MixedThe Wall Street JournalMr. Howe is a conservative, a committed evangelical Christian and fervent anti-Trump Republican ... \'Broadly speaking,\' writes Mr. Howe, \'we have taken to confronting immorality by becoming immoral. But because our immorality is intended to stop an objectively worse immorality”—the hegemony of modern progressivism—“we reason that it is not immoral\' ... There are two glaring problems with Mr. Howe’s argument. The first is that a presidential election is not an ideal instrument with which to measure a group’s moral disposition ... The other problem is that it’s never clear who Mr. Howe’s \'we\' signifies. Sometimes he censures supposed evangelical leaders...for not only endorsing Mr. Trump in 2016 but obsequiously identifying themselves and their causes with him. That is entirely fair. At other times he speaks knowingly of what \'most\' or \'many\' evangelicals think or say. I have a strong suspicion he’s getting these impressions from Twitter, a web platform he mentions frequently.
Annette Gordon Reed and Peter S. Onuf
PanThe Wall Street JournalThe authors are accomplished scholars, yet somehow the entire book feels wrong. It’s not that they revile Jefferson. Nor do they deify their subject or attempt to turn his brilliant but inconsistent thought into a coherent philosophy. No, what Ms. Gordon-Reed and Mr. Onuf have done is something that one wouldn’t have thought possible: They’ve made Thomas Jefferson small and boring ... We may wish to praise or censure him, but the author of the Declaration worked painstakingly to express himself clearly—and that is a good bit more than the authors of this monograph can claim.
