“To understand India’s slippery descent, one should read the reportage of Neha Dixit, a 37-year-old New Delhi-based freelance journalist.”
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Category: The Left
Excerpt: “Moral Courage: 19 Profiles of Investigative Journalists”
Excerpt: “Getting Elected Is the Easy Part”
“Although an overt threat is never clearly articulated, the potential for serious political consequences makes it all the more trepidatious to consider crossing the aisle on a big bill where every vote is counted and closely watched.”
Samuel G. Freedman: What a Young Hubert Humphrey Can Teach Us
“Humphrey’s insurgency at the convention basically lashed Truman to the mast of [Humphrey’s] own civil rights agenda. And desegregating the armed forces was arguably the single most important civil rights cause of that moment in time.”
Matt Johnson: “How Hitchens Can Save the Left”
“There really hasn’t been anybody like him since he passed…This is why there are these long compilations of ‘Hitchslaps’ on YouTube. It’s why most of the tributes to him focus on his rhetorical prowess—and just his brilliance on the debate stage.”
The Russo-Ukrainian War: A Very Simple Conflict
“The Rada’s final decree is a reproach to all those who think of Ukraine as nothing more than an appendage of Russia, without a culture and a history of its own.”
Excerpt: “How Hitchens Can Save the Left”
“When he saw his old left-wing comrades busily hatching excuses for neutrality as Slobodan Milošević waged war on Bosnia, he realized that much of the Left was either indifferent about this confrontation or on the wrong side.”
On Literary Science and the Bounds of Knowledge
“But philistinism is not limited to the arts. I believe that those who cannot appreciate the wondrous beauty of the real world as revealed by science are philistines, too.”
Review: “How Hitchens Can Save the Left” by Matt Johnson
“[Matt] Johnson believes that by adopting [Christopher] Hitchens’s approach—his allergy to party politics, his hatred of racism and nationalism, his emphasis on pluralism and humanism—the contemporary left will not just benefit at the ballot box but will also benefit morally and intellectually.”
Stop Pretending All Cultures Are the Same
“So I will say it with my heart, and others should too: If a culture persecutes LGBT people, is overtly racist, or makes women second class citizens, then to hell with that culture. My culture is better than that one.”
The Case for Retiring “Confederate Heroes Day”
“As we come to know more about the morally repulsive aspects of our national history—and, more importantly, face those realities—removing symbols of our collective failure in the past is not an attempt to deny our history. Rather, it is a sign of growth, a willingness to face our history.”
COVID-19 and the Banality of Evil
“Compulsory obedience can especially be seen in how the Democratic Party has changed since the election of President Biden in 2020. Before he entered office, COVID-19 was more accepted as an important and legitimate issue.”
Why I Support Australian Republicanism
“A republic represents the ability for Australians to recognize formally what has been long known: that we are willing and capable of charting our own future released from the bonds of the past.”
No Easy Answers: Facing Ecological Crises Honestly
“But we need to replace fanciful dreams of endless energy from renewables with full-cost accounting, which an increasing number of experts are taking seriously. There are destructive environmental and social consequences to constructing the infrastructure for that energy production.”
Holmesburg: Calling for an Apology from the City of Philadelphia
“My father’s skin is in those pharmaceutical companies.”
Why Is This Not Enough?
“Jackson was out walking on his property in Kansas one spring day and called Jensen with a simple question: ‘Why is this not enough?'”
