Jesus said that when confronted with Caesar's coin, to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's but unto God what is God's.

We don't seek to destroy our enemies. After all, Jesus taught that our love must extend even to enemies. It's a remarkable teaching. Not to destroy enemies, but to convert hearts, to win people over to the cause of justice.

We live at a time that is notable for the polemical nature of discussions about identity, consciousness, rationality, agency, memory, and feeling. 'New atheists' and reductive materialists conduct gladiatorial debates against defenders of faith and enemies of reductionism. Lots of heat is produced, but, alas, little light is shed. How marvelous it is, then, to see this fine new book by Lenn E. Goodman and Gregory Caramenico. Here is a learned, illuminating, and decidedly non-polemical treatment of the classic questions of soul, mind, and brain-an exemplary work of scholarship.

According to the classic liberal-arts ideal, learning promises liberation, but it is not liberation from demanding moral ideals and social norms, or liberation to act on our desires-it is, rather, liberation from slavery to those desires, from slavery to self.

Although both my grandfathers encountered ethnic prejudice, they viewed this as an aberration-a failure of some Americans to live up to the nation's ideals. It did not dawn on them to blame the bad behavior of some Americans on America itself.

Jesus said that when confronted with Caesar's coin, to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's but unto God what is God's.

What the Tea Parties are standing for is constitutional principle. It's not fundamentally about tax rates or whether to have a consumption tax or an income tax. It's about adherence to Constitution and the principle of limited government.