July 12, 2006
Ride On, Cowboy
By Nile Gardiner and Joseph Loconte
The ongoing crisis in Sudan has put many critics of U.S. foreign policy — particularly those who lament the Bush administration’s “cowboy diplomacy” — in ...
May 3, 2006
The Gathering Storm over Iran
By Nile Gardiner and Joseph Loconte
In the current standoff with Iran, the West is approaching what can fairly be described as another Munich moment.
March 24, 2006
Another charade at the United Nations
By Joseph Loconte and Nile Gardiner
The tragedy of the latest United Nations effort to reform its discredited Human Rights Commission, approved last week by the General Assembly, is not that ...
February 3, 2006
Relativism and Rights
By Joseph Loconte
Earlier this month the Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations, chafing over a U.S. plan to salvage the discredited Human Rights Commission, exemplified why the ...
January 3, 2006
Nearer, My God, to the G.O.P.
By Joseph Loconte
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, sounded like an Old Testament prophet recently when she denounced the Republican budget for its "injustice and ...
January 3, 2006
Fascism, Islamism, and Anti-Semitism
By Joseph Loconte
Hardly anything has infuriated certain critics of the Bush Administration more than the president's vocabulary to describe the war on terrorism. Bush warns of an ...
December 13, 2005
Conscience and Human Rights
By Joseph Loconte
For the last several years, lawmakers and activists have crossed party lines to pass landmark legislation defending human rights internationally.
November 4, 2005
Backward, Christian Soldiers
By Joseph Loconte
Peacemaking has always been a major theme in Christianity, and pacifists a strong voice within the Christian tradition. The founder of the faith, after all, ...
October 13, 2005
God's Warden
By Joseph Loconte
How Charles Colson went from Watergate villain to Christian hero.
September 28, 2005
Human-Rights Failure: Irrelevance and Ignominy at the United Nations
By Joseph Loconte and Nile Gardiner
Last week's gathering of world leaders in New York, marking the 60th anniversary of the United Nations, already looks like another forlorn triumph of rhetoric ...
September 26, 2005
Why Religious Values Support American Values
By Joseph Loconte
(Heritage Lecture #899)
The United States is a nation of breathtaking ethnic and religious diversity, with thousands of different religious groups and traditions. And yet we have sustained ...
August 18, 2005
Fatwa Frenzy
By Joseph Loconte
The vicious terrorist attacks over the last 18 months--in Spain, Egypt, Great Britain, and Iraq--appear to have Muslim organizations in the West on the defensive. ...
July 14, 2005
Prayers for Peace
By Joseph Loconte
The response to the terrorist attacks in London last week suggests something about the soul of Western democracies.
July 2, 2005
HOUSES OF WORSHIP: From Gospel to Government
By Joseph Loconte
They're the furious faithful -- the growing number of religious liberals incensed by the political influence of Christian conservatives.
June 17, 2005
A New Vision for Human Rights
By Joseph Loconte and Nile Gardiner
Two years ago a newspaper headline in Khartoum, Sudan, proclaimed that the government's human rights file was ''closed forever."
June 16, 2005
End the UN's Human Rights Hypocrisy
By Joseph Loconte
No institution offers more dreary evidence of a United Nations in crisis than its Commission on Human Rights.
May 28, 2005
The Unmentionable Freedom
By Joseph Loconte
Last month a group of Arab intellectuals released their third report in an unprecedented study of the many failures--economic, social, and political--that plague the world's ...
April 1, 2005
CS Lewis on Osama bin Laden
By Joseph Loconte
The Bush Administration argues that the spread of democracy in the Middle East is the only way to defeat the terrorist ideology of Osama bin ...
March 25, 2005
Rescue Mission:
Kofi Annan's United Nations appeal
By Joseph Loconte
Seated at the same table in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations in New York last Monday were representatives of Iran and Iraq. ...
January 24, 2005
Democracy and Anti-Semitism
By Joseph Loconte
This week the world will observe the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the concentration camp that claimed nearly a third of the six ...
January 18, 2005
The Reach of Charity
By Joseph Loconte
Despite the media attention to the tsunami in South Asia, it still barely registers with many people that the country hit hardest happens to be ...
January 3, 2005
The U.N. Sex Scandal
By Joseph Loconte
Last month a classified United Nations report prompted Secretary General Kofi Annan to admit that U.N. peacekeepers and staff have sexually abused or exploited war ...
December 26, 2004
Christmas Controversy
By Joseph Loconte
Skepticism about the Christmas story is nothing new. In the 1790s, the famous political theorist, Thomas Paine, caused a fury when he called the doctrine ...
December 22, 2004
The Battle for Baby Jesus
By Joseph Loconte
Probably no other historical figure has collected as many titles as the holy child of Bethlehem. Pacifist, holy crusader, enlightenment philosopher, Marxist revolutionary -- all ...
December 16, 2004
Churches, Charity, and Civil Society
By Joseph Loconte
A century ago, Harvard psychologist William James rocked the academic world with his insights into the potency of religious ideals and religious experience. Though a ...
December 3, 2004
Exclusion and Embrace
By Joseph Loconte
Leaders of the United Church of Christ are incensed that two TV networks, CBS and NBC, are refusing to air a commercial celebrating the denomination's ...
November 5, 2004
Prophets and Politics
By Joseph Loconte
Not long ago religious leaders such as Reinhold Niebuhr or Martin Luther King Jr. knew how to engage politically without becoming partisan priests.
October 19, 2004
Faith-based, but broad ideals
By Joseph Loconte
Politicians who invoke religion are always in for a rough ride. In his debates with Stephen Douglas over slavery, Abraham Lincoln was pilloried for his ...
September 30, 2004
Cynicism Won't Win the War In Iraq
By Joseph Loconte
If the Bush administration can be criticized for clinging to naïve assumptions about the prospects for democracy in Iraq, many of its critics now seem ...
September 30, 2004
Cynicism won't win the war in Iraq
By Joseph Loconte
The Bush administration seems to have discarded its rosy illusions about nation-building in Iraq. It's time for...
September 23, 2004
Fighting Anti-Semitism with Faith
By Joseph Loconte
Europe's Christian heritage is its deepest source of tolerance.
September 20, 2004
Sudan: Exhibit A for UN Reform
By Joseph Loconte
It's bad enough that the United Nations has dragged its feet in confronting the Sudanese government as militias have killed thousands of innocents and displaced ...
August 12, 2004
Barbarism Then and Now
By Joseph Loconte
Terrorist attacks in Iraq show that the enemies of al Qaeda include anyone supporting a decent civil society--not only Christians and Jews, but dissenting Muslims. ...
May 25, 2004
Human Rights Hypocrisy
By Joseph Loconte
We don't know yet the full extent of the damage to America's international reputation thanks to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. But one thing ...
May 25, 2004
American Politicians Go Too Far in Condemning The Abuses of Iraqi Prisoners at Abu Ghraib
By Joseph Loconte
We don't know yet the full extent of the damage to America's international reputation, thanks to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. But one thing ...
May 24, 2004
The U.N. Bloody Hands Commission
By Joseph Loconte
Among the costs of the Abu Ghraib scandal is the harm it does to America's standing as a champion of human rights--and the distraction it ...
May 14, 2004
Houses of Worship: Wilson, FDR, Truman, Bush
By Joseph Loconte
"Freedom is not America's gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world." In such declarations ...
April 1, 2004
Morality for Sale
By Joseph Loconte
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the world's most important political body devoted to human rights concerns, is halfway through its deliberations here.
March 22, 2004
Human Rights and Wrongs
By Joseph Loconte
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights begins its 60th session this week in Geneva. For the next six weeks the 53 member states will ...
February 19, 2004
Faith, hope and politics
By Joseph Loconte
Before President Bush launched his faith-based initiative, activists on both sides of the political aisle paid little attention to the nation's Good Samaritans. But since ...
February 16, 2004
God, Government and the Marriage Question
By Joseph Loconte
When the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled last November that homosexuals should have the right to marry, the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights group, claimed that ...
February 16, 2004
Religious Views Essential Part of The Debate Over The Issue of Same-Sex Marriages
By Joseph Loconte
Once again today, the lines formed at City Hall in San Francisco as the city continued issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Many had camped ...
November 24, 2003
A Mind That Grasped Both Heaven and Hell
By Joseph Loconte
Forty years ago today, as the world mourned the assassination of an American president, the passing of C.S. Lewis was hardly noticed...
October 27, 2003
The ABCs of AIDS
By Joseph Loconte
The president's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, approved by Congress earlier this year, challenges wealthy countries to focus on 14 nations, most of them in ...
October 21, 2003
A French Revolution in Iraq?
By Joseph Loconte and Nile Gardiner
Paris wants an early transfer of power in Iraq and rejects the latest American offer as "a disappointment." Many in Washington see French hubris at ...
August 26, 2003
The public square: Should it be naked or sacred?
By Joseph Loconte
The standoff between a federal appeals court and Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore over the public display of the 10 Commandments illustrates two extremes in ...
August 19, 2003
Ten Commandments
By Joseph Loconte
The standoff over the Ten Commandments illustrates two extremes in the ongoing battle to define America.
July 31, 2003
Robertson's Indefensible Doctrine
By Joseph Loconte
Most everyone, it seems, wants Charles Taylor out of war-torn Liberia. Not televangelist Pat Robertson, however.
July 7, 2003
The Importance of Believing in Charity
By Joseph Loconte
President Bush recently called on Congress to make it easier for religious charities that get federal money to hire people based on their religious affiliation. ...
June 23, 2003
The Moods of Anti-Americanism
By Joseph Loconte
The debate over the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has taken a strange turn. The Bush administration is now accused of lying ...
May 28, 2003
US Functions as World's Strongest Defender of Islam
By Joseph Loconte
In Iraq, the ongoing lack of security is slowing US rebuilding efforts and stoking resentment of American occupation forces. But commentator Joe Loconte says that ...
May 27, 2003
America: Defenders of Islam
By Joseph Loconte
It's not the United States that poses a threat to freedom and security in the Middle East. It's the Islamic extremists. If they win, freedom-loving ...
May 19, 2003
Mission: Possible
By Joseph Loconte
Mission: Possible: Joseph Loconte describes "What the Christian relief organizations are really up to in Iraq."
April 29, 2003
Anti-Liberation Theology
By Joseph Loconte
Anti-Liberation Theology: According to Joseph Loconte, some religious figures have called Operation Iraqi Freedom an "immoral" act of aggresion and have denied the destructive actions ...
April 10, 2003
The Phony Charge of Imperialism
By Joseph Loconte
The Phony Charge of Imperialism: Is America now the "new Rome" -- an unchecked imperalist power? Turns out war critics were saying much the same ...
April 8, 2003
Fighting a Just War in Iraq
By Joseph Loconte
(WebMemo #251)
The contrast between the conduct of the U.S.-led military and that of Saddam Hussein could not be more stark. It has been widely reported that ...
April 1, 2003
Onward, Christian Pacifists
By Joseph Loconte
Even with the start of the war to unseat Saddam Hussein, religious leaders continue to oppose the use of force as unnecessary and unjust. Bob ...
March 20, 2003
The Exhausting Pursuit of Peace
By Joseph Loconte
Right up to the moment President Bush issued his ultimatum to Saddam Hussein, war opponents insisted that peaceful means to disarm the Iraqi dictator had ...
March 12, 2003
Ideals & Facts
By Joseph Loconte & Dr. Nile Gardiner
As the United States and Britain prepare for a possible war against Iraq, religious leaders from both countries are waging an all-out campaign for peace. ...
January 30, 2003
The Prince of Peace Was a Warrior, Too
By Joseph Loconte
Everyone, it seems, wants Jesus on his side. Nutritionists publish books with titles like "What Would Jesus Eat?" Environmentalists issue policy statements asking "What Would ...
January 16, 2003
Even Jesus Resisted Evil, Sometimes by Force
By Joseph Loconte
The ranks of Americans protesting against military action on Iraq include intellectuals, celebrities and students. And commentator Joseph Loconte gives his opinion now of some ...
January 15, 2003
The Book of James: William James's lectures on religion, a century later
By Joseph Loconte
It's been a banner year for doubters in this season of skepticism. Religious conflict between India and Pakistan brought them close to a nuclear showdown. ...
December 21, 2002
Pro-FBI
By Joseph Loconte
Tired of partisan opposition in Congress, President Bush has issued executive orders to strengthen the role of religious organizations caring for the needy. He's now ...
December 19, 2002
The Case for Faith-Friendly Government
By Joseph Loconte
Tired of partisan opposition in Congress, President Bush has issued executive orders to strengthen the role of religious organizations caring for the needy. He's now ...
November 26, 2002
Europe's New German Problem
By Joseph Loconte and Dr. Nile Gardiner
What Gerhard Schroeder proudly calls "the German way" is actually Europe's new German problem. It's become clear that Berlin's recent break with Washington over Iraq ...
October 18, 2002
Spurning a CARE Package
By Joseph Loconte
President Bush's faith-based legislation, stalled in the Senate for months, is going nowhere this year. The reason given is that the proposal, by opening up ...
October 9, 2002
Wedding Bill Blues
By Joseph Loconte
One way or another, it seems, the status of marriage now depends on who amends the Constitution first. Marriage either will be radically redefined through ...
September 26, 2002
The Civil War: Missing in Action
By Joseph Loconte
The Civl War series is television at its best: history-telling that is intelligent, textured, personal, and deeply affecting. Ken Burns rightly argues that Americans cannot ...
September 24, 2002
Keeping the Faith
By Joseph Loconte
In a way no one anticipated, George W. Bush has shifted the national debate about the role of religion in American life. For nearly twenty–five ...
August 30, 2002
Religious Defense Taken From Work of William James
By Joseph Loconte
Religious belief has taken some pretty hard knocks in the last year, from the terrorist attacks of September 11th to the sexual abuse of young ...
August 9, 2002
The Black Fortress
By Joseph Loconte
Those who think of the war on terrorism in grand geopolitical terms should consider one of its most recent battle zones, a picturesque school in ...
August 6, 2002
Building a Culture of Character
By Matthew Spalding, Ph.D., Don Eberly, Samuel Gregg, and Joseph Loconte
(Heritage Lecture #755)
The basis of a free republic is in its upright and moral people. We must promote virtue in people in order to preserve our nation ...
May 31, 2002
The War Party's Theologian
By Joseph Loconte
President Bush used his European trip to return to a theme that has suffered some hits lately: moral clarity. "If we ignore this threat," he ...
February 7, 2002
Stop Rationalizing Evil
By Joe Loconte
For a president that few consider an intellectual heavyweight, George W. Bush is emerging as a pretty good moral philosopher. Better, at least, than many ...
December 27, 2001
The Wall Jefferson Almost Built
By Joseph Loconte
One Sunday morning during Thomas Jefferson's presidency, a friend stopped him on his way to Christ Church, then meeting on Capitol Hill. The president had ...
December 24, 2001
Rumsfeld's Just War
By Joseph Loconte
Critics of the U.S. war in Afghanistan have been wrong about virtually everything. They predicted that a Soviet-style quagmire awaited American troops; that chaos on ...
December 5, 2001
A Pothole in the Road to Welfare Reform
By Joseph Loconte
A recent survey of the nation's soup kitchens and food banks lends support to President Bush's plan to step up the work of religious charities ...
December 4, 2001
What a Relief: Good Samaritans in Afghanistan are Rescued
By Joseph Loconte
The lesson of the Taliban is two-edged: They remind us, by negative example, that the separation of church and state is a great safeguard for ...
November 21, 2001
Rejecting the Way of the Taliban
By Joseph Loconte
The dramatic rescue of eight international relief workers from Afghanistan surely will make it a happier Thanksgiving season for the two Americans in their ranks, ...
September 26, 2001
America's Good Samaritans
By Joseph Loconte
When President Bush announced in January his plan to support the work of religious organizations that help the poor, church-state watchdogs began growling. A "recipe ...
September 10, 2001
Faith No More?
By Joseph Loconte
President Bush's plan to expand the role of religious charities in providing social services got a boost with the passage of House legislation in July ...
July 30, 2001
The House Keeps Faith with Bush
By Joseph Loconte
Last week's House passage of President Bush's faith-based initiative is a significant victory for the administration in its embattled effort to broaden religious organizations' involvement ...
July 18, 2001
President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative
By Joe Loconte
President Bush's plan to promote and finance religious charities has been attacked by liberals as a ploy for government-funded religion, and by conservatives as a ...
July 1, 2001
Minister to Freedom, The Legacy of John Witherspoon
By Joseph Loconte
Given the flourishing of religion in America, it is easy to forget that political liberalism in Europe came laced with antireligious venom. It would not ...
June 12, 2001
Pushing the Envelope for Religious Pluralism
By Joseph Loconte
Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that public elementary schools may open their doors to after-school religious activities, including those that involve young children. The ...
May 22, 2001
The Right's Doubting Thomases are Wrong
By Joseph Loconte
The initiative to promote and finance faith-based charities -- given fresh impetus by George W. Bush on Sunday in his commencement address at Notre Dame ...
May 3, 2001
The Prayer of Jabez
By Joseph Loconte
Books on spirituality are popular these days, and most Americans say they pray regularly. Many citizens will pause today to participate in a National Day ...
February 2, 2001
Dual Mission
By Joseph Loconte
It was the first graduation ceremony for formerly homeless men at the Bowery Mission, and its president, Ed Morgan, felt like a rookie trapeze artist ...
February 2, 2001
Dual Mission
By Joseph Loconte
It was the first graduation ceremony for formerly homeless men at the Bowery Mission, and its president, Ed Morgan, felt like a rookie trapeze artist ...
December 21, 2000
Galileo's Daughter
By Joseph Loconte
On this day, December 21, 1614, a Florentine priest from the church of Santa Maria Novella took to his pulpit to denounce Italian astronomer Galileo ...
December 6, 2000
Faith and Freedom: The Missing Link
By Joseph Loconte
Our cliffhanger presidential race is being compared to the 1876 contest in which Rutherford Hayes lost the general election while winning, barely, in the Electoral ...
August 28, 2000
Lawmakers Should Avoid the Golden Calf
By Joseph Loconte
"The United States seems to be at once the most religious and the most secular of nations," sociologist Will Herberg wrote in his classic work, ...
June 26, 2000
Court to Schools: Not a Prayer
By Joseph Loconte
For both sides in the nation's church-state battles, the Supreme Court's recent ruling against school prayer was a bridge too far. Opponents of classroom prayer ...
December 1, 1998
The Bully and the Pulpit
By Joseph Loconte
Every day by 5 a.m., 90 of the 380 inmates at the Jester II prison outside Houston are awake and primed--not for pumping iron, but ...
March 1, 1997
The Seven Deadly Sins of Government Funding
By Joseph Loconte
Welfare reform is once again forcing upon Americans an age-old debate: How should we, as a society, care for the neediest among us? Until about ...
June 20, 1996
Restoring Religious Freedom to Public Schools
By Joseph Loconte
Parades, fireworks, barbecues -- it's that time of year when Americans celebrate their bold, 220 year-old experiment in democracy and political freedom. When it comes ...
November 20, 2009
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