The White workers who voted in large numbers for Donald Trump in 2020 are often described as nationalists–or, better, as men and women who have bought into a nationalist politics. But they don’t have anything like a national history. They […]
Commonplace Book #247
It is no affront to liberal socialist egalitarianism, as I understand it, if the entrepreneur who sells portable ventilators makes more money than I do and is more widely known than I am. The socialist state should not interfere with […]
Rod Dreher’s funder pulls the plug
Howard Ahmanson Jr,. the sole benefactor of Rod Dreher’s blog at The American Conservative, just pulled the plug on the conservative commentator. Here is Caleb Ecarma at Vanity Fair: …But one particular reader, upon reading the last of said posts, […]
Inside Tucker’s head
I ran across this video today: And then I read David French’s recent column at The New York Times. A taste: On Tuesday evening, two news reports caught my attention. The first was an Emerson College poll of Republican primary voters in […]
Commonplace Book #246
I don’t think that the adjective ‘liberal’ necessarily pushes the nouns that it modifies in the direction of complacency and compromise. In the cases relevant here, it is indeed the noun that carries the radicalism and requires those it describes […]
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:
Historical thinking is often paradoxical thinking
WHYY in Philadelphia recently hosted an interesting conversation between Dolly Chuch, a psychologist, and Hasan Kwame Jeffries, a historian. Chuch argues that it is difficult to get people to accept the fact that two seemingly contradictory ideas can exist at […]
Patrick Spero is the new Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon
Big news in the world of presidential and revolutionary-era American history: The Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association is proud to announce the appointment of Patrick Spero, Ph.D., as the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library housed within the Fred W. Smith National Library […]
Commonplace Book #245
The existence of millions of fellow citizens who believe in “alternative facts” and conspiracy theories strongly suggests that our schools aren’t producing enough science-savvy and tough minded realists. What seems most necessary right now is an enhanced education in what […]
More on the censure of Trump lawyer and evangelical pundit Jenna Ellis
As I wrote last night in this post, Jenna Ellis rarely tweets without claiming that she is a great defender of truth. She has built a platform on defending Donald Trump and contesting the 2020 election and now she had […]
Will evangelicals support Trump in 2024?
I was happy to help New York Times reporter Charlie Homans with this story. A taste: Mark Burns, a pastor from Easley, S.C., who served as a campaign surrogate for Mr. Trump in 2016 and has endorsed his 2024 run, […]
George Packer on historical research today: “What begins in research ends in dogma”
Here is the veteran journalist’s recent piece at The Atlantic: The new fatalism has its own historical causes, and they’re not hard to see: the failures of the War on Terror and the neoliberal economy, stubborn inequality, the disappointments of […]
Evangelical roundup for March 9, 2023
What is happening in Evangelical Land? Rod Dreher defends Josh Butler’s view of evangelical sex and claims that his critics do not understand Catholic and Orthodox views of sex. I don’t think Butler gets it right, and the criticism is […]
Trump lawyer and conservative evangelical pundit Jenna Ellis is censured in Colorado for lying about the 2020 election
It was all lies. Jenna Ellis is a former Liberty University representative, Colorado Christian University law professor, former host of a podcast titled “Just the Truth,” and a Trump election fraud lawyer who, along with Rudolph Giuliani, tried to overturn […]
Commonplace Book #244
Riots haven’t yet opened the way to revolution or to any transformative politics. They probably feed the counterrevolution, the forces that claim to represent law and order. Real change requires that a mobilization of the moment turn itself into a […]
Why some conservatives hate college
A Current Affairs piece by Matt McManus and Nathan J. Robinson begins with a quote from right-wing MAGA pundit Charlie Kirk’s book The College Scam: “Where did Anthony Fauci acquire the medical authority and credibility to impose a lockdown on […]
“It’s the Gospel, stupid”
Here is Oxford church historian, journalist, and Pope Francis biographer Austen Ivereigh at Commonweal on why the pontiff focuses so much on migration: Yet neither the current scale of the problem nor Francis’s own background is sufficient to grasp why […]
Michael Kazin: American leftists should support Ukraine
The Georgetown historian weighs-in at Dissent. Here is a taste of his piece, “Reject the Left-Right Alliance Against Ukraine“: At critical times, foreign wars have tested the moral convictions of American leftists and affected the fate of their movement for […]
A defender of liberalism and academic freedom opposes Ron DeSantis’s “anti-woke” agenda
Here is a clip from the end of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s “State of the State” yesterday: I’ll let writer and political scientist Yascha Mounk, a defender of liberal values and academic freedom, take it from here. His recent piece […]
Tucker and Kevin rewrite the history of January 6th
In order to justify his invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin had to rewrite history. So did Josef Stalin. On Monday night, Tucker Carlson tried to rewrite the history of January 6, 2021. He got help from Speaker of the House […]