Tod Lindberg, the editor of Policy Review, has just published a stunning, eye-opening, and sentence-by-sentence brilliant book called The Political Teachings of Jesus that is exactly as its title advertises. It is not a tract, nor a polemic, but a study of the political ramifications of Jesus’s own words as recorded in the Gospels. It is Lindberg’s contention that the Sermon on the Mount, in particular, is the most revolutionary document in the history of the world because it effectively created the notion of equality. You can read the book’s close study of the Beatitudes, the opening passage of the Sermon on the Mount, at Policy Review’s website. Tod and I studied with Allan Bloom a quarter-century ago at the University of Chicago, and I can’t think of higher praise than to say that Bloom (who was a rotten, mean, nasty grader) would have given Tod an A for this. Not even an A-minus.