Jonathan Witt and Jay Richards are the authors of the 2014 book The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom That Tolkien Got, and the West Forgot.
Jonathan Witt, Ph.D., is a Senior Contributor to The Stream and a senior fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. He has written many popular and academic articles, scripted three documentaries that have appeared on PBS, and is the co-author of A Meaningful World. He was the lead writer for the PovertyCure Series and the award-winning film Poverty, Inc. He also served for a time as managing editor of The Stream.
Jay W. Richards, Ph.D., is Assistant Research Professor in the School of Business and Economics at The Catholic University of America, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, and Executive Editor of The Stream. He has authored and co-authored many books, including the New York Times bestsellers Infiltrated and Indivisible, as well as Money, Greed, and God, The Privileged Planet and The Untamed God.
Director Peter Jackson’s blockbuster Hobbit trilogy, like his three Lord of the Rings films before it, has brought a resurgence of interest in the fantasy novels of J. R. R. Tolkien. Of course, Jackson’s movies did not create the Tolkien juggernaut; they merely capitalized…