So many of us have felt dread, that inchoate sense that something isn’t quite right: not with our politics nor our country nor even, perhaps, our own souls. We don’t often have the language for that thing, whatever it is, but the inability to give that something a...
Politics
Building Trust Across the Political Divide
April Lawson
We are arguably living in the most polarized time since the Civil War. And what’s more, the particular variety of polarization that presently plagues our society is an especially nasty one. Two kinds of polarization are spiking: negative polarization—“It’s not that I...
We, the People . . .
Mack McCarter
This was written four years ago, in January 2017, as part of Mack McCarter’s “weekly word” to the global community of those committed to renewing our relationships from the foundations on out. We thought it appropriate to re-post today, on this Inaugural week in the States.
Robert Peel’s Policing Principles
Sir Robert Peel
These principles, attributed to the founder of London’s first modern police, were sent out in the “General Instructions” issued to every new member of the Metropolitan Police Force from its formation in 1829 onward.
Order and Justice
Susannah Black
These days it feels like we’re seeing political theology, good and bad, play out in front of our eyes: if we thought history was over and ideas didn’t have consequences, if we thought that all of this was abstract, we’re sure disabused of that notion now. Last Friday...
What Is Policing For, and How Do We Reform It?
Anthony Barr
To rebuild the public realm, we must reform the police; to do that, we should turn to the policing principles first set out in 1829 by Robert Peel: the “police” are just members of the public “who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
Justice in a Time Out of Joint
Brad Littlejohn
Trapped within his own private reality, the vigilante can no longer be sure whether he is acting to vindicate the corrupted order of public justice or merely to achieve some private catharsis.
What Is Political Authority?
Susannah Black
You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn. John Buchan, The Power-House What is government for? What is...
Openings in Our Fractured Republic
James K.A. Smith, Yuval Levin
James K.A. Smith: At the heart of your diagnosis is that we've got this contemporary penchant for nostalgia, which is a desire to return to some part of the twentieth century. Whether it's '63 or '83 or something like that, people have some golden age in mind. But...
Citizens Aren’t Just Born. They’re Formed
Kevin den Dulk
My university (yes: by press time Calvin College will be a university) recently crafted an “educational framework.” Its purpose, as I understand it, is to “operationalize” our primary mission. Three of its four categories of goals—“faith,” “learning,” and...