God & Freedom
Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order
by Daniel J. Mahoney
Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2011
(208 pages, $26.95, hardcover)
God and the Atlantic
by Thomas Albert Howard
Oxford University Press, 2011
(272 pages, $45.00, hardcover)
reviewed by James Hitchcock
Daniel Mahoney’s Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order is the best single book for understanding the crisis of American democracy, which is the abandonment of the moral basis without which it cannot flourish.
Democracy requires something beyond itself, Mahoney argues, including “metaphysical claims about human nature, liberty, and natural justice” and “support for the biblical religions that have been a major source of our ethical system, one of self-restraint and . . .
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James Hitchcock is Professor emeritus of History at St. Louis University in St. Louis. He and his late wife Helen have four daughters. His most recent book is the two-volume work, The Supreme Court and Religion in American Life (Princeton University Press, 2004). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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