The best of intellectual conservative thought, every Thursday
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CATEGORY: CULTURE (5 min)
Life is a battlefield
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“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,” Ronald Reagan once urged. “It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for [our children] to do the same.”
This continued battle for political and religious freedom is often fulfilled by debates in the halls of Congress and, historically, even through armed conflict. But each of us can also fight the battle
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in our own religious and social life.
Francis X. Maier tells us this in First Things while reviewing a new book called Religious Freedom After the Sexual Revolution: A Catholic Guide by Helen M. Alvaré. Maier says the book helps Americans to fight a new brand of totalitarianism, one that is different from the Communist powers Reagan fought.
Maier, summarizing Alvaré’s book, argues each religious American has a duty to reject this new totalitarianism. The personal examples we set for others by becoming role models in everyday religious
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life can change the country, little by little.
“In the end, religious freedom survives only when religious practice remains vigorous,” Maier writes.
Hear more about Alvaré’s excellent work and what Maier calls the “three pillars” of the new totalitarianism right here.
Read Now
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CATEGORY: POLICY (6 min)
Stretching their power
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President Biden’s administration has attempted many power grabs over the past two years, but one of the most overt may be the president’s plan to unilaterally force Americans to bear $400 billion in student loan debt
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. Thankfully, a Texas judge blocked the plan earlier this month, forcing Biden’s team to appeal the decision.
Writing for The American Mind, Jonathan W. Pidluzny details both the excellence of Judge Mark Pittman’s decision and the insanity of the government’s bailout plan.
The administration bases its authority to cancel debt on a decades-old law that was supposed to support the American military
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. Pidluzny says this basis is tenuous at best, and Judge Pittman agreed.
The judge applied a legal principle called the “major questions doctrine,” which forces bureaucratic agencies to find “clear congressional authorization” for any power related to a major question. Judge Pittman found no such authorization here, and he stopped the bailout plan.
Can this doctrine continue to stop the American bureaucratic glut? Pidluzny hopes so. Read his full article to find out why.
Read Now
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It's application season! Apply to one of our many programs.
George Washington Statesmanship Program
This is a 16-week fellowship. Sessions will take place on Tuesday evenings from February to May 2023. Participants will come to each session having previously viewed a 30-minute lecture and should be prepared for a 90-minute, virtual Socratic discussion with an ISI faculty member.
Participants are also expected to attend all 16 sessions as well as the weeklong trip to France during the end of June and beginning of July.
Applications for this program close on December 12, 2022.
Apply for the George Washington Statesmanship Program >>>
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Tocqueville Challenge
The Tocqueville Challenge, a student competition where teams of students chose an NGO or topic they want to work on, and with the help of company mentor, they develop a concrete solution for an issue the organization has (it can be fundraising, communication, a new program…).
Learn more about the Tocqueville Challenge >>>
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Honors
Imagine gathering with top undergraduates from across the nation for an in-depth, weeklong (and all-expenses-paid) summer conference exploring the conservative intellectual tradition, where you can experience opportunities like:
learning from, being mentored by, and forming friendships with leading professors from many different colleges across many disciplines
being invited to exclusive weekend seminars
building lifelong relationships with like-minded, intellectually curious students
joining an alumni network that includes scholars, authors, government officials, journalists, attorneys, judges, and more
That’s what the ISI Honors Program is all about.
The application deadline for the 2023 Honors Program is February 3, 2023.
Apply for our Honors Program >>>
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Because our student editors and writers are bravely bringing conservative ideas to their campuses, we’re highlighting their efforts here.
Revolutionize the Student Loan System: A Modest Proposal
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via The Chicago Thinker
Using Biblical Truths in Political Discussion
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via Cogitare Magazine
CATEGORY: PHILOSOPHY (7 min)
Going quietly into the night
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The totalitarianism that threatens America today is hardly as loud as a Soviet missile, but it might be just as dangerous. Power that sneaks in through bureaucratic regulation
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and guises itself as freedom is coming for our liberty.
Daniel Mahoney, who won ISI’s 2021 Faculty Award, reveals the invasive threat of “mild despotism” in our Intercollegiate Review archive. He goes back to Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic Democracy in America to discover that, like he did with many of America’s modern problems, Tocqueville had predicted this “mild despotism.”
One of the most insidious aspects of this threat, Mahoney writes, is that it has corrupted the very idea of freedom. Instead of the liberty to do the right thing
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and live within a moral order, freedom has become morally relativist and absolutely tyrannical in its enforcement of perceived “equality.”
Mahoney points to the authoritarian rules of Justin Trudeau’s Canadian government, the culture wars in the United States, and the constantly power-hungry European Union as modern examples of this bureaucratic tyranny.
What can we do to respond? Discover Mahoney’s solution in his full article here.
Read Now
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Thought of the Day:
“Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”
- Ronald Reagan
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