Kevin Slack

Thomas More's early writings provide both a defense of his vocation in politics and a political theory for a Christian polity, attempting to harmonize Christendom with the best practicable political order. But More's A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation reflects upon this vocation in light of the anti -Christian political order. He uses the specter of Turkish tyranny sweeping into Hungary to reflect on the open persecution of Christians. Where other scholars have focused on the pedagogy, history, and theology of More's Dialogue , this paper focuses on its political teachings. More shows his readers the essence of political tribulation, the necessity of supplementing pagan philosophy and virtue with a distinctly Christian courage, and how the Christian citizen should behave in the face of death. The Christian's virtue is the source of his comfort and the bulwark for Christendom's final victory. Les premiers écrits de Thomas More offrent à la fois une défense de sa vocation en politique et une théorie politique d’une gestion chrétienne de la vie publique, en proposant d’harmoniser la chrétienté avec le meilleur ordre politique possible. Cependant, le Dialogue du réconfort dans les tribulations de More propose une réflexion sur sa vocation à la lumière d’un ordre politique anti -chrétien. Il utilise le spectre de la tyrannie turque qui a balayé la Hongrie pour réfléchir sur la persécution des chrétiens. Alors que des études antérieures se sont concentrées sur la pédagogie, l’histoire et la théologie du Dialogue de More, cet article s’intéresse à son enseignement politique. More dévoile à ses lecteurs l’essence de la tribulation politique, la nécessité de compléter la philosophie païenne et la vertu par un courage distinctement chrétien. Il montre au citoyen chrétien la bonne attitude à avoir face à la mort. La vertu du chrétien est la source de son réconfort ainsi que le rempart qui assure la victoire finale de la chrétienté.

Americans often use the wordsprogressive,liberal, andradicalmore or less interchangeably, without reference to their place in our nations history. Kevin Slack clarifies the distinct aims of the movements they represent, and weighs their consequences for the American Republic.Each of the three movements rejected older republican principles of governance in favor of an administrative state. But there were substantial differences between Teddy Roosevelts Anglo-Protestant progressive social gospelers, who battled trusts and curbed immigration; Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnsons secular liberals, who initiated government-business partnership and a civil rights agenda; and the 1960s radicals, who protested corporate influence in the Great Society, liberal hypocrisy on race and gender, and the war in Vietnam. Each movement arose in criticism of what came before.Following the revolution of the 1960s, elites on both left and right turned against the industrial middle class to erect an oligarchy at home and advance globalization abroad. Each side claimed to serve the interests of disadvantaged or underrepresented groups. Radicals ensconced themselves in bureaucracy and academia to fulfill their vision of social justice for women and minorities, while neoliberal elites promoted monopoly finance, open borders, and outsourcing of jobs to benefit consumers. The administrative state had become a global American empire, but the neoliberals economic and military failures precipitated a crisis of legitimacy. In the great awokening that began under Barack Obama, neoliberal elites, including establishment conservatives, openly broke with the populist base of the Republican Party, embraced identity politics, and used Covid-19 and myths of insurrection to strip away the rights of American citizens.Today, an incompetent kleptocracy is draining the wealthiest and most powerful people in history, thus eroding the foundations of its own empire. This book traces the rise and fall of the American Republic.

While much has been written on Benjamin Franklin's view of religion, less has been written on his Christian theology. This article first situates Franklin as an important figure in the religious Enlightenment, connecting his own view of philosophy to his teachings on Christian revelation. Providing historical context on the subscription debates, it then gives a comprehensive treatment of Franklin's Christian theology in the 1735 Hemphill affair. New scholarship on Franklin's transatlantic sources confirms that, far from attempting to undermine Christianity, he appealed to popular European writers in an attempt to bend it to reasonable ends. Moreover, Franklin's own views on church polity and liturgy developed over time. As he rose from a middling artisan to political power, he saw both the need for religious appeals and the threat that competing sects posed to political unity. His focus shifted from religious freedoms in private associations to institutionalizing elements of Christian teachings in education, charity, commerce, and defense. His experiences with rigid Presbyterian orthodoxy and chaotic New Light enthusiasm also awakened him to the need for more reasonable forms of worship, and he set to the task of experimenting with Christian liturgies to achieve both the tranquility of parishioners' minds and social unity.

This article studies sixteenth‐century Spanish colonialism solely through the lens of Foucauldian thought, using his method of genealogy to return to the debate over the indigenous' capacity for reason, and his method of archeology to assess the positive systems of law and economics, particularly the law of nations, that were formulated in response to the problems of conquest and settlement. It also offers an alternative to Foucault's own history of raison d'État, showing that its foundations of Christian pastoral discipline, police, and diplomacy, rather than rising in opposition to the Spanish Crown and the Church, defined Spain's colonial order.

Many analysts have attempted to make sense of the unexpected election of Donald Trump, but the thinker who offers perhaps the best explanation is Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes’ name has been invoked to warn of a threat to free government in an imperial presidency or a return to tribalism. But Hobbes himself is seldom read and widely misunderstood. His diagnosis of political disorders, and his remedy, can help to shed light on the diseases of the American body politic, the rise of Trump, and the cure. This essay begins with an unorthodox treatment of Hobbes as a classical liberal in Part I; its application to American politics follows in Part II.

Beginning in the 1950s, a more radical form of liberalism emerged in the academy that sowed the seeds for the sexual revolution and multiculturalism. Neo-progressivism mobilized the New Left of the 1960s, transformed American politics, and continues to dominate the cultural and political conversation today. It combines what neo-progressives call personal politics (the idea that American citizens have a right to all forms of self-expression) and cultural politics (the idea that cultural groups are entitled to special status) together as the twin pillars of a new identity politics. As a result, citizens today have more, not less, freedom from government in the realm of sexual expression, and the American electorate has been fractured into various groups.