armed struggle and guerrilla warfare.” This provocative collection begins with a summary of Lewy’s argument. Then fifteen respondents—pacifists and non-pacifists—join the discussion. Some decry Lewy’s account as prejudiced and incomplete; others applaud it as a long overdue exposure of the subversion of a noble purpose. In a final chapter, Lewy replies to his critics.

During the last twenty years, American Catholics have been locked in a Fierce Struggle to shape not only the inner life of their church but the stance their church will take on civic and political questions.In the book George Weigel takes us to the center of that struggle, where the Left and the Right are rallying around their standards,.One side, he believes, is yielding to a Jacobin temptation of descriptive radicalism which obscures the authoritative message of the gospel.The other side is retreating to a disgruntled, world-denying posture, longing for the restoration of a bygone and largely mythical age.

The “surprise” jump in producer and consumer price inflation is not a surprise when you understand the political and economic…

It is now less than a year until the 1988 election, and we therefore end our self-imposed silence on matters…

  AMERICAN PURPOSE is not your basic holiday greeting card. But if it were, we would want to use William…

The Central American peace plan negotiated in August 1987 by the presidents of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and…

The debate over a treaty eliminating medium and short-range (INF) missiles in Europe will surely be another hot item in…

  AMERICAN PURPOSE has not been hesitant to criticize those voices in the American religious community whose approach to “work…