In “Macbeth,” Roman Polanski shows that even fidelity to Shakespeare can leave plenty of room for surprise. The film’s images capture the story’s paradoxes. April 12 was Shakespeare’s birthday. The real Shakespeare, I mean: Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. I thought a little celebrating was in order, so I watched one of the best [...]
It doesn’t take much imagination to guess what Thomas Jefferson would think of the U.S. government today, when its supposed “implied” powers are virtually infinite and nobody bothers measuring them against the powers expressly granted. When the federal government claims a new power nowadays, nobody even asks just which clause of the Constitution “implies” it. [...]
Deep political wisdom can be found in a writer who took very little interest in politics: C.S. Lewis, a scholar who achieved his greatest fame as a popular Christian writer. Lewis was sometimes laughably ignorant of current events. His friends were once amused to discover that he was under the impression that Tito, the Communist [...]