Peter Johnston
Johnston: Let the vision live past today

What is one to think the morning after? The passion that reached its climax the night before, giving way to a hazy afterglow and eventually […]

Johnston: The soldier for the future

The oppressed rarely have weapons to combat their oppressors. The great insight of liberalism is that ideas have power. Liberalism arms the oppressed with the […]

Johnston: Liberalism, sovereignty

Since the end of World War II, and with particular intensity after the fall of the Soviet Union, national political systems the world over have […]

Johnston: The exodus of conservatism

The election of Barack Obama may mark the end of political conservatism in America. This is not to say that the Republican Party will not […]

Johnston: Secularlism foreign to Islam

Recent debate in these pages concerning the nature of secularism reflects a fundamental uncertainty within the Christian intellectual tradition. Though modern Christians are often wary […]

Johnston: The beauty of tragedy

N ietzsche describes Greek tragedy as a union of two divine forces: the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The Apollonian is found in the dream of […]

Johnston: Breeding bias

It is pretty hard to deny a leftward bias in the news media these days. On the one hand, the National Enquirer reported that the […]

Johnston: Salovey falsely revises ‘liberty’

At last Saturday’s Convocation, Dean Salovey offered a challenge and a promise to freshmen. Entitled “A Contrarian Education,” his speech challenged freshmen to depart, in […]

May Obama’s ‘patriotism’ exclude — patriots?

SIGHISOARA, Romania — Although the immediate surrounding of this medieval Saxon town monumentalizes an intimidating communist aesthetic insensitivity, the nearby countryside offers quaint pastoral scenes […]

Yale officials prolong circuitous blame game

It is becoming increasingly difficult to determine who to believe in the controversy surrounding Aliza Shvarts’ art project. On the one hand, the projects’ status […]

If autonomy justifies art, feminists ought not object

There is a brand of feminism that criticizes prostitution and pornography when the women involved participate out of economic necessity. The theory is that economic […]