Moana Revisited: A Better Disney Princess
Rather than forging a new identity, she returns to old paths. Moana is not following her inner voice. She is listening to the echoes of her ancestors.
Shopping Local in a Storm
I mourn the storm. It’s far from over. But I also do not mourn without hope.
The Very Online Culture Wars
The Very Online Right might be riding high now, but I anticipate that the election jackpot of the moment will not last and that this victory will soon look more like Las Vegas at noon, beaten down and tawdry under the merciless exposure of the midday western sun.
The Liberal Charity Model
Our need for privacy has been accentuated by the way we live, in which goods and services arrive seemingly out of the ether, things we’ve bought to consume, throw away, or do with what we wish. The faces and hands behind these goods are invisible to us.
Jordan Peterson: From America’s Dad to America’s Guru
Christianity spread because people actually believed Jesus was their Lord and Savior. They believed in miracles not metaphors.
What is a Nation, Anyway?
Proper forgetting depends on the idea of a nation itself. For Renan, “a nation is a soul, a spiritual principle” built on two things, the past and the present.
Ode to Gettysburg at 161
To prove the American proposition, we must dedicate our lives to its truth with our deeds every day, and maybe someday with our lives themselves.
Belonging to the Garden
I belong to this place—if not for the next thousand years, at least for the summer. In such a displaced age, even that has to mean something.
Joan of Arc’s Grief
My grief would overwhelm me if I were not in God's grace. — Joan of Arc, February 24, 1431
Straw Men and the Possibility of Community in Modernity
Between these extremes, however, is free choice within reasonable limits, which I believe makes the value of community and its deliberative fruits still possible, even within the reality of the fractured and deracinated world in which we are living.