How should memorials shape our memories?
Archives for January 2025
What does Reinhold Niebuhr’s “spiritual discipline against resentment” look like on the fourth anniversary of January 6th?
This is a question I want to start thinking about. Today I feel full of resentment and unhealthy anger. As the Senate certified the 2024 election results, confirming Donald Trump’s electoral college victory, I could not get over the fact […]
The “cultural and political rot” that led to the January 6, 2021 insurrection
Here is a taste of Charlie Warzel and Mike Caulfield’s piece, “The Internet Is Worse Than a Brainwashing Machine“: Conspiracy theorizing is a deeply ingrained human phenomenon, and January 6 is just one of many crucial moments in American history […]
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What Mike Pence learned from Al Gore
It’s January 6th. Later today, Vice President Kamala Harris will certify the 2024 presidential election. She will do what Al Gore did in 2000 and Mike Pence did in 2020. Here is Mickael Kruse at Politico: Last summer, in a […]
Commonplace Book #302
Indeed, the moral undermining of the moral worth of persons in late modern societies is highlighted within contemporary American democracy through the emergence and proliferation of identity groups–those groups around which contemporary identity politics are built. Identity groups are, in […]
Reaping the whirlwind
Viereck saw this coming.
“Once he takes office, Mr. Trump will be positioned to finish refashioning Jan. 6 as a modern Lost Cause of the Confederacy.”
Tyrants rewrite history. They do so to strengthen their claim to political power. The insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 was based on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump’s telling of what happened on […]
First Thing We Do: Fire All the Strategists
The Democratic party fears risk more than it fears Trump
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: Self-sabotage The era of Taylor Swift What is modernity? Who benefits from identity politics? Adam Hochschild reviews Brenda Wineapple, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a […]
At least eight Grand Rapids-area churches plan to leave the Christian Reformed Church over same-sex relationships
They are Grace Church, Calvin Church, Church of the Servant, Boston Square, Eastern Avenue, First Neland Avenue, and Oakdale. Here is Sam Landstra at Fox News 17: At least eight Grand Rapids-area churches plan to leave the Christian Reformed Church, […]
Commonplace Book #301
The question of moral worth of the human person, as I have posed it, is the fundamental question for any society that imagines itself to be–or aspires to become–genuinely humane. It is definitional and yet it is also a moving […]
Joe Biden is leaving us a country “that by many measures is in good shape.”
Here is Peter Baker at The New York Times: To hear President-elect Donald J. Trump tell it, he is about to take over a nation ravaged by crisis, a desolate hellscape of crime, chaos and economic hardship. “Our Country is […]
Commonplace Book #300
In its totality, public discourse in America over the most important and often the most trivial issues of the day is not discourse at all. Under the conditions of late modernity, public discourse as a rational exchange of competing positions […]
It’s was a nice prayer Mike Johnson, but Thomas Jefferson probably didn’t pray it
In case you missed it, Mike Johnson was re-elected Speaker of the House today. Watch his speech here: At the fourteen minute mark, Johnson said: …I was asked to provide a prayer for the nation. I offered one that is […]
Commonplace Book #299
Debunking is an important democratic task, but in a late modern context where there is very little agreement as to what constitutes facts or truth or how to arrive at them consensually, these strategies will never fully gain traction with […]
Blessing of Unicorns: the first of 2025!
Jimmy Carter tributes, reflection questions for recapping last year and planning for this new year, the writing life, John Wilson’s list of favorite nonfiction books of 2024, intensive parenting, family policy, and a response to ProPublica’s irresponsible blaming of pregnant women’s deaths on abortion bans.
The Author’s Corner with Albert J. Churella
Albert J. Churella is Professor of History at Kennesaw State University. This interview is based on his new book, The Pennsylvania Railroad: The Long Decline, 1933–1968 (Indiana University Press, 2024). JF: What led you to write The Pennsylvania Railroad? AC: Most of […]
REVIEW: X Factors
Harari synthesizes his synthesis in yet another masterwork
What the Emancipation Proclamation did
The Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863. It was an executive order stating that all enslaved people in the rebellious states were free and would be recognized and maintained as such by the Union government. Here is […]