Today, Andrew Roberts considers why Winston Churchill’s critics are having a comeback moment; Peter Berkowitz identifies the values and institutions that will help America endure a period of civilizational fragility and world chaos; and Eugene Volokh examines several legal options available to religious institutions seeking to maintain religious qualifications for their employees.
Revitalizing History
Writing at The Wall Street Journal opinion page, Distinguished Visiting Fellow Andrew Roberts asks why the political far right in Britain and the United States is “targeting” Winston Churchill with derision and inaccurate revisionist narratives, attempting to cast the former UK prime minister as the chief villain of the Second World War. Roberts argues that Churchill is in the crosshairs because his “practical aims and principles as a leader of the West were directly opposed to the new strain of isolationism in America and Britain.” Roberts further notes that today’s “new revisionism is possible only because the Greatest Generation is dying out, and their sacrifice is becoming a debatable part of history rather than a lived reality.” In his essay, Roberts rebuts several popular claims regarding Churchill’s leadership during the war and shows how British “neutrality in the face of Hitler” would have led to a world “in a vastly worse place than the one that Churchill and Roosevelt helped to fashion in 1945.” Read more here.
Revitalizing American Institutions
In an essay for Civitas Outlook, Senior Fellow Peter Berkowitz reviews Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis by Robert Kaplan. Berkowitz highlights several themes from Kaplan’s book: how technology is making the world smaller and more connected; the intensification of politics due to increasing urbanization; and the “simultaneous decline” of three major great powers—the United States, China, and Russia. Berkowitz emphasizes that although Kaplan paints a grim portrait of global trends, the prolific author “rejects fatalism.” Berkowitz extends Kaplan’s argument that a rededication to the best of the classical liberal tradition in the West, focusing on constitutionalism, equality of rights under the law, and toleration “for those competing views of the good life that themselves tolerate competing views,” can help avert decline and achieve “better outcomes” for the United States and the world. As Berkowitz concludes, “The convictions and commitments that formed the United States remain essential to countering the present disorder.” Read more here.
At his Volokh Conspiracy blog, Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh considers how the US judicial system currently handles cases where religious organizations fire a non-minister employee “for violating the group’s beliefs about sex or marriage.” Volokh shows that courts have tended to apply the “ministerial exception,” or the principle that religious groups should retain “authority to select and control who will minister to the faithful,” to cases covering clearly non-ministerial employees, even when the religious defendants do not wish to claim the ministerial exception. Against this status quo, Volokh argues that “other legal tools are specifically designed to protect religious groups’ interest in maintaining religious qualifications for employment. And courts should not hesitate to use them.” Volokh concludes that in these types of cases, “religious groups have several strong, overlapping, and mutually reinforcing legal defenses, all of which point to the same conclusion: religious groups have the freedom to maintain religious qualifications for their employees.” Read more here.
Confronting and Competing with China
Visiting Fellow Matthew Turpin kicks off his weekly China Articles newsletter with his analysis of current rumors that senior Chinese diplomat Liu Jianchao has been “disappeared.” Turpin notes how Liu has been viewed by many China watchers as a potential contender for the position of foreign minister. While acknowledging the abundant uncertainty around Liu’s status, Turpin reminds readers of similar past episodes, like the 2023 purge of the “short-lived” foreign minister Qin Gang—whose reason for dismissal is still officially unclear. In Turpin’s view, the episode highlights the precarity of service in the Chinese diplomatic corps, whose members draw ongoing scrutiny from state security services because of their many interactions with foreigners beyond the watchful eye of the Chinese surveillance system. “Perhaps Liu Jianchao will emerge in a week or two . . . cleared of suspicion,” says Turpin. “But regardless of the outcome, everyone else in the Party has been reminded, yet again, of how vulnerable they are and why they need an escape hatch.” Read more here.
State and Local Governance
In a post for his Substack Environmental and Urban Economics, Visiting Fellow Matthew E. Kahn asks, “When a Superstar City elects a Socialist, does the unemployment rate go up or down?” To analyze the probable effects of a Mamdani victory in New York City’s upcoming mayoral election, Kahn posits that a socialist mayor “will strengthen rent control laws to protect tenant rights.” Citing recent research, Kahn suggests that strong protections for renters increase the unemployment rate, because covered tenants are less likely to search for work further from where they live. As he writes, “Rent control locks people in because they don’t want to lose their great deal.” Kahn then argues that progressive policies intended to help renters by providing subsidized apartments and ironclad tenant protections will actually harm the recipients of those benefits. As he concludes, “Individuals would have more option value and flexibility if they did not receive a spatial subsidy that tied them to an unproductive place.” Read more here.
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