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, […]
Way of Improvement
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 […]
The GOP primaries need an anti-Trump candidate in 2024
Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post calls for an anti-Trump candidate in the Republican Party. But it will not be former Maryland governor Larry Hogan. On Sunday he wrote an op-ed in The New York Times titled “I’m Not Seeking […]
Commonplace Book #243
Our very conception of participation in the public discourse is predicated upon a gross distortion of the proper relationship between truth and opinion. We abhor silence, as if having nothing to say is somehow worse than saying much without substance. […]
Two Twitter threads that reveal the current state of The Kings College, a Christian college in New York City
We have covered the financial difficulties of The Kings College here and here. Here is New York journalist Sam Thielman: And here is Alissa Wilkinson, a writer and film critic who teaches English at The Kings College:
“His rotundity” versus a supposed atheist and anarchist
Over at his Substack, historian William Hogeland is telling “lurid tales” of American elections. He begins his series with the presidential election of 1796. Here is a taste of his post: Jefferson supporters, labeling Adams “His Rotundity,” claimed that the […]
How Ben Carson appropriated the Asbury Revival at CPAC
Check out our full coverage of the Asbury Revival. The former HUD director and presidential candidate’s speech this weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference praised the founding fathers, repeated the myth that Ben Franklin led the Constitutional Conventional in […]
Apparently $100,000 is the price to compete in the CPAC straw poll
Vivek Ramaswamy is running for the GOP nomination for president in 2024, but he has no name recognition and as a result was not expected to do well on the straw poll conducted last weekend at a gathering of the […]
McKay Coppins at CPAC: “I’ve never seen it more dead”
What happens if you hold a Conservative Political Action Conference and no one shows up? Here is McKay Coppins at The Atlantic: The right-wing-merch retailer’s setup was among the most impressive at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference—a gargantuan display […]
Episode 52: “Introducing the Terri Schiavo Case”
In the first half of 2005, the Christian Right poured all its energy into this controversial Florida right-to-life case. Episode 52: “Introducing the Terri Schiavo Case’ dropped today. Subscribers to Current at the Longshore level and above have access to new episodes of this […]
What’s new at Current?
We’ve made some changes at CURRENT. You can read about them here or watch this video:
CPAC 2023 in six minutes
Thanks to Ron Filipkowski for putting posting this: