Ross Douthat 14
Seeking the Sacred: Douthat’s Case for Religious Tradition in an Age of Uncertainty
We are pilgrims in this world. We must be content to wonder as we wander. Douthat is asking his readers to cast their nets into the deep.
Fatherhood: The Toughest Job You’ll Ever Love
Fertility rates are low. After going through the pregnancy of our first child, I’m surprised they aren’t lower. Many young people lack the “why” to endure the cultural pessimism around…
Narrating Sickness, Land, and Hope
To whatever extent I imposed a narrative on experience, it was only because experience first imposed it upon me.
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…
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…
Collectivism and Violence are One
The left is collectivizing, the right falling apart. Can a pragmatic, humanist center hold?
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.
Silence, Development, and the Changing Church
Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation of Silence (2016), the 1966 novel by Shusako Endo, follows the trials of a young Portuguese Jesuit, Father Rodrigues, whose mission to the Japanese in the…
The Limits of Place
Hidden Springs, VA. Recently Ross Douthat commented on Rod Dreher’s new book in a column devoted to the rising incidence of suicide and the problem of loneliness. In a follow-up…
Dilemmas of conservatism: start with the labeling…
A new book provides profiles of seminal conservative thinkers. But Lord, please, please don't read them through the outdated narrative of traditional cons, neocons, and laissez-faire cons.
Against Pessimism
Alexandria, VA My last post has led some to conclude that I am a pessimist. Even Ross Douthat, among the most perceptive commentators in print and on internet, suggested that…
Family Warfare
GREETINGS FROM THE PROGRESSIVE POLICY WORLD It’s an honor and pleasure to be in dialogue with members of the Front Porch Republic. I heard about you from Patrick Deneen, who…
Douthat to the Times
Phoenix, Arizona. Catapulted by his inclusion on the exclusive FPR blogroll, Ross Douthat has been tabbed as a new opinion columnist for the New York Times. This is good news.…