A new issue of Common-place is out, including an essay on Thomas Paine, the new atheism movement, and the European skeptic tradition. Simon Blackburn reviews The Case for God: What Religion Really Means by Karen Armstrong. A review of The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me about Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else by Christopher R. Beha (and more from Bookforum). From Sexual Intelligence, we're now punishing Ensign and Sanford for not being who we pretend we are — no one has clean hands in this affair. The nature of temptation: Why those who speak against vice so often fall for it. Matt Yglesias on Obama's Blue Dog problem. "God made the world in seven days. Respect": Twitter, it seems, is the ideal medium for both politics and philosophy. From LRC, a review of Shakedown: How Our Government Is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights by Ezra Levant; and the Ugly Canadian: Forget middle power, forget model citizen — we're becoming one of the bad kids on the block. From Taki's Magazine, Marcus Epstein on the story behind his historic battle against racial hatred and intolerance; David Gordon reviews American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile by Richard John Neuhaus; and Paul Gottfried reviews Thinkers of the Right: Challenging Materialism by KR Bolton.
