Linker has a long attack on Neuhaus, his former boss, in the New Republic. (It’s the cover.) To Linker’s credit, the essay is not a collection of water-cooler gossip and so there is no danger of a he said/he said standoff developing. Instead, Linker has tried to criticize Neuhaus by looking at his writing–although it sometimes seems as though he has looked at the writing trying to find bits that could be criticized.

There are, here and there, elements of what might have been an effective critique of Neuhaus. Linker is intermittently interesting on the development of doctrine in the Catholic church, on Neuhaus’s understanding of natural law, and on the attempt by some intellectuals to portray the American Founding as a kind of accidental realization of Catholic social philosophy. (Curiously, he doesn’t mention Orestes Brownson here.)

The quality of Linker’s overall argument is, however, poor. At times–especially as his essay reaches its conclusion–it is embarrassing.