Even the homeless see the virtues of suburban life, apparently.
Culture
Academics, Politics, and Business
David Brooks has written a fascinating essay on how self-presentation in politics is very different from that in the academic world, and how Michael Ignatieff came to grief in Canada finding this out the hard way. I don’t feel the […]
It’s a Consensus World, After All?
We often speak of our era as a very polarized age. I will demur. First, I remember 1968 in America, and the polarization and hate between cultures then was a lot worse than it is now, with actual riots and […]
Two Theories of a Lasting Marriage
Reading the Sunday New York Times always fertilizes the imagination, for good or ill. Today they had a psychologist named Eli J. Finkel writing about how since 1965 we have been in the era of the “self-expressive marriage,” which is […]
The Last Freedom (and its Relationship to the First)
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World seems, for the most part, to be closer to the future we are facing in the West than George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. I do think that parts of Orwell’s vision are still important, however; in […]
“Spoiled Rich Kids” and “Ghetto Gangsters”
Trustfunders like myself are accused of a lot. We are accused of being ‘spoiled’, whatever that is. Some of us take the route of a Paris Hilton, others of us follow the rather ostentatious simplicity of the so-called ‘trustafarian’. But […]
God = Not Society and Not the Autonomous Individual
Conor Friedersdorf, fortunately declares that children do not belong to the ‘community’ or ‘society’. Actually, they don’t really belong to their parents anyway; they belong to God, and their parents are temporary stewards of them. While we cannot say it […]
An Interesting Twist on “It’s a Wonderful Life”
In view of the recently released book Building Home and the upcoming conference No Place Like Home here’s an interesting twist on the famous film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The author seems to like Potterville better. I don’t think I do, because […]
Nashville: The Nation’s New ‘It’ City
Well, Nashville has been the nation’s third media city – and that in regard to book publishing, not just music – for at least 40 years! It is the one red-state place where someone leaving Hollywood would feel reasonably comfortable. […]
Thoughts on St. Patrick’s Day
In a few days comes one of the strangest holidays in our American calendar, in which we honor a saint who actually deserves honoring or remembering, and at the same time the first major non-Protestant ethnic group to come to […]