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Religion and the Constitution

This essay makes three main arguments: (1) By crafting a document that took seriously the fallibility of human nature, America’s Founders created a government that has withstood the political passions that have destroyed so many other regimes throughout human history. (2) By refusing to sanction even the hint of an official state religion in their new Constitution, the Founders encouraged Read More ›

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Brooklyn Bridge
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Evangelical Reform in Early Nineteenth Century America

To American evangelicals, the new century seemed anything but hospitable. Many Americans had stopped going to church. Some openly doubted Christianity, preferring to place their hopes in reason alone rather than a God who intervenes in human affairs. The nation’s cities were turning into havens of crime, promiscuity, and alcoholism. Radical social reformers dotted the landscape, attracting enthusiastic interest, if Read More ›

21st-Century War Economics

“The Republicans don’t have a clue how bad the economy is,” a Democratic congressional aide told us one late October night, savoring the vision of a gavel in Dick Gephardt’s hand. Then, slowly, he broke into a wide smile, like a happy hijacker dreaming of seventy succulent virgin interns awaiting him in paradise. Chiefly in the business of appraising enterprise Read More ›

Let’s change science standards and let students do real science

Should Pennsylvania’s science standards be changed? Draft language for the standards is expected to go before the state legislature early in 2001. According to standards adopted in 1998, students are expected to “know” that “organisms arose from materials and life forms of the past” because of “evidence of evolution in the form of fossils . . . embryological studies and Read More ›

Photo by Felicia Buitenwerf

Evolution Debate: Student Leads Textbook Challenge

PERKASIE, Pennsylvania (CNN) — It’s a debate that just won’t go away. The latest battleground over the teaching of evolution in public schools is in the town of Perkasie, Pennsylvania. But what makes this particular debate unique is that the campaign against teaching evolution is being led not by parents or politicians, but a high school student. Joe Baker, 19, Read More ›

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book lot on black wooden shelf
Photo by Giammarco Boscaro via Unsplash

The Roots and Remedy of Judicial Imperialism

Legal pragmatism traces its origins to the early decades of the twentieth century, when America was wrestling with the implications of Darwin's theory of evolution. Arguably the most significant impact of the Scopes trial was on legal philosophy itself. Read More ›

Where Physics and Politics Meet

Memoirs A Twentieth Century Journey in Science and Politics by Edward Teller Perseus, 544 pp., $35 EDWARD TELLER has undertaken, at the age of ninety-three, to tell the story of his life. In conducting an exercise of this sort, most men find much to admire, but little to censure in themselves. An autobiography thus tends to be an exercise in Read More ›

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Army boots close up
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Defense Gets Back to Basics

On Nov. 1, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ran an op-ed in The Washington Post, asserting that the United States must "act now to prepare for the next war, even as we wage the current war against terrorism." Read More ›