The Stump 340
Liberalism: A Joke, Literally
It’s a bit rich to pile on a “free-thinker” like Kanye West, who implores us to “lead with love,” when the best critics and pundits are themselves bankrupt of compelling…
Social Justice vs. Social Charity
The Pernicious Nature of Charity There is a pernicious force that operates in all societies, but especially in ours and especially in these sad days. It is a force that…
A Digital Relation to the Universe
Matt's essay concludes our discussion of "Localist Social Media." You can view all the essays in this symposium here. When I first submitted my attempt at a jovial attack…
The Bar Jester Goes Off (While Putatively Responding to Matt Stewart)
We also need technological monks.
Sparking Little Platoons
When I became a Washington, D.C. newsroom intern, Twitter usage was mandatory (primarily so that we could help run the magazine’s Twitter account). I neither understood nor liked Twitter at…
Marginalia
I was a bit surprised that Matt directed his critique at Twitter rather than at other forms of social media. At least Twitter isn’t as corrupt as Facebook and its…
What Tolkien Can Teach Us About Twitter
In December of 2016, I observed, alluding to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, that Twitter was akin to Trump’s ring of power. My point then was relatively straightforward: just as…
In Praise of Boredom
G. K. Chesterton reproached the modern experience of boredom. In Heretics, he declares: There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist…
Alone Together on the Internet
The happy traveler is apt to become even happier as he crosses a state line into Vermont or Maine. These two misfits of the continental 48 ban billboards (Hawaii and…
Big Other is Watching. Hallelu!
All hail Big Other, in whom we live and move and have our being. All hail Big Other, from whom so many blessings flow. All hail Big Other, than which…
The Irony of Twitter
Several years ago I followed an exchange on Twitter between two academics. Both were lamenting the (in their view) low quality work done by young writers as well as the…
Stop Talking about Wendell Berry on Twitter
Editor's Note: Matt's piece kicks off a mini-symposium on the question of whether localists should use social media, and if so, how. As a Twitter user myself, albeit a somewhat…
Whither Liberalism?
We live, to borrow the title from Daniel T. Rodgers’s excellent 2011 book, in an age of fracture. Whether any time in history has been without fracturing is a point for…
The Triumph of the Datum
The middle of the twentieth century abounded with writers who simultaneously analyzed their own times and predicted ours: Daniel Bell (The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society), Christopher Lasch (The Culture…
What is Truth?
A year ago, as President Trump launched yet another salvo of tweets whose express purpose was to correct allegedly "false news" with a new variety of confirmedly false news, Time…
Why Anti-Liberalism Fails
The Failures of Liberalism The intellectual critique of liberalism is coextensive with liberalism itself, going back at least as far as Giambattista Vico’s dispute with Descartes. The term “liberalism” itself…
What Wendell Berry’s Brush Teaches Us About Capitalism, Community, and “Inevitability”
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] The Art of Loading Brush: New Agrarian Writings, the latest collection of writings by Wendell Berry, isn't a perfect book, nor the perfect expression of…
The New Yorker’s Latest Contribution to Trumpian Populism
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. --George Orwell, Animal Farm This past Thursday, I opened my mailbox and saw a naked President Trump staring…
Identity and Ethnos in Socrates’s Athens: A Response to Jordan Wales
Jordan Wales has recently gifted the conservative movement a sober and justly-timed critique of Richard Spencer and the alt-right. Unfortunately, much of the analysis of Spencer and the movement Spencer…
Technology and the Virtues: Scale Matters
When an autonomous Uber vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona, Uber suspended its fleet of self-driving cars and assured everyone that it was “cooperating with authorities.” Such “cooperation”…
Communal Self-Reliance: A Tie to Bind Black and White
Two recent incidents have made clear to me how the culture wars can stultify the fecund complexity of our common life. Recently, my wife and I attended a lecture on…
Learning from The Left Behind
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Robert Wuthnow's new book, The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America, is the best book I've read on the rural-urban divide in the…
The Practice of Attachment and A Comprehensive Social Order
Shortly after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, Columbia University professor Mark Lilla took to the pages of the New York Times to offer an edifying perspective as to why…
Good News and Bad News
As always, the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. On the good side of the ledger, the facts seem incontrovertible: more and more people riding bikes when they decide…