He carries a Bible and regularly invokes his faith as he leads the United Auto Workers in a historic strike against the country’s three largest automakers. For Fain, the strike is a “righteous cause.” This reminds of Eugene Debs’s claim […]
Every candidate on the stage at tonight’s GOP debate should go after Trump
Tonight is the second presidential primary debate. Donald Trump will not be there. He really doesn’t have to be there. He has a massive lead in the polls. Why would any political adviser suggest that the former president attend this […]
Conquering the wilderness, building a city on a hill, and tonight’s GOP debate
Historian Peter Mancall will be looking for references to the Puritans in tonight’s GOP presidential primary debate. He found several in the first debate. Here is a taste of his piece at Zocalo Public Square: The second Republican debate will […]
Brooks Robinson, RIP
RIP:
Joe Biden joins the United Auto Workers picket line in support of striking workers
For the first time in United States history a sitting president joined a picket line. Here is Joe Biden at a General Motors warehouse in Van Buren Township, Michigan: More here. Interesting take from a Cambridge University historian: Socialist Jacobin […]
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”: A short history
Over at Black Perspectives, historian Nico Slate reflects on the history of this famous phrase with a short analysis that spans from Theodore Parker to Martin Luther King Jr. to Barack Obama and beyond. Here is a taste of his […]
Who will be on the GOP debate stage tomorrow night?
The second GOP presidential primary debate on Wednesday night will include Doug Burgum, Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Tim Scott. Donald Trump will not attend. Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson did not make the […]
Ralph Nader will support Biden in 2024
The goal is to keep Donald Trump as far away from the White House as possible. Here is Michael Scherer at The Washington Post: The liberal activist Ralph Nader still remembers nearly the exact words Joe Biden used to banish […]
Is “girl boss feminism” on the decline?
Here is Liza Featherstone at Jacobin: This elitist vision of feminism has been around for more than one hundred years. In the early twentieth century Alexandra Kollontai, a Russian socialist organizer and writer who would later become the only woman in […]
“Don’t let right-wing culture warriors obscure the fact that some ideas behind this progressive ideology have genuine problems.”
Last week we called your attention to Yascha Mounk’s new book The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time. Today we want to call your attention to a Mounk piece at The Atlantic based on the […]
Commonplace Book #284
The Social Gospel softened the impact of industrialism and brightened the lives of many men, and the policies it recommended still have merit. It did, however, strengthen that tendency of American thought that identified fraternity simply with solidarity. By adding […]
In defense of academic book reviews
Here is historian Carolyn Eastman, the book review editor at the William and Mary Quarterly, at The Chronicle of Higher Education: Reviews can contain perfunctory writing, boring chapter-by-chapter summaries, and criticism so mild it’s almost imperceptible. But having just stepped […]
Are public intellectuals condescending?
Becca Rothfield writes: “If the academic humanities too often address only siloed experts, then pop philosophy too often addresses an audience of imagined idiots. And condescension is an especially risky vice for public intellectuals, because it conflicts with the very […]
If you were homeschooled, there is a good a chance you attend either Liberty University or Hillsdale College
Here is Ryan Burge, the religion and politics numbers guy, referencing a study at TheFire.org, the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression: More from Burge here.
Commonplace Book #283
American theorists sought for some element of fraternity some suggestion of bonds uniting man and man. Yet the Enlightenment doctrines made the object of that search difficult to attain. Reason, conceived as the “servant of the passions,” could not unite […]
Episode 117: “The Idea of Fraternity in America”
What is fraternity? Our guest in this episode of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast, political scientist Susan McWilliams Barndt, discusses her father’s 1973 magnum opus The Idea of Fraternity in America. We talk about the work of Wilson Carey […]
Evangelical roundup for September 25, 2023
What is happening in Evangelical land? 65% of evangelicals in two-adult households donate to charity. Rich Mullins: Evangelical court jester. Russell Moore finds a model in Mitt Romney. The number of evangelicals in Spain is growing. Former Buffalo Bills quaterback […]
Sunday night odds and ends
A few things online that caught my attention this week: The academy v. Betty Friedan David French on Trump and the pro-life movement. Will $500 million save local journalism? What is the Crick? Flannery O’Connor’s childhood caretaker. Joe Posnanski: Sportwriter […]
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Commonplace Book #282
The Revolution of 1689 put matters on a different basis. James II had been New England’s unambiguous foe, an enemy to provincial autonomy and a Roman Catholic. Pardonably, the clergy could not resist the temptation to regard the Glorious Revolution […]