Thomas D. Howes

Some fun news: @McGillPatterson and I have signed a contract with @ActonInstitute to write a book in which we argue that the project of postliberalism is a revival of past failed projects, and a dead end for Catholics/Christians. The tentative title: Why Postliberalism Failed.

So bad it’s numerous. Let’s fix it 1. Thomas Aquinas 2. Thomas A’Kempis 3. Thomas Reid 4. Thomas Hobbes (I say that as a Hobbes scholar. 5. Thomas Nagel (who is better on mind and teleology than Hobbes) 6. Or lower: Tommy Kuhn, whose work on the history of science is far excelled by Ed Grant. How do people not know Ed Grant is the real historian of science… 7. The lowest rung goes to the Gospel of Thomas but put the disciple Thomas at the top of the list.

@PaulRDeHart I thought Kuhn had some helpful observations, but a lot of what he said that was good was already in Michael Polanyi. Not to completely take away from his contribution. He's important, still.

smh

Looks like Orban's bid to salvage himself by generating a fake conflict with Ukraine is going about as well as his price controls, birth rate subsidy programs, and overall economic growth...

@Zheschool @thedispatch You'll like the Vichy section of our book. Good article!

My monday essay for @thedispatch

@Kit19892 Oh lol. Hadn't realized that.

@ThomasDHowes any other Thomases that are important. I can't think of any. Certainly none that have a book coming out in the near future.

It is scandalous such a dumb conspiracy theory-loving Groyper was head of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Whoever is posting for @CarriePrejean1 is running an unreconstructed version of Maurrassisme. For her, the authority of noted crank E. Michael Jones is greater than that of the successors to the Apostles, and she hopes to divide the Church on behalf by turning her audience from a devotion to Christ to a hatred of the people from which Christ was born.

Took my kids to Project Hail Mary. Beautiful.

@no_no_nanett Yeah, I'm skeptical of the legal argument but what a silly fight, concerning even

@ThomasDHowes Good question. Does CUA follow this policy generally? According to the FIRE letter, it does not.

I'm unsure of the legal claim, but I find it troubling that CUA refused to allow an event on antisemitism by Students Supporting Israel just because they didn't include a speaker with the opposing view. What is going on?

I hate having a president who celebrates when people die. Basic respect and human decency are still worth caring about, even if a large number of people have decided that’s lame and old-fashioned. I hope we recover that before long.

.@whypostlibfail

@McGillPatterson Nice!

@ThomasDHowes Yeah lol

POV: you just Penced (we are wearing the same tie)

Pope Pius IX unpublished encyclical on totalitarianism and racism, 1938

The draft of Pope Pius IX's unpublished encyclical Humani Generis Unitas, on nationalism.

Just in case anyone’s interested…been publishing on natural law and the Constitution since 2007. Started working on it in the 90s (delivering conference papers, MA thesis, dissertation)—when there were very few of us (very, very few) and people regularly told me to scrub the phrase from my CV if I wanted a tenure track job. I don’t get many invitations to speak on it. Those usually go to younger people who for the most part don’t know the earlier work done on this. But I did do some of the spadework in this area. So if you ever want a talk by someone who knows the history of reflection on natural law and the Constitution and who has done some spadework for new arguments based on its institutional design, I’m available. I’ve even spoken at Oxford in the Rothermere American Institute’s series. And my argument is that classical natural law is necessary for the intelligibility of the Constitution’s institutional design—even though the Constitution does not instantiate a mixed regime but a wholly popular one predicated on constrained majoritarianism, as Madison argues.

Chuck Norris can do a wheelie on a unicycle.