Excerpt: “Moral Courage: 19 Profiles of Investigative Journalists” by Anthony Feinstein The Left - “To understand India’s slippery descent, one should read the reportage of Neha Dixit, a 37-year-old New Delhi-based freelance journalist.” (11/21/2023)
Excerpt: “Getting Elected Is the Easy Part” by Karen Keiser The Left - “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.” (11/16/2023)
Samuel G. Freedman: What a Young Hubert Humphrey Can Teach Us by Erich J. Prince The Left - “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.” (9/16/2023)
Matt Johnson: “How Hitchens Can Save the Left” by Erich J. Prince 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.” (9/14/2023)
The Russo-Ukrainian War: A Very Simple Conflict by Daniel Sharp The Left - “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.” (8/29/2023)
Excerpt: “How Hitchens Can Save the Left” by Matt Johnson 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.” (6/13/2023)
On Literary Science and the Bounds of Knowledge by Daniel Sharp The Left - “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.” (4/27/2023)
Review: “How Hitchens Can Save the Left” by Matt Johnson by Riley Moore The Left - “[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.” (4/12/2023)
Stop Pretending All Cultures Are the Same by Johan Pregmo The Left - “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.” (1/27/2023)
The Case for Retiring “Confederate Heroes Day” by Robert Jensen The Left - “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.” (1/19/2023)
COVID-19 and the Banality of Evil by Andrew Joseph Pegoda The Left - “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.” (12/4/2022)