The pathos—and consequences—of our longing to be shiny happy people
Archives for August 2023
Ideas in progress: Christopher J. Lane on teaching, vocation, and the stress of discerning a calling
Christopher J. Lane is Associate Professor of History at Christendom College (Front Royal, VA) and the author of Callings and Consequences: The Making of Catholic Vocational Cultural in Early Modern France. As you get ready to begin another academic year, […]
“A magazine about America in the form of a 19th-century newspaper”
I just learned about County Highway. It’s a “magazine about America in the form of a 19th century newspaper. According to the site’s website: County Highway is a 20-page broadsheet produced by actual human beings, containing the best new writing […]
Why Viktor Orbán may want to visit Bestsellers Bookshop in Budapest
A friend spotted Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump in Budapest. As many of you know, prime minister Viktor Orbán is trying to build a Christian nationalist state in Hungary modeled closely on a kind of Trumpian populism. […]
Ohio’s Issue 1: Pro-Lifers v. Democracy
Abortion opponents in Ohio just suffered a major defeat at the polls when voters rejected Issue 1 on August 8. It was a needless defeat that was entirely of their own making because abortion wasn’t even on the ballot. Instead, […]
REVIEW: No Questions, No Lies
Amanda McCrina’s characters glow like embers
Has the GOP rejected Reaganomics?
Check out David Leonardt’s interesting piece at The New York Times: The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has spent the last few months trying to boost Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign. It has called his legislative record “as impressive as […]
Climate change as a culture war issue
Sadly, the debate over climate change has become just another issue in our ongoing culture wars. Meanwhile, the earth is getting hotter. Here is Paul Krugman at The New York Times: Understanding climate denial used to seem easy: It was […]
Mets announcer Gary Cohen slams Baltimore Orioles management for suspending announcer Kevin Brown
Orioles management suspended its play-by-play announcer, Kevin Brown, for this: Here is Mets announcer Gary Cohen: I agree with Cohen’s comment about the Orioles this year. On Saturday night I was at Camden Yards for the celebration of the Orioles […]
Progressives need to “work their hearts out” for Joe Biden in 2024
Here is Paul Waldman at The Washington Post: Ask a Democrat with a long memory what the numbers 97,488 and 537 represent, and their face will twist into a grimace. The first is the number of votes Ralph Nader received […]
Chris Rufo: “Intellectual historian” or “intellectual bully”?
Chris Rufo is a conservative activist whose claim to fame is an appearance on the old Tucker Carlson show on Fox News. That appearance caught the attention of then president Donald Trump. Since then, Rufo has become Ron DeSantis’s point […]
Material Girls
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie just wants to be a woman
My minimalist month
There’s a challenge out there: you wear the same dress for one hundred days straight. The idea is to inspire creativity: look what you can do to make the same dress look different day after day (bonus: some who have […]
Mike Pence makes the stage for the first GOP debate
The Pence campaign has announced that it has passed the donor threshold needed to qualify for the first GOP debate on August 23 in Milwaukee. It must have been our July 24th call for everyone to donate a dollar to […]
The Author’s Corner with James Jewell
James Jewell is Professor of History and Co-Chair of the Social and Behavioral Science Division at North Idaho College. This interview is based on his new book, Agents of Empire: The First Oregon Cavalry and the Opening of the Interior […]
A man “unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper”: The founders expected someone like Trump
As Jeffrey Rosen of the National Constitution Center reminds us, the founding fathers anticipated “a demagogic challenge to the rule of law.” Here is a taste of his piece at The Wall Street Journal: The allegations in the indictment of Donald […]
Episode 114: “How Slavery Helped Grow the American Catholic Church”
Did you know the Jesuits were some of the largest slaveholders in colonial America? Our guest in this episode is Rachel L. Swarns, author of The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved And Sold to Build the American Catholic Church. We […]
Evangelical roundup for August 7, 2023
What is happening in Evangelical land? Will Trump’s recent indictment hurt his support among evangelicals? More on why evangelicals are leaving church. Is Trump’s evangelical support in Iowa slipping? Bonnie Kristian responds to Jake Meador’s Atlantic piece on church attendance. […]
Barbie . . . and Ken
On finding a way to teach what feminism is . . . and isn’t
Growing Up Absurd and human dignity
I recently picked up the NYRB edition of Paul Goodman’s Growing Up Absurd, which has a foreword by Casey Nelson Blake. In that foreword, Blake suggests that some aspects of the book are still relevant. For Blake, Goodman is part […]