James Davidson Hunter is doing commendable work trying to restore the interest, of Christians especially, in the ‘common good.’ Not a bad thing, but first we have to think about what the ‘common good’ is. 1. First of all, we […]
Culture
Pansies
Why are pansies associated with unmanliness and deviation from heteronormativity? They are some of the hardiest flowers there are. When I took this picture the temperature in Washington D.C. had risen to a high of 34F (1C) and they have […]
China’s High-Speed Rail
Yeah!!! I admit there are a lot of problems with California”s high speed rail, and it was probably a mistake, but if high speed rail could replace a lot of airplanes I would be very very happy. In Response To: […]
The Homeless Prefer Suburbia
Even the homeless see the virtues of suburban life, apparently.
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 […]