Building Something of Our Own
It may be the great sentiment of this American moment: “I want to build something of my own. How do you not understand that?”
We’re Number One!!
Both the Right and Left in American politics agree with this aim - to keep America "number one."
Disaster and Power
Natural disasters and security threats seem to beg for a response that is massive, coordinated, and centralized. If so, how can the consolidation of state power be tempered and the principles of localism advanced?
Meditation on the Cold
Lovers of snow and cold are qualitatively different from the lovers of sun and surf; they are different moral beings altogether.
Blood and Tobacco: Robert Penn Warren’s “Night Rider”
Men cut off from their origins and alienated from their selves become desperate, and desperate men do desperate deeds.
The Problem With Principled Argument
Even as he denounces the conservative justices for activism and for creating "legislation" from the bench, as well as the general conservative movement for a "double standard without apology" . . . he fails to note the double-standard that he (and others on the Left) are employing in their demands for judicial modesty.
Washington, we have a Problem
We have for so long asserted that we are a force for good in the world and that our efforts are in the service of "democracy" that we can no longer see the irony of a nation refusing to call itself an empire when in possession of military bases around the globe and expending nearly half our annual tax receipts on war efforts without foreseeable end.
Quote of the Week
Doubtless he is a proud example of a high-level commitment and an educational system that aims to produce deracinated, placeless individuals.
From Olive Trees to Overcapacity
A homogeneous global consumer culture flattens its victims. And, perhaps in the same vein, our meanderings around the dying furniture capital of Yecla turned up nothing: virtually everything on display fitted what has become the decorative style of contemporary Spain: the sort of stuff one might find in a Copenhagen dentist’s office.