Too Many Excuses for Tyrants
Essay - “Despite all of this, [Robert D.] Kaplan’s analysis of the greater Middle East should not be ignored. His travels throughout this vast region across the decades give him insights into its diverse challenges that few Americans possess.” 5/3/2024
Essay - “Despite all of this, [Robert D.] Kaplan’s analysis of the greater Middle East should not be ignored. His travels throughout this vast region across the decades give him insights into its diverse challenges that few Americans possess.” 5/3/2024New Poems:
Introducing Jonathan Church’s podcast:
In Defense of the Bugmen
Essay - “But I am not interested in chiding Bronze Age Pervert—as other publications, such as National Review, have done—for his use of dehumanization. Instead, I want to offer a full-throated defense of these nasty bugmen.” 5/2/2024
Essay - “But I am not interested in chiding Bronze Age Pervert—as other publications, such as National Review, have done—for his use of dehumanization. Instead, I want to offer a full-throated defense of these nasty bugmen.” 5/2/2024Irregular Beats: The Surprising Politics of Kerouac, Burroughs, and Ginsberg
Essay - “It is hard to say whether this philosophy would have had any adherents other than Kerouac, but it would have represented something new and uplifting—a counterculture to the counterculture.” 4/30/2024
Essay - “It is hard to say whether this philosophy would have had any adherents other than Kerouac, but it would have represented something new and uplifting—a counterculture to the counterculture.” 4/30/2024For Whom the Nobel Tolls: Tomas Tranströmer’s “The Blue House” Essay - “The lines, like long, rolling ocean waves on a cold Baltic sea, create their own reasons, their own rhythm, their own understanding. Anaphora is used, as Whitman did, to summon us to the great historical pageant of life, of happenings beyond our immediate knowledge.” 4/28/2024
Essay - “The lines, like long, rolling ocean waves on a cold Baltic sea, create their own reasons, their own rhythm, their own understanding. Anaphora is used, as Whitman did, to summon us to the great historical pageant of life, of happenings beyond our immediate knowledge.” 4/28/2024Slavoj Žižek: “Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist”
Interview - “In all other religions, you have people who become atheists. Only in Christianity, God himself goes through this experience.” 4/25/2024
Interview - “In all other religions, you have people who become atheists. Only in Christianity, God himself goes through this experience.” 4/25/2024What Happened to Columbia University? Op-Ed - “Seventy years of an educational ideology steeped in ‘openness’ has wreaked havoc on the United States, and what we see at Columbia University (and at other American universities) is clear proof of that.” 4/24/2024
Op-Ed - “Seventy years of an educational ideology steeped in ‘openness’ has wreaked havoc on the United States, and what we see at Columbia University (and at other American universities) is clear proof of that.” 4/24/2024When Promoting Clean Energy, Patriotism Beats Moralizing
Op-Ed - “The debate over whether to go green is not a debate over whether to incur costs. It is a debate over which set of costs to incur, and people’s willingness to bear tangible burdens to achieve goals supported by affluent, educated progressives is limited.” 4/22/2024
Op-Ed - “The debate over whether to go green is not a debate over whether to incur costs. It is a debate over which set of costs to incur, and people’s willingness to bear tangible burdens to achieve goals supported by affluent, educated progressives is limited.” 4/22/2024Rescuing Religion from Atheism
Essay - “It seems, then, that religious practice is beneficial but unpalatable to many highly analytical people because they deem religious doctrines unpersuasive. The question therefore arises how one can make it palatable to them.” 4/21/2024
Essay - “It seems, then, that religious practice is beneficial but unpalatable to many highly analytical people because they deem religious doctrines unpersuasive. The question therefore arises how one can make it palatable to them.” 4/21/2024By the Known Rules of Ancient Liberty: A Review of Masha Karp’s “George Orwell and Russia”
Essay - “Lest I should have appeared overly critical, allow me to restate that even in this, her analysis is exceptional and that overall, George Orwell and Russia is a uniquely penetrating study of Eric Blair’s life and legacy.” 4/19/2024
Essay - “Lest I should have appeared overly critical, allow me to restate that even in this, her analysis is exceptional and that overall, George Orwell and Russia is a uniquely penetrating study of Eric Blair’s life and legacy.” 4/19/2024Reckoning with Medicine’s Unseemly Past
Essay - “How does such an advanced nation and forward-looking profession embrace ‘medicalized mass murder’ and a philosophy calling for the ‘annihilation of life unworthy of living’? How did those who pledged to follow ‘the Hippocratic tradition of healers,’ they ask, ‘become killers’?” 4/16/2024
Essay - “How does such an advanced nation and forward-looking profession embrace ‘medicalized mass murder’ and a philosophy calling for the ‘annihilation of life unworthy of living’? How did those who pledged to follow ‘the Hippocratic tradition of healers,’ they ask, ‘become killers’?” 4/16/2024Lord Conrad Black: Insights from the Ancient World Interview - “There is such a thing as progress. I am no Pollyanna, and human nature doesn’t change much, but there’s undoubtedly progress.” 4/14/2024
Interview - “There is such a thing as progress. I am no Pollyanna, and human nature doesn’t change much, but there’s undoubtedly progress.” 4/14/2024The Creases Between Utterances: Jenny Xie’s “The Rupture Tense” Criticism - “Whether [Jenny] Xie’s volume was long in the making or came out in a fiery burst (maybe both, by parts?), it is a work of substance, worthy of its current high reputation.” 4/14/2024
Criticism - “Whether [Jenny] Xie’s volume was long in the making or came out in a fiery burst (maybe both, by parts?), it is a work of substance, worthy of its current high reputation.” 4/14/2024Lessons from Machiavelli and Guicciardini for an Unstable World
Essay - “The world is in flux. November’s elections in the United States will speed up the pace of change. There is a danger that politicians across the West are positioning themselves to govern a world that will no longer exist by the time they come to power.” 4/13/2024
Essay - “The world is in flux. November’s elections in the United States will speed up the pace of change. There is a danger that politicians across the West are positioning themselves to govern a world that will no longer exist by the time they come to power.” 4/13/2024The Freedom to Be Religious as an Atheist
Op-Ed - “In other words, now that I have become an atheist, I feel free to appreciate and even dabble in various religions. To put this in terms of Waits Paradox: Once one has quit religion, he is free to be religious.” 4/12/2024
Op-Ed - “In other words, now that I have become an atheist, I feel free to appreciate and even dabble in various religions. To put this in terms of Waits Paradox: Once one has quit religion, he is free to be religious.” 4/12/2024People over Place: Reviewing “The Culture Transplant” by Garett Jones
Essay - “Any serious government would, therefore, develop and implement immigration policy with the utmost care. Instead, our governments are experimenting with unprecedented peacetime increases in immigration that further expand ethnic and cultural diversity.” 4/8/2024
Essay - “Any serious government would, therefore, develop and implement immigration policy with the utmost care. Instead, our governments are experimenting with unprecedented peacetime increases in immigration that further expand ethnic and cultural diversity.” 4/8/2024
