A few things online that caught my attention this week: Is America a “city on a hill?” An academic retires and reflects on the state of the academy. Can you pass a U.S. citizenship test? The guy who wanted to […]
Archives for July 2024
Will the 2024 Republican Party platform ignore abortion?
Here is Heather Digby Parton at Salon: One of the more obvious signs that the Republican Party had devolved into a cult of personality came in 2020 when the party decided to abandon writing a platform in advance of the […]
“REVIVAL OR BUST”
Earlier this week, Commonweal published my piece on the way the Christian Right uses the supposed links between the First Great Awakening and the American Revolution to advance its political agenda. And then this comes across my X feed today: […]
Report: Trump paid to bury sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits
Recently I came across Brian Stelter’s 2020 CNN interview with disgraced former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis. (Why did CNN fire Stelter? His show was excellent!) Ellis, one of the many MAGA evangelicals in 2020, has had a rough few years […]
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:
Zach Bryan and Bruce Springsteen drop “Sandpaper”
It’s growing on me:
The Trump intellectuals
Many of them gather at the Claremont Institute in Southern California. Here is a taste of Ruth Graham’s New York Times piece, “Why a New Conservative Brain Trust is Resettling Across America”: The Claremont Institute has been located in Southern […]
Blessing of Unicorns: Scofield Reference Bible, education, tech Sabbaths, George MacDonald, and more!
The Unicorns of this week have landed!
Are Christian values American values?
Short answer: No. Short nuanced answer: Sometimes Christian values can overlap with American values. Was America founded as a Christian nation?: No Was Christianity important to the founding generation and did the founders believe that Christianity was good for the […]
Does Gettysburg have a Lost Cause problem?
Simon Barnicle believes it does. He is a lawyer and officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. Here is a taste of his piece today at The New York Times: …But for all the learning one can do at Gettysburg, there is […]
Song of the day
The South Asian boys in George Washington’s family
Here is Gillian Brockwell at The Washington Post: On Jan. 6, 1796, George Washington, the sitting president in the temporary capital of Philadelphia, wrote a long letter to his teenage step-granddaughter with relationship advice. Though Washington never had biological children, […]
The Punxsy Summit
We did not see Phil the groundhog, but we did think and dream about the future of Current. This week the founders of Current met at a small farm in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. I think I speak for my fellow founders […]
David Blight offers an “immodest proposal to resolve the current crisis of the Democratic Party.”
Here is a taste of Blight‘s proposal: …I offer the following immodest proposal to resolve the current crisis of the Democratic Party. In a matter of days, President Joseph Biden should hold a news conference, surrounded not only by his […]
Where are the conservatives and pluralists in higher education?
Steve Teles, a political scientist at The Johns Hopkins University, writes: “The university’s ideological narrowing has advanced so far that even liberal institutionalists–faculty who believe universities should be places of intellectual pluralism and adhere to the traditional academic norms of […]
Evangelical blast from the past
Thanks Tim Terhune!
What is Project 2025?
In Steve Bannon’s recent interview with David Brooks, Bannon referenced something called Project 2025. What is Project 2025? James Goodwin explains at Boston Review. Here is a taste: The week after taking office in 2017, Donald Trump announced his administration’s […]
A Primer on Peace
Give plain speech a chance
Stacks and stacks of books
Down with the book-stack shelfies!
“There were probably more constitutional constraints operating on George III in 1776 than now operate on the US president”
Here is constitutional historian Grace Mallon responding to the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump vs. United States. Early American historian David Waldstreicher’s response is on the mark: One wonders why U.S. history departments “sold off constitutional history to Poli Sci […]