n>America is a country split apart. There is little room for authentic conversation, civility, and compromise between opponents, Left and Right. Even more disturbing is the rise of ruination of dissenters as a primary tactic in political disagreement. We struggle to know who we are anymore as Americans. To articulate national unity of any kind, other than bromides to egalitarianism and rights-talk, is a rather lonely political appeal. Why then would a sixtieth-anniversary appraisal of John Courtney Murray’s We Hold These Truths (1960), a book that attempts to theorize what Murray calls the “American Proposition,” be timely or even worth reflection? At best, opponents on the Progressive Left and Post-American Right will say: this is just Catholic conservative types whistling past the graveyard of their own failures to assume intellectual leadership in conservatism, to say nothing of their larger failures to formulate America’s public philosophy, post collapse of Mainline Protestantism. “Go ahead, though, show us your museum pieces, Richard. What’s this one called? Old-school Jesuit from the Great American Auto Age.” But if we read Murray with fresh postmodern conservative eyes, in the full light of our country’s failures, we will find new wisdom to work with. Read Full Article »