Why Religion Refuses to Fade Away, and How to Keep It from Doing So

April 26 2023

Poll after poll shows that ever fewer Americans are making religious belief and practice part of their lives. At the same time, many religious institutions continue to flourish, and faith plays a prominent role in public life. Are traditional Jews and Christians doomed to live as marginal minorities reliant on majority toleration? Patrick Deneen and Meir Soloveichik discuss this question and the present relationship between religion and politics in the U.S. more broadly. (Moderated by Jonathan Silver. Video, 109 minutes.)

Read more at American Enterprise Institute

More about: American Religion, Decline of religion, Democracy, U.S. Constitution

Oil Is Iran’s Weak Spot. Israel Should Exploit It

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].

Read more at UnHerd

More about: Iran, Israeli Security, Oil