Democracy: How Direct?
Views from the Founding Era and the Polling Era
Edited by Elliot Abrams
Posted: Tuesday, October 1, 2002
For more than two hundred years Americans have been debating how direct a democracy they want. Advocates of a powerful role for direct voting -- in which public opinion dictates public policy -- fear elitism and the usurpation of democratic rule by politicians, bureaucrats, and the rich. Advocates of representative voting fear that emotion and factional interest will undermine stability and justice. Through representation, they believe, cool-headed deliberation within institutions will prevail over popular passion.  [Read More]

The Influence of Faith
Religious Groups & U.S. Foreign Policy
Edited by Elliot Abrams
Posted: Thursday, June 28, 2001
Realists have long argued that the international system must be based on hard calculations of power and interest. But in recent years, religion’s role on the international scene has grown. The Influence of Faith examines the American reaction to the persecution of Christians and Jews overseas, as well as the role of faith-based groups such as missionary and relief organizations in the formulation and implementation of U.S. policy. The Influence of Faith considers these timely issues from diverse points of view, offering broad historical analysis as well as concrete examples taken from current affairs.  [Read More]

The Desecularization of the World
Resurgent Religion and World Politics
Edited by George Weigel, Peter Berger
Posted: Friday, July 16, 1999
For two centuries theorists of "secularization" have been saying that religion must inevitably decline in the modern world. But much of the world today is as religious as ever. This volume challenges the belief that the modern world is increasingly secular; showing that while modernization does have secularizing effects, it also provokes a reaction that more often strengthens religion. Seven expert social observers examine several geopolitical regions and several religions--Catholic and Protestant Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam--and explore the resurgence of religion in world affairs.  [Read More]

America's Imperial Burden
Is the Past Prologue?
By Ernest W. Lefever
Posted: Monday, June 1, 1998
On the cusp of a new millennium, are we Americans prepared to accept the imperial burden that history has thrust upon us? Looking back, the author argues that writ large, America, despite its internal flaws and external blunders, has borne its imperial burden with a singular sense of responsibility.   [Read More]

Close Calls
Intervention, Terrorism, Missile Defense, and 'Just War' Today
Edited by Elliot Abrams, James Turner Johnson
Posted: Monday, June 1, 1998
Just war reasoning attempts to discriminate between defensible and indefensible uses of force. It does not accept “state interest” as an unbeatable trump; it requires that moral distinctions be drawn. Here, in twenty highly readable essays, scholars and expert practitioners draw such distinctions as they ponder some of the hardest questions facing policymakers today. Commentators on the just war tradition itself and on various forms of intervention in other countries provide a wealth of insights into when the use of force is justifiable.   [Read More]

Honor Among Nations
Intangible Interests and Foreign Policy
Edited by Elliot Abrams
Posted: Wednesday, April 1, 1998
Can “intangible” interests such as national honor, morale, and reputation be deemed “vital”? Can they be considered an essential part of a policy that seeks to defend traditional security interests? Donald Kagan begins the discussion with a panoramic view of honor, interest, and the nation-state. William C. Wohlforth looks at Russia’s foreign policy since 1600 and its definition of national interests. Daniel J. Mahoney examines the foreign policy of De Gaulle’s France. And Karl Walling looks into how the early American statesmen—especially Alexander Hamilton—balanced interest and honor. Respondents are Peter W. Rodman, Charles H. Fairbanks, Jr., Francis Fukuyama, and Robert Kagan.  [Read More]

The 9 Lives of Population Control
Edited by Michael Cromartie, George Weigel, Midge Decter, Nicholas Eberstadt, Gilbert Meilaender
Posted: Monday, August 21, 1995
Does our world now have more people than it can reasonably sustain? If current growth rates continue, will overpopulation be the cause of ever-increasing hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation? Will we run out of resources? And if the world is becoming overpopulated, what is the most wise, humane, and effective response by concerned governments and organizations? These are some of the questions that engaged twenty-six scholars and practitioners at a conference sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center in October 1993. The four papers and two related responses from that conference form the nucleus of this book.   [Read More]

The Price of Prophecy
Orthodox Churches on Peace, Freedom, and Security
By Alexander F. C. Webster, George Huntston Williams
Posted: Tuesday, February 28, 1995
As Eastern Europe struggles to emerge from its Communist past, the public moral witness of its Orthodox Churches has assumed a special importance to Americans seeking a truly just world order. Yet how many Americans know what these vast and ancient Christian Churches stand for, especially on crucial issues of freedom and human rights, war and peace, and national security?   [Read More]

Idealism Without Illusions
U.S. Foreign Policy in the 1990s
By George Weigel
Posted: Tuesday, March 1, 1994
"In the tradition of John Courtney Murray and Reinhold Niebuhr, George Weigel has become one of the outstanding social critics of our time. This book of his presents a vision of American foreign policy for the 1990s which would reconcile the imperatives of Realpolitik with the moral fervor of the American culture." --Eugene V. Rostow, National Defense University  [Read More]

Might and Right After the Cold War
Can Foreign Policy Be Moral?
Edited by Michael Cromartie
Posted: Thursday, April 1, 1993
“The discussion of ethics or morality in our relations with other states is a prolific cause of confusion,” former Secretary of State Dean Acheson once asserted. The distinguished contributors to this volume—Alberto R. Coll, James Finn, Richard D. Land, Luis E. Lugo, George Weigel, and Nicholas Wolterstorff—do not deny such confusion. But they argue that moral issues are simply unavoidable in the making of foreign-policy choices. The often-heated “morality and foreign policy” debate can best illuminate the quandaries faced by policy-makers through a recovery of the classic tradition of “prudence.” This tradition encourages statecraft that is, in Coll’s words, neither “politically impractical nor morally bankrupt.”  [Read More]