The economy continues to slump, and business commentators point to fears of war as the cause of depressed stock prices and lower consumer confidence. This must be disconcerting to Marxist theorists, who claim that all wars are started by capitalists seeking profits. True, some parts of the economy w

“Sneering and snobbery,” the philosopher Mary Midgeley has written, won dominance for linguistic analysis and existentialism in 20th-century philosophy. Although an overstatement, her comment hits the mark about philosophical fashions. It points to a desperate ploy in the war of ideas. W

From being a country that once welcomed immigrants, the United States has become a nation that has raised higher and higher barriers against them. These higher walls of exclusion are having a destructive effect on would-be immigrants from around the world, but especially on the people of one of our

The welcome surprise in President Bush’s State of the Union address was his proposal for an Emergency Plan for Aids Relief. The president described the initiative as “a work of mercy beyond all current international efforts to help the people of Africa.” He asked the Congress to co

In the Western democratic tradition, debates over war and peace are recorded as far back as the Peloponnesian Wars. St. Augustine assumed, by the lights of his day, that the decision for war lay solely with the magistrate. By Shakespeare’s time, audiences had become sufficiently sophisticated

Casting a dark look over the past year, and an even darker look at what lies ahead, the U.S. mayors’ annual Status Report on Hunger and Homelessness predicts a rise in both throughout the country—an increase that, sadly, is already well under way. Released in December, the report, which