This morning I was writing on the so-called “war on Christmas” as it played out in December 2004. Some of this stuff will probably make it into my next book. Here is a taste: For his December “Holiday Party” at […]
I no longer control my own X feed
Someone hacked my X feed over the weekend. Nothing on the feed since December 7, 2024 is my work. (My last post was a repost about St. John’s basketball). My X biography was altered (it has now been wiped clean) […]
Commonplace Book #288
John Adams had held out the hope that America could be a “Republic of Virtue,” a nation in which the baser tendencies of humankind could be tempered by the higher ideals of virtue, benevolence, and duty. But after the revolution, […]
Barack Obama on megachurches
If you read some commentators and scholars, evangelical megachurches are places where Christian nationalism, patriarchy, white supremacy and a bunch of other ominous things happen. They might even try to evangelize you! It seems like Barack Obama is trying to […]
How to read one hundred pages every day
Matthew Walter, the editor of The Lamp, calls it the “One Hundred Pages Strategy.” Here is how he does it: Almost nothing I have written in the last few years has given rise to more correspondence than a throwaway column […]
What was Eric Metaxas’s role in the new Bonhoeffer film?
There has been a lot of confusion on the relationship between MAGA evangelical Eric Metaxas and the film Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin. Warren Throckmorton scored an interview with the film’s director, Todd Kormanicki. Here is a taste of Throckmorton’s Substack […]
Finding hope in western North Carolina
David LaMotte is a songwriter, speaker, author, and peace activist from western North Carolina. In his recent piece at Duke Divinity School’s Faith & Leadership blog, he explains what it means to “wait with deep hope” in the wake of […]
Biden creates the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument
Here is Sarah Klotz at the Pennsylvania Capital-Star: President Joe Biden created the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument in Pennsylvania on Monday to underscore the oppression Indigenous people faced there and across the broader Native American boarding school system, as well […]
Now I’m really confused
Commonplace Book #287
Fear and loathing, then are effective sources of solidarity and can provide a framework through which political discourse and action can take place. Yet negative solidarity is always limited in its effectiveness. Absent any other shared beliefs and commitments, not […]
Jacoby: Marxism got lost in the academy
According to historian and public intellectual Russell Jacoby, Marxist scholarship is alive and well, but it has failed to reach ordinary people. Here is a taste of his Jacobin piece, “American Marxism Got Lost on Campus“: But specialization also entailed […]
If the 2024 election is any indication, America is less polarized
Here is Harvard University law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos at The Washington Post: Here’s a shocker: One of the unnoticed themes of the recent election was depolarization. The electoral chasms between groups of voters shrank compared with four years earlier. This was […]
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: Founding friendship Is “The American Century” over? The great dechurching “In Alexander Hamilton’s apt words, the Senate can prevent the appointment of ‘unfit characters’ who would be no more than […]
Franklin Graham on Trump’s victory: “Millions and millions of people were praying, and I believe God allowed it by his merciful hand”
Here is Graham at Decision magazine: We witnessed one of the greatest political comebacks in U.S. history as Donald J. Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States, becoming only the second president ever to win two non-consecutive […]
Listen to the earliest known country music recording
Here is Geoff Edgers at The Washington Post: John Levin had no idea what he’d stumbled upon at first. About 10 years ago, the collector paid about $100 for a box of wax cylinders at an auction in Pennsylvania coal […]
Using Bonhoeffer
Over at First Things, Joel Looper, the author of a book on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, reviews the movie Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. A taste: Bonhoeffer was a towering figure of twentieth-century theology whose courage, leadership in the Confessing Church, and ultimate […]
Wehner: If “politics goes bad, if it goes really bad, it can have catastrophic human consequences.”
Peter Wehner is a former George W. Bush staffer, a public intellectual, a writer at The Atlantic and The New York Times, a conservative, and a staunch critic of Donald Trump. He recently appeared on Andrew Keen’s podcast to discuss […]
Perry Bacon Jr. wants us to stop blaming progressives for Harris’s loss. Is he right?
Here is the Washington Post columnist: Center-left and establishment Democrats are trying to marginalize the party’s left wing in the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss last month, in some ways mirroring what moderates — including Bill Clinton — did in the late ’80s […]
Other controversial presidential pardons in American history
According to Joshua Zeitz, Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden was less controversial than these presidential pardons: George Washington pardoned two whiskey rebels. Andrew Johnson pardoned Confederate officers. George H.W. Bush pardoned six men convicted in the Iran […]
Eric Metaxas apologizes to the Bonhoeffer family…sort of
Warren Throckmorton is following this story closely. Here is a taste of his latest: Today, Eric Metaxas offered a guarded apology for his slanderous remarks about the relatives of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. During an interview with Glenn Beck on November 23, Metaxas said 86 of […]