Since the beginning of the New Deal, American liberals have insisted that the government must do more–much more–to help the poor, to increase economic security, to promote social justice and solidarity, to reduce inequality, and to mitigate the harshness of capitalism.

In his State of the Union Address on January 26, 2011, President Obama declared, “This is our generation’s Sputnik moment. We’ll invest in clean energy technology—an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.”

Green jobs are the most recent reappearance of a perennial idea—industrial policy to [...]

Many have observed that we are living through a world historical moment of which Hegel spoke: a time when many of the traditional assumptions about the shape and future of culture are suddenly in play. As The New Criterion embarks on its fourth decade of publication, the magazine commemorates its commitment to the civilizing values [...]

The first fundamental truth about the “Arab Spring” is that there never was one. The salient fact of the Middle East, the only one, is Islam. The Islam that shapes the Middle East inculcates in Muslims the self-perception that they are members of a civilization implacably hostile to the West. The United States is a [...]

With a journalist’s grasp of events and a novelist’s ear for narrative, Melanie Kirkpatrick tells the harrowing story of the North Koreans’ quest for liberty. Travelers on the new underground railroad include women bound to Chinese men who purchased them as brides, defectors carrying state secrets, and POWS from the Korean War held captive in [...]