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Diplomacy of Deceit

Caleb A. Gerber

5/12/2026

Review of In the Garden of Beasts

Book Author: Erik Larson

tags: history

It was the worst of times; it was the worst of times. It was the ascent of progress; it was the ascent of depravity. It was an age of love; it was an age of love. In short, it was, as the present age, an age when the good encountered evil… and who would prevail was a question of who had the will to do so and, to a degree, who had Providence on their side.

Much has been told, and many pages filled, with the rise of isolationism at home. Few pages have been devoted to the consequences of isolationism abroad; certainly, few books have been written which have focused on the immediate consequences of isolationism in the garden of the beasts, or, even more so, in the mouth of the dragon. This book is intriguing, therefore, for the reason that it covers not an unknown period of time, but an unknown place in that period. That is not to say that there have been few works on the rise of Hitler; there haven’t. But there has been remarkably little scholarly inquiry into what the American experience was in Hitler’s Berlin.

Erik Larson, with his typical dramatic flair for the good, the bad, and the ugly, traces the lives of two main people: the American ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, and his vivacious and promiscuous daughter, only in her second decade of life, yet already divorced, the flamboyant Martha. From love affair to love affair and diplomatic meetings to diplomatic meetings, Larson shows us, in an intimate way, I mean intimate quite literally, what life was like with Hitler’s rise, and what life was becoming.

The Germans we see in this picture are not the warlike and evil geniuses of World War II, though they were fast becoming that. Rather, Hitler and his government were at a desperate point, their government hanging by a lifeline. Largely, their survival was held in the balance by international perception, and since international perception was largely dictated by the letters of the American ambassador, William Dodd was bombarded with propaganda from the moment he landed on German soil. Instead of showing Hitler, Goring, and Goebbels as idiotic madmen intent on destroying the Jewish race, Larson gives a far more accurate, and far more disturbing, portrayal of the original Nazis. Despotic men, perhaps, but they were still men, and, like all men, had a distinctly personal side. Before they were masters of war, they were masters of diplomacy, yet never, and Larson makes this very clear, did Hitler or his inner circle ever consider stopping what they considered to be in the common good, the attaining of Lebensraum, the decimation of the Jewish population, or the persecution of Bolshevik sympathizers, for the sake of scoring foreign victories. Instead of compromising for the sake of gain, they gained exactly what they wanted without giving an inch, by lying. Larson shows us one lie after another put forth by Hitler, the head of the Gestapo, or Hermann Goring. In some cases, the lies were believed by the teller, but this did not make them any truer.

Secondly, this book shows the progressive distrust inside Hitler’s own coalition. This distrust would ultimately lead to a split, with courageous yet unsuccessful men such as Franz Papen taking a stand against Hitler, and other bloodthirsty opponents of Hitler, such as the head of the sexually perverse SA, Ernst Rohm, suffering the ultimate penalty for their ambition, with the culmination of the break coming on the Night of the Long Knives.

Larson’s chief strength is his ability to show not only the political or the military, but the personal. Certainly, I wish he would have spent less time discussing the ins and outs of Martha Dodd’s love life and more time focusing on the inner turmoil of the senior Dodd’s conscience as he came to realize that he was being used, but either way, this is historical narrative at its best. Perhaps it would not be the equivalent of an academic essay or a biography of William E. Dodd; it certainly does not compare to William Shirer’s Diary from Berlin during this period, but it doesn’t have to. The point is not to show what has already been shown, but to show something new and, with it, to give a new perspective.

Perhaps the most striking and fascinating part of this book is the fact that William Dodd left the United States as an avowed Wilsonian isolationist. He desired intensely to cooperate with Germany. Martha Dodd, too, initially mocked anti-Nazi protestors. Both were skeptical of Jewish persecution, with the ambassador urging President Roosevelt repeatedly to do nothing or to calm the outrage of prominent Jewish intellectuals in America over the rise of Hitler’s antisemitic efforts. Yet by the time of Dodd’s departure, a departure which occurred precisely because the ambassador no longer believed that permanent peace with Germany was possible, Dodd had come to realize the evil of the looming threat, and its intensity. He started the journey a skeptic; he returned a convert. This was not ideological fervor that pushed him to intense criticism of Hitler and Germany; if anything, Dodd was too hesitant to realize the threat. It is through the eyes of Dodd’s family that we can realize the incompleteness and dishonesty of revisionist histories which suggest that the war was by no means a foregone conclusion, that a negotiated peace could have been settled, and that antisemitism was perhaps a fluke and not a foundation. Such a narrative has no grounds in the truth, and Larson shows it masterfully.

In the end, Dodd realized what all men must at some point realize: that, as Bonhoeffer said, “Silence in the face of evil is evil itself,” or, better yet, Burke, who stated that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Though this book is history, it is a history of a movement, a movement which could well replicate itself in our day and age, for there truly is nothing new under the sun. Perhaps Larson never intended it this way, but this book is, above all, a call to action.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

May 12th, 2026

Not by Opinion Alone

Caleb A. Gerber

5/4/2026

Review of Alito

Book Author: Mollie Hemingway

tags: politics, jurisprudence

The Supreme Court is an institution filled with history—good, bad, and ugly. It is an institution which has, in its record, handed down decisions both accurate and misguided, well-reasoned and socially legislated. Its justices have at times been well-equipped to address the deepest questions of government’s role, and in other cases, they have been people whose names will forever linger as those who failed to exercise their gift of reason, or who reasoned from faulty premises. In Mollie Hemingway’s most recent book, she does not simply give a history of a justice or a biography of Samuel Alito, but a history of the institution and a biography of the Court itself.

Hemingway has a remarkable gift for making complex subjects simple without losing their complexity. She has gone to great lengths to personally interview those who knew Alito when he was serving on the Court of Appeals, as well as those who have come to know him intimately—not only as a judge, but as a husband, a citizen, and even as a baseball fan. Her facts are well documented, and the one area where there is room for critique is not that she has under-documented the portrait she attempts to paint, but that at times she has over-documented it. In her pursuit of exactitude, she occasionally includes quotes that border on the vulgar. Notwithstanding this, it is admirable that instead of simply presenting Alito the justice, she has also shown us Alito the man.

Certainly, while always remaining within the bounds of the facts—all the facts—Hemingway has arranged them in such a way as to make the reader sympathetic to Alito and his interpretation of the law. She offers many critiques of other justices, both liberal and conservative. Sonia Sotomayor bears a large share of the blame for some of the more controversial decisions made by the Court, as does Chief Justice John Roberts. Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, and Amy Coney Barrett are presented as figures who are at times in real opposition to what Alito considers the necessary course of action. Ketanji Brown Jackson, I must admit, is treated with considerable contempt, and in this I do not disagree. Even someone as widely respected as former Justice Antonin Scalia is, at times, criticized by Hemingway through Alito. Indeed, one of the most interesting aspects of this book is that it not only shows the Court as it is now, but also as it once was, with in-depth descriptions of justices such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter. This greatly enriches the narrative, as it shows Alito in relation to others who were at times more famous, who at times outshone him, but from whom he always earned respect and admiration.

The name of Justice Samuel Alito will likely be remembered for his opinion in the decision in Dobbs, which struck down a fifty-year precedent that protected what you describe as the right of some human beings to murder other human beings. In some ways, the history of every Court since Roe v. Wade, from Rehnquist down to Roberts, has been the history of a colossal failure to adequately respond to what you view as an egregious abuse of constitutional law and constitutional telos. Samuel Alito was a young man studying at Yale when Roe was handed down. Now in his seventies, he helped to strike it from the record.

The author also devotes a significant portion of the book, intermittently, to Alito’s judicial philosophy. I was quite surprised to learn that Alito is not, as I had imagined, a pure constitutional originalist in the same sense as Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas. What Hemingway calls Alito’s “all steak, no sizzle” approach to judicial review is, she argues, his defining characteristic as a Supreme Court justice. He is, in a way, a very original originalist. Unlike Scalia, he takes a more practical approach; he believes in the Constitution and in the values it embodies, but he also believes in common sense. It is not only by reading the Constitution of the United States that we can understand Alito’s philosophy; we must also read what might be called the constitution of nature.

This practicality, without descending into a legal positivism that sees man as nothing more than a subject of law, is what gives Alito’s jurisprudence its distinctive texture. He is not content with a cold recitation of clauses, nor does he wander into the fog of untethered moral invention. Instead, Hemingway presents him as a judge who reads the Constitution with one eye on its text and the other on the enduring realities of human nature. Law, in this view, is neither an abstract game nor a malleable instrument, but a framework built for real people within a real moral order.

This should be required reading in classes on jurisprudence and the American legal system. Hemingway, in a move that is rare among explicitly biased political reporters—even on the conservative spectrum—has managed, to a remarkable degree, to stay out of the political realm, for which she deserves admiration. Certainly, she does not hesitate to call things as she sees them, or as Alito sees them, but her goal is not primarily political, and in reading this book, ours should not be either.

Review written by C. A. Gerber

May 4th, 2026

The Road and its Ditches: A Call to a Forgotten Conservatism

Caleb A. Gerber

5/1/2026

Review of What Conservatives Believe

Book Author: Mike Pence

tags: politics, leadership

Estranged from party leadership, abandoned by the populace, yet refusing to surrender, this is the final call—one which we have all heard before—from the honorable and sincere former Vice President Mike Pence. Shortly before his run for President in 1964, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater published a book titled Conscience of a Conservative. Pence’s attempt is to create anew the fervor for the truth that conservatives have embodied before and can embody again. By once more returning to these principles, believes Vice President Pence, we can return to more firm a foundation.

The book is designed much as I believe Goldwater’s work is designed, and as one would expect a political manifesto to be designed: chapter by chapter, Pence illuminates the most critical elements of policy in our day, from immigration to tariffs to the right to life. Each chapter covers a different topic, yet each is also unified in that it presents a coherent and structured worldview, one that is, surprisingly, mostly untinged by political bias. Although complete objectivity is, of course, impossible—and Pence certainly remonstrates on the accomplishments of the Trump-Pence administration of the first term—the fact that he is willing both to praise and to criticize the new Trump administration, delivering praise where it is due and criticism where it is warranted, is a refreshing break from the far more politicized, highly personal politics to which we have now become accustomed.

I began with some praise, and before moving on to the chief thesis of the book, I will offer a few short criticisms. Although much—indeed, most—of what is contained herein is true and needs to be repeated, it is exactly that: repeated. This is by no means a new message. Perhaps Pence would argue that the essence of conservatism is not that it is new, but that it is good despite, or even because of, its age. Yet that may obscure something different, namely that nearly everything Pence says has been said by him before. While reading his book, it at times reads more like an essay, or the transcription of a speech, than a new, logically structured argument. From cover to cover, I must acknowledge that this was not a read I wanted to continue, but one I felt I needed to continue because, despite its style, it was true—and because it was true, it deserves reading. I assure you that this will not become the new Pulitzer Prize–winning political treatise, regarded as groundbreaking research into the nature of politics. Likely, it will be forgotten in the recesses of a bookstore. Yet the fact remains that truth is often like that; concealed behind the guise of the ancient, or of that which is no longer popular, we seem to have embraced chronological snobbery even in our reading habits. Perhaps this book will cure us of it.

Pence’s thesis is to recall conservatives to life. He urges us to reconsider the prevalent view that conservatives are winning in America. We are not, states Pence. Although the populist right is closer to conservatism than the progressive left, Pence argues that we are not even close to being the same, and our differences should not be forgotten, even if it may be politically convenient to do so. Chapter by chapter, Pence dismantles the problems with each of the two ditches on either side of the road called sanity into which we may be tempted to stray. On the right lies populism, which for decades was seen as antithetical to conservatism, but which has today gained a foothold. On the left lies the clear and present danger that we have long acknowledged, and which still beats at our door. One interesting thought I had during the reading process is that both of these enemies bear a remarkable resemblance. Although in the modern arena they have diverged—partly because the group on the left has become far more radicalized—if traced back in history, both progressivism and populism emerged from the same source: the Democratic Party of the 1890s, followed by the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, as well as the repeated presidential candidacy of William Jennings Bryan. An important distinction that Pence makes is that populists are not necessarily fighting for the wrong things, or even for different things than conservatives; they simply have a different way of fighting for them. While conservatives must be content to wait, to abide within the system and change it from within, populists, in their search for immediate and substantial victories, undermine the systems they strive to protect, achieving short-term success at the expense of long-term prosperity. It is not that the populist right lacks principles; the problem is that at times it fails to act consistently with those principles.

This book contains a message that needs to be heard and considered. If, after reading it, you remain unconvinced, that is an acceptable outcome, but you will emerge substantially wiser and better equipped to engage in thoughtful conversation. This is not a light topic; in all seriousness, the future of our country is the subject of this work—something that should neither be gambled away nor protected so overzealously that, in defending it, we destroy that for which it stands. I believe that Vice President Pence has made his point, and made it well. After reading it, perhaps you will think otherwise; but, as I was, you will be compelled to admit that this book was written in all sincerity, with deep care and concern, and with clear-eyed vision.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

May 1st, 2026

Victory through defeat

Caleb A. Gerber

4/29/2026

Review of The Fate of the Generals

Book Author: Jonathan Horn

tags: history, biography, leadership

In times of war, there are two types of people: the victors and the losers, but is it possible that both are fighting for the same thing and against the same enemy? Is it even possible that for victory to be achieved, losses must also be sustained, losses that involve a degree of self-sacrifice, an eschewing of self-aggrandizement, and an acceptance of fate incomparable under almost any other circumstances? If so, the battle for the Philippines, during the opening shots of World War II in the Pacific theatre, is exactly such a situation, and historian Jonathan Horn has invited us to step back into time and witness for ourselves the cost of victory: the fate not only of the generals, as the title suggests, but of the nation which the generals represented.

Nearly everyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of World War II, and of the American strategy during it, exemplified by a Europe-first approach embraced by Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, has also heard of the self-serving yet brilliant general who pushed for a front that prioritized what he saw as a more immediate threat: the rising sun of a Japanese empire. Such a man was Douglas MacArthur, and in the half century since his death, his actions during both the Second World War and the subsequent Korean War, in which he would serve admirably but would be discharged dishonorably, the man’s legacy has been fiercely disputed by historians, political strategists, and military commanders alike. Two rival visions of MacArthur’s personality have overwhelmed the imagination of our time. Jonathan Horn does not take either of the two most typical approaches as regards MacArthur, either presenting him in an entirely positive or negative light or, compromising between the two and showing an image that is neither positive nor negative, but neutral. Horn avoids neutrality like the plague, painting a portrait of MacArthur that is at once entirely positive and entirely negative. Strengths and flaws become inseparable, and for once, Douglas MacArthur has come to life.

Far less common in discussions of military commanders is the story of Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, the commander left behind by MacArthur upon his retreat from the Philippines, who courageously but unsuccessfully tried to defend Bataan and Corregidor islands from an oncoming Japanese onslaught. Yet through these pages, he too comes to life, as a far less complex figure than MacArthur—perhaps it is this lack of complexity that made him vulnerable to caricature in the first place—but a figure nonetheless compelling. Loyal and true to his superiors, yet perpetually doubting his moves and struggling through the acceptance of reality and the desire to protect his troops, this is a man to admire, and Horn compels us to admire the alcoholic general who would nearly die in a Japanese POW camp.

Horn brings in the background story of both of these figures, though he spends considerably longer on MacArthur for the simple reason that he had a far longer story to tell. Using quotes from Wainwright’s diary during the war, as well as the correspondence of Douglas MacArthur, his aide Sutherland, the loyal Lew Beebe, George C. Marshall, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, this book is meticulously researched and wonderfully written. At times it is necessary to stop and contemplate the sheer beauty of the writing, despite the ugliness of the situation which it describes. Here is one example:

“They had feared the coming of the rainy season on Bataan, and now it found them midway up Luzon’s central plain, in the town of Tarlac. They had dreamed of taking showers on Corregidor, and now they struggled to keep their bunks dry. They had cursed the dust blinding their eyes, and now they saw mud and mildew everywhere. They had lain awake through bombardments, and now they tried to sleep through thunder…”

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, Horn makes this story center on the sacrifice of Jonathan Wainwright. It may appear that Horn’s purpose is to put MacArthur down; certainly, that is how some have interpreted this work, but I do not think that this is the purpose of the work, or how it should be read. Rather, Horn does not make the reader admire Wainwright and despise MacArthur, but love MacArthur because of Wainwright. Without the latter’s sacrifice, the former’s triumph would have been impossible. Without the former’s triumph, the story of the latter would never have been told. In a strange way, Wainwright completes the picture of MacArthur that we have always wanted but never had. It is by showing MacArthur’s faults that Horn has shown his greatest strength. Through the sacrifice of one, the victory of the other, and the courage of both, the nation as a whole could emerge from what Winston Churchill called its darkest hour, not unscathed, but undefeated, not as angels, but as men whose actions showed the world clearly the better angels of our nature.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

April 29th, 2026

The War That Made the Man Who Saved the West

Caleb A. Gerber

4/28/2026

Review of Hero of the Empire

Book Author: Candice Millard

tags: history

Every great man must have a formative experience that made him great. Nearly all great men are formed in some sort of conflict, a conflict that informs both their character, personality, and outlook on life. Abraham Lincoln would not today be remembered were it not for the Civil War; without the French Revolution, history would not have produced Napoleon Bonaparte; and without the Boer War, claims Candice Millard, Winston Churchill would never have become the guiding force and moral leader of Western civilization during the crucial years of World War II.

This conflict is not often remembered as a war that would make or break an empire. Certainly, although by the end of it the geographical redistribution and proportions of South Africa would have changed significantly, the geopolitical effects would be virtually null. For those outside of Great Britain and the Dutch-controlled African colonies, the Boer War, though perhaps a topic for conversation at the time, would quickly fade away and recede into distant memory, especially with the onset of World War I barely a decade after its conclusion. Yet for young Winston Churchill, the Boer War would prove to be the path to engraving his name on history. “History will remember me,” he wrote, “for I intend to write it.” During this war, he did write it, first as a reporter, then as a participant whose fate was anxiously watched by both the Boer settlers and the British aristocracy.

Candice Millard brings her characteristic clarity to the forefront of this narrative. Clearly, she has deeply researched both the South African landscape and the characters who make their appearances throughout this storyline, for both come alive in the pages of this book. Her key strength lies in her ability to make the story feel real; you, I, each one of us who reads this book becomes a player, a character whose fortune lies intertwined with that of Churchill. With hindsight in our possession, we can cringe each time that Churchill comes within inches of death; we can laugh every time he makes a prediction about the survival of the empire he so loved; we can cry as he cried for lost opportunities; and we can sweat under the South African sun, even as he sweated, all from the comfort of our living room couch.

Beginning with several previous occasions on which Churchill’s courage was tested, including at the Battle of Omdurman, when British forces under General Herbert Kitchener crushed the Mahdist forces, Millard introduces us to this young, dashing man of famous lineage, confident in his own ability to a degree that he constantly risked his life. Was the physical bravery he showed simply the product of courage, or was it a naïve belief in himself and a disregard for his own safety? Perhaps it was both. Whatever the case, Winston Churchill pressed his luck time and again, daring, as it were, destiny to do something about it. Each time he emerged the victor, and each time he showed the watching world that he was a Churchill, and that a Churchill had to be reckoned with.

There is, however, a tension in Millard’s narrative that invites critique. While her even-handed treatment lends credibility, it occasionally drifts into moral neutrality where moral clarity might have strengthened the work. Conflict, after all, is not merely a stage upon which character is displayed; it is also a test of principles. To portray both sides vividly is commendable, but to refrain from deeper judgment risks flattening the very stakes that give such conflicts their enduring significance. On the other hand, another of her strengths is her ability to bring the culture of the Boers to life. Instead of straw-manning the Boers, as Churchill and many others did at the beginning but later came to regret, Millard paints a convincing picture of independent, individualistic, yet deeply devoted Christians seeking to defend their homeland. Unlike a standing army, it was the duty of every man over the age of fifteen to participate actively in the conflict, to do his duty and protect his culture—and what a culture it was. We see Churchill through the eyes of the daring Boer leader Louis Botha, through those of the man who would eventually lead South Africa during World War II and become Churchill’s close friend, Jan Smuts, and through the eyes of the…

In the end, Churchill would escape, and his daring escape made him perhaps wiser, certainly more equipped to deal with the problems of the next half-century. When history called, as at last it would, Winston Churchill would not be standing idle; he would be walking, hand in hand with destiny.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

April 28th, 2026

Ancient monks for a modern problem

Caleb A. Gerber

4/23/2026

Review of The Benedict Option

Book Author: Rod Dreher

tags: politics, Christian, culture, leadership

Is the answer retreat? Is today’s modern liberal culture too far gone to save? Have we invested “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” in a project that is not worth the former two, much less the first? Perhaps this is not the exact, word-for-word argument that columnist Rod Dreher makes, but it certainly appears to be something close to it. In The Benedict Option, Dreher takes us back in time to examine the life and example of St. Benedict and his band of reclusive followers, arguing that the community they formed is exactly the kind of community in which we should participate—and the kind of life for which we should be willing to die.

Dreher begins his argument with intellectual history, describing the twin forces of reason and faith—represented by Athens and Jerusalem—as guiding the Church and society through the Middle Ages. It is within this context that the life of Benedict and his monks, living for Christ as a community rather than merely as individuals, takes place. Dreher continues his intellectual chronology with the thought and life of St. Thomas Aquinas. Coming from a Protestant background, I am compelled to concede the greatness and intellectual seriousness of the man who is likely the premier theologian and philosopher not only of his period but extending into the present day. One of Dreher’s most important strengths is his ability to appeal to authorities such as Aquinas when making the case for Christian philosophical realism. Nor does Dreher resort to blaming the typical villain of anti-Enlightenment Christian critiques, René Descartes. Although he mentions Descartes, Dreher critiques not his methodology but the thinkers who followed him. Rather than blaming Enlightenment figures directly for current skepticism, Dreher instead points to William of Ockham, the father of nominalism, as the source of the problem. Let me explain.

Dreher posits that two rival worldviews were at work during the High Middle Ages, which have since split philosophical discourse into two nearly unbridgeable camps. The first, Christian realism, is associated with Thomas Aquinas and, earlier, Aristotle. This view holds that real, discoverable truths exist and are grounded in God. In other words, a tree is genuinely real, present, and accessible to the senses, but ultimately ordered within a meaningful and purposeful reality. This was the dominant view for centuries following Aquinas’s death. In contrast, William of Ockham proposed nominalism—the view that things do not possess inherent reality, causality, or necessity. Reality becomes fragmented into isolated parts, and meaning is no longer embedded in the world but is instead fluid. While nominalism leaves room for God, it undermines the idea of God’s unchanging nature. For Ockham and his intellectual descendants, the qualities of nature are not necessary but contingent. God could have just as easily commanded Moses, “Thou shalt kill,” if He had so chosen. The key difference lies in the nature of meaning: for realists, meaning exists independently and is discovered; for nominalists, meaning is constructed. Dreher sees this shift as the catalyst for the modern struggle between objective meaning and subjective self. His argument is that once society rejected realism and embraced nominalism, the checks and balances that governed both society and meaning itself began to unravel, piece by piece.

The solution, Dreher proposes, is not political engagement. He argues that such efforts have failed. In a sense, he calls for retreat—perhaps into local communities, perhaps even into something resembling monastic life. However it is framed, engagement with an increasingly counter-Christian culture is not, in his view, the answer. The problem with this is that Christians are called to be the “salt and the light” of the earth. Classical teachings hold that Christians remain in the world as a counterbalance to evil. It is through engagement with a fallen world that redemption is pursued. Dreher overlooks this in his advocacy for intentional Christian communities. While such communities are not inherently wrong, his emphasis neglects a significant part of the broader picture.

Secondly, Dreher significantly overestimates the ability of community to preserve truth. While he is correct to reject the nominalism of William of Ockham, he veers toward the opposite extreme, failing to adequately account for the free will of individuals to accept or reject biblical mandates. Community, though valuable, cannot guarantee faithfulness. Because of human fallenness, no structure—no matter how well-ordered—can serve as a safeguard against error. Dreher himself concedes that community is not salvific. Yet by placing such weight on retreat and communal life, he effectively elevates it beyond its proper role, risking a subtle shift away from personal responsibility and active witness in the world.

The final problem with Dreher’s argument is that, although he is overly optimistic about humanity’s ability to achieve harmony within community, he simultaneously underestimates humanity’s capacity to act in accordance with natural law—especially when the survival of culture itself is at stake. His claim that the answer no longer lies in voting for political candidates risks creating a false dichotomy. The truth is that the answer never lay solely in political engagement. Both Christian theologians and the American founders understood that political involvement, while necessary, is not sufficient. We can agree with Dreher that “politics is not the solution,” but we must also insist that “retreat into community is not the solution either.” In avoiding one ditch, Dreher has driven into another. There have always been those who spread fear and predict impending collapse. Perhaps such collapse is near. But even if our systems are irredeemable, our institutions corrupt, and our world deeply fallen, the answer is not withdrawal. It is to stand and act—even if such action appears futile—so that we cannot be said to have remained silent.

It is important to avoid misrepresenting Dreher’s argument. He does not advocate burying our heads in the sand or withdrawing entirely from political life. In fact, he encourages continued support for causes such as the right to life, traditional marriage, and core tenets of Christian conservatism. Dreher is not unpatriotic, despite how his argument may sound. He clearly loves America and its people; more broadly, he values Western civilization and seeks to protect it from forces he believes are eroding it from within. The issue lies less in what Dreher explicitly argues and more in how his argument may be interpreted. He is correct to point out that many of our current solutions are ineffective. However, where he errs is not in diagnosing the problem, but in his response. Like others in the post-liberal movement, he risks rejecting the very system that allowed the problem to emerge—and that may still contain the means for its resolution. The problem is not classical liberalism or our system of government. Nor is it that we mistakenly believe politics alone is the solution. Rather, the problem lies in expecting too much from imperfect systems and people. It lies in demanding perfection from a fallen world and then abandoning it when that expectation is not met.

What, then, is the verdict? Is The Benedict Option worth reading? Yes—with important caveats. The book succeeds not so much in accomplishing its stated aim, where it ultimately falls short, but in establishing the necessary groundwork for a broader discussion. Dreher’s real contribution is that he forces readers to confront where things may have gone wrong and to consider possible solutions together. This conversation, as Dreher himself suggests, should take place within communities—but without idolizing community, dismissing political structures, or denying individual responsibility. The Church was not called to survive history by retreating from it, but by confronting it—generation after generation—not with certainty of victory, but with certainty of truth. That is where we must stand.

Keepers of the Flame

Caleb A. Gerber

4/21/2026

Review of Founder's Fire: From 1776 to the Age of Trump

Book Author: Arthur Herman

tags: history

They go by many names: entrepreneurs, leaders, thinkers, politicians, business moguls, or military commanders; their names litter our history books, their accomplishments are taught in every classroom that still values the true history of the American experiment. Is it possible that there is a thread connecting them all, one which can explain why those who failed failed, and why those who succeeded were able to succeed? Was success inherent to the leaders’ view of the world, in the case of those whom we now view favorably, and failure inherent in the view taken by those whom our modern eyes regard with scorn? Arthur Herman, noted historian and Pulitzer finalist, believes so.

Herman’s style is easy to engage with and understand. In other books, and in this one as well, he neither inundates the reader with facts nor devotes the entire conversation to abstract lessons, but, through a masterful combination of both, succeeds in doing that which a historian, if he is a good one, must always do: make history come alive to the reader. His sources are mostly well-documented, though there are a few errors which tend to distract from the overall experience and reduce the aesthetics of the narrative. That said, Herman has a clear thesis, which he does not change throughout the book. Sometimes, I must admit, it is difficult to understand the relevance of a certain fact to the overall thesis; perhaps it is there by design, to give a more balanced view, or perhaps it is simply there to add narrative depth, but it distracts and dilates the actual theme in a way which can become, at times, annoying.

The central claim of the book is that, in American history, those lives which are remembered for greatness are remembered precisely because of what Herman calls the “founder’s fire.” This is certainly not a political label, nor one meant to divide down party lines or even socioeconomic spectrums. In contrast to those who have a creative genius—a fire that pushes them to break the status quo, to strive for greater, newer horizons—is the managerial class; those who take over in the absence of the founder’s fire. Indeed, Herman’s claim revolves around the fact that the one leads to the other; a founder who has a vision then begins a company, or a party, or a form of government which breaks all expectations; those who come after him—or her—become preoccupied not with finding a new vision to attain, but rather with conserving the older vision. There is nothing inherently wrong with conserving the old, and this highlights a potential crisis point for Herman’s thesis, for he is a classical conservative who distrusts the progressive elite. Yet the problem, according to the author, is not in attempting to conserve the old for the sake of the old, but in attempting to conserve the old for the sake of conserving the old; in other words, the vehicle for success becomes the measure thereof, ending in a vicious cycle which can only, and has only, been broken by a new type of founder.

Herman has strong words for leaders of both parties, and leaders in all areas: economic, political, and military. Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under President Kennedy, who supervised the Vietnam War, comes under scrutiny, with Herman claiming that McNamara, despite his expertise in the industrial field, was too focused on numbers and figures and neglected the duty of the creative founder in boldly asserting his vision and mission to the task at hand. Also receiving much criticism is the erratic but still enormously successful businessman Henry Ford, whose anti-Semitic views likely precipitated the decline of his standing in the world of both business and geopolitics.

On the other hand, the story which he tells is the prototypical American story, beginning with the founders of the new nation and including oft-overlooked moments of American history which were both uncommon and determinative, such as the Patent Act. Herman then moves on to argue that the failure of the pre-Civil War leadership was in forgetting the actual vision of the American founding. It was Lincoln, with his founder’s fire, who reignited that fire and drove America to surpass previously unsurpassable limits. The story then continues with the managerial class taking over from Lincoln, embroiled in corruption and mired in economic decline; the answer was found in the captains of industry, who were at once hailed as philanthropic messiahs and Gilded Age villains. People such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt figure prominently in the narrative, as do Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and later, Henry Ford.

Herman does not conclude with the period at which most historians will typically end, that is, with the end of the Cold War. He seems not to care that the current political and economic arena is fraught with controversy, arguing that it has always been so and always will be; indeed, he uses modern proofs, such as the pro-tariff and, according to his own political views, pro-American administration of Donald Trump, as well as the remarkable progress made by people like Elon Musk in getting America closer to a landing on Mars, something unthinkable only a generation ago. Perhaps the weakest point in his narrative is the fact that he uses modern examples to prove the thesis, rather than the thesis to prove the examples. In the earlier periods of American history, this is good—admirable even—but once we enter a more controversial era, it can seem, at times, as if Herman is inviting patriotic fervor or political alliances rather than well-reasoned argumentation.

At a deeper philosophical level, one of the areas in which I see potential harm from Herman’s thesis is that he fails to distinguish between different types of progress, even while critiquing progressive politics. As an example, to prove his thesis, he uses competing personalities with competing agendas and competing worldviews to prove one central point: Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey, or Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump; they are all on the side of America because they are pushing America forward. Herman fails to convincingly answer the question: is forward the way we want to go?

The author concludes the narrative with the inspiring example of Charlie Kirk; perhaps this too may be controversial, yet his tragic death at the hand of an assassin’s bullet is clearly something that has caused many people to reconsider Kirk’s mission and lasting impact, and something which, regardless of political persuasion, we can all unequivocally condemn and wholeheartedly recognize Kirk as an extraordinary American. This is Herman at his best: calling the nation to a brighter future, a better tomorrow, a tomorrow where the founder’s torch, the fire of our heroes, lights the path ahead.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

March 21st, 2026

If Everything Is Spiritual, Is Anything True?

Caleb A. Gerber

4/15/2026

Review of Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious

Book Author: Ross Douthat

tags: culture

Believing is now fashionable for many of those in the cultural elite. In his most recent book, New York Times Opinions writer Ross Douthat makes the case for why this cultural trend should move out of the cultural elite and into the societal mainstream. This is the case for belief, belief, as it were, in the supernatural.

It is necessary at the outset for me to admit that I have enjoyed reading Douthat’s articles and have found many of his works insightful in the past. It is also quite easy to admire the purpose for which he wrote this book, namely to bring religious belief back into the public arena, not as a choice, but as a necessity. Douthat is a Catholic, and not only this, but he is quite orthodox, something which I appreciate as a conservative Protestant. Yet the problem with this book is that Douthat’s appeal is pitched too broadly.

As a book dealing with evidence of the supernatural, this one excels. Douthat takes real-life testimonies from many people, coming from all walks of life and all religious backgrounds. Taking stories of supernatural encounters from atheists as well as orthodox Christians and Catholics who have supposedly received some gift through a supernatural experience, Douthat certainly makes his point broadly and could likely convince any honest reader of the presence of the supernatural realm in everyday life. This, for the moment, leaves aside the fact that the differentiation between the natural and the supernatural realm is quite unbiblical, something which I will come to later.

In being indiscriminate in the stories which he chooses, Douthat unfortunately loses much of the moral and theological force which he would otherwise have. These are not angelic experiences alone but also include stories of electrical impulses and demonic apparitions. Douthat defines the supernatural broadly as anything which cannot be explained or explained away. Although this is a good secular definition of the word, it is not exactly one that can bear any level of Christian significance, certainly not when it is made to include experiences that border on hallucinations rather than reality. This is not to discount the reality of the spiritual realm, for Douthat does admirably in proving that such a realm must be accepted as a precondition of religious belief.

Moving on, it is necessary to touch on one important point, namely that the distinction between the natural and the supernatural is a recent one, one that would have been denied for millennia by Christian theologians and philosophers. To make that which we cannot immediately explain by the rules of nature—to be clear, reason can account for them, though the natural laws of physics cannot—unnatural, or supernatural, is to make its originator unnatural. Yet we know from the biblical account that everything that we can classify as natural proceeds from thence. Thus, even when trying to prove the existence of demonic and angelic forces, of experiences that defy explanation, and of those which cannot be accounted for except by the divine, we must be careful not to associate them with the supernatural, or the unreal. In reality, the realm of spirit is as real and as natural as the realm of matter.

Ultimately, the problem with Douthat’s explanation of the supernatural centers not on using the wrong word, a word which has by now been engraved on the social imaginary, but on treating religious experiences as universally valid. Obviously, his purpose in writing the book is not to promote a partisan religiosity, although he makes clear his own Catholic beliefs, but rather to draw everyone nearer to belief in some sort of deity. Therein lies the problem, for Douthat does not recognize, at least in this work, the fact that some belief is divine and some is deceptive. Truth gets mixed with error, the God of the Bible with the God of the mystics. Although Douthat proves that something is out there, he does not give an answer as to what is out there beyond a testimony of his personal belief.

As a book which will certainly be sold in nonreligious bookstores and will likely form a significant part of the cultural conversation for quite some time, this book is both useful and necessary to properly understand the movement toward belief in the divine. For those who are agnostic, atheist, or simply uninterested in religious experience, this should be a book that remains on their bookshelves. However, if you are searching for a book that offers not only a case for religion, but a case for the Religion, then this, unfortunately, is not it. Although perhaps a useful tool, one that indeed should be used, this book is limited in scope to the realm of inclusivity. By broadening the audience, Douthat has, alas, narrowed its sharpness as a weapon to cut down the lies of the enemy, although he has certainly provided a bulwark from which we may now launch our arrows of truth.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

March 15th, 2026

Heaven Is Not the Point

Gabriel Herrmann

4/15/2026

Review of Surprised by Hope

Book Author: N. T. Wright

tags: Christian

Wright's Surprised by Hope is one of the most clarifying and theologically bracing books a Christian can read on the subjects of resurrection, eschatology, and the Christian life. Wright, the Bishop of Durham turned prolific New Testament scholar, dismantles centuries of accumulated Platonic distortion and replaces it with a robustly biblical vision. Frankly, it is more surprising and more exciting than the thin gruel of “going to heaven when you die” that passes for Christian hope in most pews.

The heart of the book is a recovery of what Wright calls “life after life after death.” The intermediate state of the soul with God between death and resurrection is real, but it is emphatically not the destination. The destination is bodily resurrection into the new creation, the renewal and transformation of the present cosmos, not its abandonment. Wright marshals the New Testament with characteristic precision: Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, the resurrection appearances in the Gospels, the “new heavens and new earth” language of Revelation and Isaiah—all of it points to a God who redeems and transforms rather than discards.

This is positive eschatology in the truest sense. Creation is not a holding pen for souls waiting to escape; it is the theater of God’s redemptive purposes, groaning toward glorification. The resurrection of Jesus is not a proof-of-afterlife miracle standing alone; it is the first installment of the new creation breaking into the old. Christian hope, then, is not evacuation; it is the anticipation of a world made right.

This eschatological reframe has direct ethical consequences, and Wright presses them hard. If God is going to renew creation rather than incinerate it, then what Christians do in and with the physical world now genuinely matters. Work, art, justice, care for the poor, beauty—these are not distractions from the “real” spiritual business of soul-saving. They are acts of anticipation, small foretastes of the coming kingdom, contributions to what God will ultimately complete.

Wright is careful not to collapse into a social gospel; he insists the resurrection is the foundation, not political activism. But the directional thrust is clear and salutary: a Christianity that ignores the body, scorns creation, and retreats from culture has been infected by Gnosticism, not formed by the New Testament. The Christian vocation is to be “resurrection people” who live in the present order as though the future has already broken in because, in Christ, it has.

Wright's treatment of the sacraments flows naturally from his broader argument. Baptism and the Eucharist are not merely memorial ceremonies or spiritual hygiene; they are enacted declarations of the new creation. Baptism signifies dying and rising with Christ, a bodily, material act that marks the participant as belonging to the age to come. The Lord’s Supper is the place where the church meets the risen Lord in the breaking of bread, a meal that is simultaneously backward-looking (to the cross), present-tense (communion with the risen Christ), and forward-looking (the marriage supper of the Lamb).

Wright resists both bare memorialism and a rigid scholastic transubstantiation, landing in a sacramental realism that trusts the physical elements to bear genuine spiritual weight without requiring a particular philosophical mechanism to explain how. His approach is characteristically Anglican in the best sense: grounded, liturgically serious, open-handed on metaphysics, and deeply christological.

Surprised by Hope is, at its core, an argument that Christians have been telling themselves a diminished story. Wright’s corrective is not innovation but excavation, digging back to the first century to recover what the apostles actually meant when they said “Jesus is risen.” The result is a vision of hope that is larger, earthier, and more demanding than anything that fits on a bumper sticker.

Review Written by Gabriel Herrmann

March 15th, 2026

Beyond Green Pastures

Caleb A. Gerber

4/11/2026

Review of The Shepherd

Book Author: James Collins

tags: Christian

Why is it that today’s shepherds know little about sheep?

In this book, pastor and author James Collins takes our contemporary interpretations of Psalm 23 and sweeps them into the dustbin, then carefully crafts a new, and I would argue more radical, approach to how we should truly approach such a significant biblical passage.

Setting it in its context within the book of the Psalms, Collins reminds us that it is placed between two Messianic psalms. Certainly, David did not know who he was writing of when he spoke of the Shepherd, for it was indeed the Lord—but it was a specific Lord: the Lord Jesus, who had not yet been revealed in full when David wrote the now-famous words.

Moving beyond mere platitudes, Collins’ genius lies in his ability to combine deep theological lessons with Southern wit and personal experiences, without getting the reader lost either in the theological definitions of so many other works on theological matters or in making light of the things of God. In reality, when you read this book, a theological treatise is exactly what you are reading, yet you may well deny it, for it feels more like you are reading the reminiscences of a Southern preacher—which, in a way, you are.

Not only does Collins include everyday experiences and stories that impart rich practical meaning, but he also includes many symbolic details of which Christians today are woefully ignorant. It is easy to conclude, from reading this, that the author did massive research into the symbology behind the Lord as a shepherd, and he writes in this book of the many parallels between the needs of sheep and the tasks of the shepherd, in contrast to the needs of humans as sheep who need a master, and the tasks performed by the Shepherd and Master. Remarkably, the symbolism is neither stretched nor overdone, and the images portrayed do not go further than an explicitly biblical and orthodox interpretation.

That said, at times the book can feel overly simplified. This is by no means a fatal flaw, nor even an unexpected one given Collins’ pastoral aim. While the avoidance of dense theological terminology makes the work accessible, there are moments when the reader may wish for a more rigorous engagement with the underlying doctrinal issues that the text inevitably invites. Thus, my recommendation is simple: if you wish to move beyond the platitudes of normality, then this is the ideal book. If you wish to move into the profundity of theology, then this is not it. The purpose of this book is not to educate the educated, but, as I perceive it, to call the uneducated to a fuller and more accurate understanding of the truth claims of Christianity.

Collins does not offer a theological tower, but he reminds us of the base upon which such a tower must inevitably be built. It is a call for each of us to remember that only when we recognize that we are sheep can we recognize who our Shepherd is.

Review Written by C. A. Gerber

March 12th, 2026

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