Articles

[1] It is not an original thought. I heard one of the TV pundits discussing the point after the last debate; but it struck home. Over these past weeks of campaigning, the middle class has been front and center. People are losing jobs and health care. The elderly can’t get the prescription drugs they need. […]

[1] A substantial number of the forgotten issues in this election involve questions of intergenerational justice. Consider the following: Both the Hospital Insurance part of Medicare (Part A) and Social Security are headed for bankruptcy-Medicare Part A in the next few years, Social Security a few years down the road. Both are financed by taxes […]

[1] “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” As he stood in the Ellipse, my father-in-law remembers that the only thing he was really afraid on that wintry day was frostbite. But I am not worried about the weather. What concerns me is how far this country has traveled from Roosevelt’s insight. Fear has […]

[1] A basic difficulty in the application of Lutheran theological insights to the current political scene is the fundamentally static nature of much of Luther’s thinking about the relationship of state and citizen. That is, Luther’s political writings focus much more narrowly upon the duties and powers of temporal authority in general and the individuals […]

[1] It has become commonplace to observe that in this television age political campaigns tend to be reduced to sound bytes and thirty-second ads designed to project an image of the candidate or of his or her opponent. Any serious discussion of issues thus tends to be constrained by these requirements of campaign methods. [2] […]

[1] The two-realm teaching in Lutheran social ethics is something quite different from the notion of separation of church and state as it has evolved in the United States political tradition. It is Luther’s attempt to translate his law and gospel distinction to the public realm featuring the complex life of society – the province […]

[1] In our upcoming elections, these are three broad commitments that I would like all candidates to make. [2] Let’s talk about real issues: restoring a politics of substance Politics within our present context has been debased. Real policy alternatives are often not discussed or debated. It sometimes seems that “image” is almost everything. Candidates […]

[1] Jean Bethke Elshtain opens Just War against Terror by asking a simple, but crucial question. “What Happened on September 11?” is the title of the opening chapter, where she challenges her readers with two different interpretations of that terrible day in New York, Washington, D.C. and western Pennsylvania. The first is Pope John Paul […]

[1] This book was a disappointment to me, and therefore a missed opportunity. It is a disappointment in the sense that those looking for a sustained and informative treatment of the struggle against terrorism illuminated by the just war tradition will be let down- a conclusion confirmed for me by both civilians and soldiers (one […]

[1] Jean Bethke Elshtain’s Just War against Terror is her response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The original publication date was 2003, and the most recent edition also contains analysis of the initial prosecution of the Iraq war. Elshtain’s analysis is pursued from the perspective of “just war theory,” a theory that finds […]