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Articles 356

We Should All Stop Talking About Harvard So Much

It is not because I bear Harvard any ill will that I wish we could all just shut up about it already. Rather, I am concerned that our national obsession…

In Defense of Nature Writing

Perhaps this, above all, is the work of nature writing: to bring the wild and the domestic together and to reveal the mystery at the heart of both. That Springer’s…

Athos for All

I have Orthodox friends that find our little chapel concerning, and they are certainly right that a casual use of icons for decorative enhancement is to be avoided. Still, their…

Ayn Rand: Russian Nihilist

Aaron Weinacht’s book is a needed corrective to the public misperception of Ayn Rand as radical capitalist. She was, first and foremost, a radical nihilist. Insofar as Rand embraced capitalism,…

The Geography of the Future

At a time when ideologies and slogans often pull us away from the difficult task of finding realistic solutions and building a world together, the approach of these authors reveals…

Principles Over Power: Lessons from Bush and Nixon

If there is to be the equivalent of a Reagan following President Biden, he or she will face a more difficult task than the one leaders faced in 1980. Reagan…
John Murdock
February 21, 2022

Is Progressivism Sustainable?

We cannot sustain the rhetoric of conservation and sustainability if our society remains fixated on ideas of economic and technological progress. We cannot become a people who cherish the land…

Who Loves Academic Discourse? A Review of Rita Felski’s Hooked

Attunement, attachment, engagement, and identification are all absolutely necessary for properly considering artworks of all kinds. However, I struggle to identify the application of Felski's argument. Perhaps it is because,…
February 16, 2022

Joe Rogan’s Speech Impediment

A decent society must be characterized by individuals who reject designations of class guilt and innocence, who are capable of seeing the image of God in the face of the…
Mark T. Mitchell
February 15, 2022

Forest Rebel Cinema

With this love and materiality, these two films express the pure reality to which their protagonists are so devoted. In a world of frictionless unreality, endless abstractions, and tepid and…
February 14, 2022

The Irony of a Wendell Berry NFT

While some are admittedly pleasing, NFTs will not be the great decentralizing force many of us long for. Instead, their rapid profusion creates speculative bubbles and too often rewards unvirtuous…
February 11, 2022

A Good Party: A Review of Breaking Ground

A Good Party, Tara Isabella Burton suggests, is “a place where bonds of friendship, fostered in a spirit of both charity and joy, serve as the building blocks for communal…
February 10, 2022

Narrating Sickness, Land, and Hope

To whatever extent I imposed a narrative on experience, it was only because experience first imposed it upon me.

Motherhood as Sacrament: A Review of Maya Sinha’s The City Mother

Sinha’s writing should appeal to multiple audiences, from those disillusioned with modern urbanity to young mothers to thoughtful people concerned with the persistent presence of evil in our times. The…
February 7, 2022

From Endoscopy to Colonoscopy: One Man’s Strange and Confounding Journey Through American Health Care

Beneath these critiques of the American medical system and the biological mysteries of the human body throbs a more existential question: How does one deal with suffering? These are some…
February 4, 2022

Ross Douthat’s Landscape of Suffering

Douthat continues to discover remedies for his condition, but his experience has produced a book in which the natural world confronts us with suffering’s source and signifies the possibility of…

The Stories We Share

Douthat is, I think, proposing a conversation. As a low-level functionary in the medical-industrial complex, I would like to take him up on that offer. There may be much to…
January 31, 2022

On to Ottawa Redux: Notes from Canada’s “Freedom” Convoy

The Revolutionary Spirit promises—especially to the disaffected in extreme situations—a false hope in burning the status quo to the ground. It promises a new world order. It promises a reset.…
January 29, 2022

500 Acres and a Castle

By acquiring sufficient acreage, typically a minimum of 500 acres, ideas can be given the isolation they need to have a chance at succeeding, unmolested by the outside forces of…
January 28, 2022

When Foot Voting is Necessary: A Review of Free to Move

It would be nice if Somin would see migration (national and international) as a remedy for intolerable situations, a lesser evil, not a desirable thing in itself. Those who aren’t…

A Farmer Who Walks the Talk

Human stories, centered around human persons in pursuit of wisdom, are the roots from which communities grow. We can be sure, by the sweat on the brows of each person…
January 24, 2022

Substitution and Exchange

If such substitution and exchange were genuinely possible, would we agree with Lewis that no gift was more gladly given? Would we too readily assume we could bear another’s burden…

Two Cheers for Sacramentality

I give two cheers for Mark Clavier’s timely and eternal reminder to us that we should seek the encounter with God in the world; it may just give us a…

Ishiguro’s New Novel Contemplates the Relationship between Humans, Machines, and the Natural World

Sterling, KS. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s eighth novel, Klara and the Sun (2021), the humans believe in science. The titular character, however, believes in the Sun. Klara is a solar-powered robot whose…