We have come to expect vast and manipulative public relations campaigns mounted to influence the voters, who are then supposed to exert influence on elected officials. In an empire, however, the only constituency that matters to people who want things done is the courtiers, and the only constituency that matters to the courtiers is the emperor himself.
I number myself as a drop in the flood of formerly Evangelical Protestant scholars and writers who have become Catholic in recent decades. The purpose of this post is not to boast that we are right, and I certainly don’t want to bash the Evangelical community, among whom I first heard the Gospel as a child. God bless you.
During the Constitutional ratification debates, the skeptical party worried that a state that tried to govern too many people and too much territory would inevitably degenerate into despotism. That is why they believed in keeping as much authority in the localities instead of exporting it to the top.
I’ve been waiting for Cambridge University Press to release the paperback edition of my Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Law, so that bookworms who long for it will no longer have to mortgage their firstborn children. This happy event has finally transpired; your children are safe.
Revue générale de droit 29:2 (1998). This one isn't "recent" but may be of interest nonetheless.
For those who like sweets, I’ve added three new items to the recent articles and book chapters section of the Read Articles page.
In Paul R. DeHart and Carson Holloway, eds., Reason, Revelation, and the Civic Order: Political Philosophy and the Claims of Faith (Northern Illinois University Press, 2014)
In Jesse Covington, Bryan T. McGraw, and Micah Watson, eds., Natural Law and Evangelical Political Thought (Lexington Books, 2012)
This will be the first presidential election since reaching voting age that I’ve sat out. I will not vote for either major party’s standard-bearer.