“Similarly distinct from the regular life-world is the world of academic theory, in which, as in the fantasy world, theoretical constructs are often divorced from any dependency on practical outcomes.”
“As Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said on the White House lawn in 1993 during the Oslo Accords, the progenitor initiative of what is required exactly now: ‘Enough of blood and tears. Enough.”
“Just as [Greg] Dember’s generation inherited modernism and felt a need to rebel, today’s younger generations have inherited postmodernism and no doubt feel the same urge to keep the sense of cultural evolution progressing.”
“At the end of the summer, I got a bit too close to a Russian artillery round, a mistake that earned me a week in Kharkiv Regional Hospital. When the doctors cleared me, I walked home.”
“Charles Krauthammer used to pride himself on not going to cocktail parties, instead preferring to be at home with his wife quietly reading, writing, doing whatever. And he was probably better for it.”
“And as she lay on her death bed, as she must have felt a cancerous tumor slowly taking her life, she would also have looked around her and seen the stern and damaged but also joyous legacy she would leave behind.”
Writing from Munich, Gerfried Ambrosch considers what Europeans should conclude from the rather decisive electoral victory of President Donald Trump.
Erich J. Prince reflects on the famous Jackson C. Frank song, the life of the songwriter, and the age-old question: What value is there in a change of scenery?
“The author of this essay is the proud owner of 25 books, poetry collections, and short story anthologies written by the man widely recognized as the godfather of the literary movement known as ‘dirty realism.’”
“Clearly, industrial policy—the deliberate and coordinated governmental support of industries—is coming back, even if it is not clear yet where it will end up.”
“And, relatedly, one also begins to wonder if there are certain ways of phrasing the key points that have already been formulated, capture them perfectly, and, thus, cannot really be improved upon.”
“Bringing this back to the United States: While we need to address our current housing crisis, the goal should not be to build, build, build anywhere at any cost.”
“Utopians often produce evil because their movement’s aspirations become paramount—that is, more important than avoiding acts ‘traditionally perceived as immoral.’ If enough people follow Istvan on the transhuman roller coaster, people could eventually get hurt.”
“The change with After Virtue, however, is that in an important sense [MacIntyre] turns against modernity as a whole. He argues that the move to modernity involves the destruction of morality—that in modernity we no longer know what we’re talking about when we deploy moral language.”
“But enhancing the experience of children with incarcerated parents does not require a wholesale restructuring of prisons. Most parents in prison desperately want more contact with their kids, hoping to break the destructive cycles they have been caught in.”
“Political violence, particularly against minorities, has no place in a democracy. However, neglecting the undeniable social and cultural repercussions of mass immigration is a grave mistake that only serves to empower the hard right.”
“While I was always a philosopher, I was originally a fairly apolitical one, and it was my first year in France that awoke the political part of my being, for I saw all around me where socialism, oikophobia, and multiculturalism were leading.”
“But with that said, what has always bothered me about the story told in ‘Galveston’ is that there seems to be so much of life left unruminated over, a fact remediated only slightly by the mention of the seascape at the end of the song (and ‘the sea waves crashing’ in the Campbell version).”
“For me, though, there is one Prine song I find the most philosophical, though many of his songs do indeed have that bent…The song is ‘Fish and Whistle,’ the first track on his 1978 album Bruised Orange…”
“For [Patrick] Deneen, the most nefarious influence in the history of liberal political thought is John Stuart Mill, son of Enlightenment radical James Mill, godson of utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, and the author of the canonical 1859 liberal text, On Liberty.”
“Although pithy and pugnacious, the slogan is wrong. The moment parents drop a child off at the schoolhouse door, they entrust the school to take over some of their parenting responsibilities.”
“Henry David Thoreau, writing in 1854, remarked: ‘I never received more than one or two letters in my life…that were worth the postage.’ What would he make of the modern email inbox?”
“Holding myself to this standard, I am comfortable in saying that in each and every one of those scenarios, my view would be unchanged: The protests, all the university protests, must be stopped.”
“New populations moving into a country creates ready-made client groups to which the managerial state can administer, gaining new voting blocs, which continue to vote for the party of the managerial state.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“As a result, an air of fear hangs over society, regardless of the fact that the likelihood of falling victim to such an attack is very low indeed. But this is how terror works.”
“Although these no doubt play a role, even a cursory glance at recent election results (not to mention those of the past) makes clear that variables beyond the control of the candidate are often determinative, as well as that the best man does not necessarily win.”
“Is there anyone who can give a clear definition of Leftist or Rightist doctrine with which even half of those who consider themselves to be on the Left or the Right would agree? I am inclined to doubt it…”
“However, outside of the contemporary United States and United Kingdom, a look at the composition of certain right-of-center political movements casts doubt on the reflexive association many hold between young people and voting for the Left.”
