Politics & Power

Free Speech as a “A Delicately Manicured Garden”: A Review of...

Michael Knowles: “Free speech cannot be an open plain; nor can it be a jungle; it must be a delicately manicured garden."

We the Corporations: A Review

Corporate rights was not a spontaneous development but the result of a sort of corporate civil-rights movement. Through litigation (generally well-financed) over two centuries, various corporations won decisions by which corporations evolved from government-created artificial persons, not even mentioned by name in the Constitution, into entities possessed of many of the same constitutional rights as flesh-and-blood human beings.

The Unreproducible Society

We justify our choices as the price of innovation, of progress, of efficiency. We tell ourselves we can’t afford to do anything else. We even tell ourselves it’s for the children. And so we bankrupt our posterity so we can eat, drink, and be merry. It’s a nice life for those who get to live it, but it’s not reproducible.

Live Not by Lies from Neither the Left nor Right

Who wins in a contest between Woke Soft Totalitarians and Fringe Right Conspiracists? Nobody. But there will be many losers, not least among them Christians who fail to stand for the truth.

Playing the Long Game: A Review of Abraham Lincoln’s Statesmanship

The Lincoln that Schaff puts forth cultivated liberal democracy by placing limits and crafting public consensus. In order to see Lincoln in a new light, Schaff applies Aristotle’s ideas of moderation and prudence as his lens. It is not simply that Lincoln knew the good, but, as a good steward of liberal democracy, he embodied the good.

Anti-Prophets of Doom: A Review of Michael Shellenberger’s Apocalypse Never

What would be helpful is a book that acknowledge both sets of trends and moves beyond name-calling to begin the hard work of engaging in the tensions and trade-offs between them. Beneficial too would be a clear-eyed encounter with the fact that measures of human happiness and fulfillment have not skyrocketed along with our greater health and wealth. People need more than just more stuff.

Spiritual Dangers in the Trump Era

One of the spiritual dangers of Trump is that he can come to be seen as the only danger. Such “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic then leads to the temptation to overlook the problems posed by the other side.

Forget Karen, Think Lisa

It was the reaction I had seen so often in public school classrooms from teacher's pets: Conformity is always the right course. Rocking the boat is disruptive. Teachers and principals know what's best.

From Decadent to Local

It’s true that we don’t yet have a colony on Mars. But countless people are living very ordinary lives and doing very ordinary things that are true, good, and beautiful.

Language and Power

"We wade through a torrent of words and images every day, and yet we mostly lack a clear understanding of what language is and can be for the human..."