“Lozada’s book provides a comprehensive, incisive analysis of the intellectual debates that defined the Trump-era. As we plunge forward into a post-Trump presidency politics, it is a must read.”
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Tag: Essay
Letter to an American Agonist
“What the United States shares with Athens is not the pretense of democracy, or any other feature of the content of her tradition but, rather, her citizens’ uncommon commitment to contesting it.”
Finding Hope When All Seems Lost
“The alarming juxtaposition is that on the other side of this brick wall were patients dying from malaria and children being born with HIV. However, the sheer joy and optimism of this village was unbreakable and, in every sense, unexplainable.”
I Voted for Trump, and I’m Not a Racist
“But I had never voted in a presidential election until this year. So why did I vote in 2020?”
Review: Ted Cruz’s “One Vote Away”
“One Vote Away serves as a useful primer on some of the great constitutional issues of our day, while also proving that legal judgment and political judgment are separate matters.”
What the Winning Conservative Coalition Looks Like
“Those who work with ideas increasingly vote for the Democrats, while those who work in physical reality with their hands or machinery increasingly vote Republican.”
Meritocratic Tyranny: Big, If True
“But Sandel’s critique of meritocracy runs deeper than lamenting the obvious gap between meritocratic ideals and reality; Sandel takes issue with the ideal of meritocracy itself.”
Ibram Kendi’s Thesis Could Use a Lot More Rigor (Part II)
“In short, Kendi’s consequentialist view of racism as rooted in policy (which, however unpredictably and unintentionally, results in racial disparities) does not explain everything.”
A Soviet Immigrant Reminds Americans What They’ve Forgotten
“This country confers upon people the basic, fundamental dignity—starkly absent in Soviet Russia and in many other places on Earth—of drawing a more-or-less direct line between our life choices and our lives’ outcomes.”
Žižek and Milbank: The Monstrosity of Christ?
“However, the purpose of this reading is to stress—contra more conservative interpreters like Milbank—that the disordered post-modern world that we inhabit is not a firm break with Christianity.”
We’re Divided. But Will We Fall?
“French dedicates his book to James Madison, saying, ‘May we remember that you were right.'”
How Biden Did It
“The Economist’s less-than-ringing endorsement of the former Vice President—resignedly titled, ‘Why it has to be Biden’—typifies the sentiment.”
Ibram Kendi’s Thesis Could Use a Lot More Rigor
“For Kendi, it is policy first and racism second. Debatable? That is a racist question. Maybe a presentist interpretation of history? Also racist.”
To Resist Participating in the Great Lie
“Solzhenitsyn observed through incredible hardship and deep reflection, that, in his country, the lie had ‘become not just a moral category but a pillar of the state.'”
“A Cry from the Far Middle”: Lots of Laughs, And a Few Important Insights
“If there is an underlying argument here, though, it is that Americans ought to quit taking themselves—and their own tribe’s political convictions—so darn seriously.”