University of Texas historian Steven Mintz writes: “Imagine a public discourse where intellectuals don’t just take sides but challenge the assumptions underlying each perspective. He asks “what would it take for public intellectuals to serve as beacons of understanding rather […]
Archives for February 2025
Pivot Points: Adventures on the Road to Christian Contentment (Chapter 6)
Communism to Theism
Lessons Not Yet Learned
There is still reason to hope
Commonplace Book #343
Out of our faith in gold, we build ourselves the golden calf: Mammonism, capitalism, profit economy. And out of our drive toward power and violence and our faith in them, we develop militarism and imperialism. We revere the flag as […]
Are “progress” and “justice” just a “secularized form” of “providence”?
Over at Inside Higher Ed, historian Steven Mintz writes: “In a world increasingly shaped by secularism and scientific empiricism, a paradox emerges: the enduring belief that history has direction, meaning and purpose—a secularized form of providentialism. Once the realm of […]
Thomas Frank on “fake populism”
Nathan Robinson, the editor of Current Affairs, starts his interview with author Thomas Frank by quoting from Frank’s 2016 book Listen, Liberal: “Now all political parties are alliances of groups with disparate interests, but the contradictions of the Democratic Party […]
Pivot Points: Adventures on the Road to Christian Contentment (Chapter 5)
Addiction
On Frank Robinson, Earl Weaver, and the Baltimore Orioles
When I get the chance, I hope to read John W. Miller’s book The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented and Reinvented Baseball. The Washington Post is running a short excerpt. Here is a taste: Weaver changed how baseball […]
REVIEW: Heavy Metal Nursing
Stay here. Feel this.
Catoggio: “Republican voters have been rooting for laundry since 2015”
Here is Nick Catoggio at The Dispatch: The modern Republican Party isn’t conservative in any meaningful way. Any lingering doubt about that was extinguished on Saturday. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Trump declared in a post. It’s […]
The Trump (and Musk) cuts to the federal government are taking their toll on American institutions and the people who work for them
The slashing and burning continues: Terminations at the U.S. Forest Service and Department of Interior are having a major impact on local communities. 3,400 people were fired from the Forest Service and 2,300 from the Department of Interior (National Park […]
Pivot Points: Adventures on the Road to Christian Contentment (Chapter 4)
Career to Careening
Commonplace Book #342
All things that have been tried for the sake of renewal…in these decisive times, whether by individuals or groups, all the new goals that have been presented, all the new life-styles that have been tried, all the faith, hope, and […]
Exile’s Journey
Why I write (and publish) amateur verse
Commonplace Book #341
We must distinguish between what we call politics and what we call religion (in the highest sense). Politics cannot exist without a struggle for worldly power, but religion (at any rate that religion which is in the spirit of Christ) […]
The “woke right”
Here is Thomas Chatteron Williams at The Atlantic: One of the defining features of the social-justice orthodoxy that swept through American culture between roughly the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012 to Hamas’s assault on Israel in 2023 was the […]
Pivot Points: Adventures on the Road to Christian Contentment (Chapter 3)
Philosophy to Journalism
The Halftime Show that Had No Chance
Even Lamar can’t defeat the Super Bowl
Commonplace Book #340
Socialism and the use of force stand in basic and sharp contradiction. Socialism is based on the fundamental belief in the worth and sacredness of man, and by that I mean of each person, even the least one–indeed, of him […]
Jerome Copulsky and Mark Noll on the moral framework undergirding America’s liberal order
Over at Law & Liberty, Jerome Copulsky and Mark Noll talk about Copulsky’s new book American Heretics: Religious Adversaries of Liberty Order. Here is the setup: Today we will be speaking to Jerome Copulsky and Mark Noll. The subject will […]