Nurturing the spirit (and your inner weirdo) through the written word
Archives for 2023
Barbenheimer
More Barbenheimer, please. As the summer approached, people who look forward to movies noticed something: Barbie and Oppenheimer were opening on the same day. It seemed incongruous. This led to jokes. Then to memes. Then it became an event—Barbenheimer. People […]
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: Simone Weil: “decreationist“ An New York Times editor on what she learned about slavery in her 1960s history class. It’s not what you might expect. Female war correspondentes in the […]
Cornel West vs. Bernie Sanders
Democratic socialists disagree over Joe Biden in 2024: I am a West fan, but I lean toward Sanders here. There are certain times in one’s life–hopefully only a few times–when doctrinal purity must be set aside for the greater good […]
“‘Keep off the Grass’ is not a sexist remark”
I recently saw some tweets from folks who suggested that men are sexist and probably misogynistic if they criticize the ideas of a woman. Yes–sometimes this happens. But sometimes the person being criticized just has bad ideas. And sometimes these […]
Post-Roe abortion debate is coming to Pennsylvania
Prior to the Dobbs decision no one really cared about state Supreme Court races. They do now. Here is Holly Otterbein at Politico: Less than a month after their double-digit victory on abortion rights in Ohio, Democrats are preparing to […]
Is Cornel West a Marxist?
Conservative political philosopher Robert George defends his friend and presidential candidate:
Springsteen opens Gillette Stadium show with “Lonesome Day”
This is the first time “Lonesome Day” has ever opened a Springsteen show. Did he have Jacksonville in mind?
Imagine if the Christian right started offering mere ‘thoughts and prayers’ to end abortion
Four dead at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville today. That’s the 470th mass shooting in the United States this year–and it’s only August. I wrote this piece at The Washington Post after the 2019 shootings in El Paso, Texas […]
Vivek Ramaswamy: The United States won World War II because FDR got polio
Watch GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy on the Jordan Peterson Show: I like to teach my students that two things can indeed be true at the same time. But not in this case.
Speech of the day
A blessing of unicorns: a weekly roundup
This roundup concept was dubbed a unicorn at first, because it seemed to be a mythical beast, to be seen in the wild just once and never again. But here’s roundup #4, so perhaps it’s here to stay, at least […]
Can one oppose abortion and still be a democratic socialist?
Check out Matt McManus‘s review of Sohrab Ahmari’s Tryanny , Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty–and What to Do About It at Jacobin. As I noted in an earlier post, socialists really like this book despite Ahmari’s social conservatism. […]
Did New York Times columnist David Brooks just endorse Nikki Haley for the GOP presidential nomination?
It sure looks like it. Here is a taste of his column today: I have a bunch of friends and acquaintances who are Never Trump, maybe-Trump or kind-of-Trump Republicans. They’ve been looking around for the candidate they can support and […]
Could Vivek Ramaswamy pass his own citizenship test?
I think the upstart GOP presidential candidate would get at least one question wrong. Here is College of the Holy Cross historian Ed O’Donnell: Here is the full context: See our take on Ramaswamy’s recent GOP debate performance here. George […]
Do you want to make the past more interesting for your students? Focus on contingency.
In my book Why Study History (revised second edition coming in March 2024!) I introduce students and other readers to Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke’s five Cs of historical thinking. They are change over time, context, causality, complexity, and contingency. […]
What is popular this week at Current?
Here are the most popular features of the week at Current: Here are the most popular posts of the last week at The Way of Improvement Leads Home blog: Here are the most popular posts of the last week at The Arena blog:
What It’s Like to Teach: A Rhetorical Guide
Enter the classroom to teach, exit with stories to remember
What I am reading: how Gloria Mark broke my heart
Ben Christenson writes from Virginia where he lives with his family and four pets. His writing has appeared in Front Porch Republic, The Federalist, and The Symbolic World among others. More at: benjaminchristenson.com I am a sucker for self-help books. You know the type: punchy […]
Trump is the only president in American history with a mugshot
He is also back on X (Twitter); On the day he surrendered at the Fulton County Jail, Trump tweets that he will “never surrender.”