Ahmed White is Nicholas Rosenbaum Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Boulder Law School. This interview is based on his new book, Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers (University of California Press, 2022). JF:...
capitalism
The Author’s Corner with Lori J. Daggar
Lori J. Daggar is Associate Professor of History at Ursinus College. This interview is based on her new book, Cultivating Empire: Capitalism, Philanthropy, and the Negotiation of American Imperialism in Indian Country (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022). JF: What led...
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Tony Norman slams Springsteen and Ticketmaster
Over the weekend I lamented the possibility that I might not be able to see Springsteen on his upcoming tour. Tony Norman, an opinion writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and a Current contributor, has my back and the backs of...
Does the GOP still believe in free markets?
Apparently not in Florida. Here is writer Robert Schlesinger at The New Republic: “The market is rational and government is dumb,” Dick Armey, one of the leaders of the 1994 Republican Revolution, liked to say. That used to be a cornerstone...
The Author’s Corner with Kathryn Olivarius
Kathryn Olivarius is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University. This interview is based on her new book, Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom (Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2022). JF: What led you to write Necropolis? KO:...
Capitalism exhibits “moral idiocy”
I just learned about Christian cultural critic Rodney Clapp‘s recent book Naming Neoliberalism: Exposing the Spirit of Our Age. (I have never met Clapp, but he was the acquisition editor at Baker Books who offered me a contract for Why...
The Marxist scholar who believes anti-racism is a cover for capitalism
If you listen to some folks on the Right these days you might conclude that there is little difference between the anti-racism and Marxism. But as Benjamin Wallace-Wells reveals in his recent piece on political scientist Adolph Reed, there are...
Do you have your Trump coin yet?
One of these Make America Great Again coins could be yours for free (plus $9.99 shipping and handling). Just to be clear, these coins are different from the Trump King Cyrus coins that court evangelical prophet Lance Wallnau was hawking...
Catholic social teaching as an alternative to neoliberalism
Anthony Annett of Fordham University articulates the differences between neoliberalism and Catholic social teaching. Here are some of those differences: Neoliberalism defines human motivation in terms of self-interest. Catholic social teaching defines human motivation in terms of “solidarity, reciprocity, and...
How Thanksgiving became a capitalist holiday
In Monday’s Evangelical Roundup (available twice a week to Current patrons at the Surface level), I included a piece by Wallbuilders president Tim Barton in which he claims that the seventeenth-century Pilgrims defeated socialism. Here is Barton: We often think...
Is Wawa about to plant a flag in Sheetz country?
Unless you live in Pennsylvania and the surrounding area you probably have no idea what the title of this post means. Get up to speed here: It looks like Wawa is starting to make some inroads into Sheetz country. Here...
The Author’s Corner with Jared Hardesty
Jared Hardesty is Assistant Professor of History at Western Washington University. This interview is based on his new book, Mutiny on the Rising Sun: A Tragic Tale of Slavery, Smuggling, and Chocolate (NYU Press, 2021). JF: What led you to...
Commonplace Book #198
However much the United States has been a moral or religious nation guided by (individual) impulses of spirit and conscience, it has also seen repeated mergers, or confusions, of religious and material intentions. One would be hard-pressed to argue that...
Is Democratic Socialism anti-Christian?
Here is a taste of Stephen Mattson‘s piece at Sojourners: “Why Democratic Socialism Isn’t Anti-Christian“: Contemporary Christians are among those who have embraced the democratic socialist platform as a necessary check against an economy and political system they view as...
Pope Francis’s scathing critique of American life
Yesterday at The New York Times, Pope Francis published an excerpt of his new book Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future. He offers a devastating critique of the selfishness that we Americans try to pass off as...
Court evangelical James Dobson invokes the Civil War in a letter to followers on the November elections
Read the entire letter here. Let’s break it down: Dobson: As I write this newsletter, voters across this nation are only a few short months away from the next general election. What an ominous time this is for our 244-year-old...
The Author’s Corner with Daniel B. Rood
Daniel B. Rood is Associate Professor of History at the University of Georgia. This interview is based on his book, The Reinvention of Atlantic Slavery: Technology, Labor, Race, and Capitalism in the Great Caribbean (Oxford University Press, 2020). JF: What led you...
White Supremacy, Capitalism, and a New Book on the History of St. Louis
Is capitalism racist? If you answer yes, you are one of the cool kids in the historical profession right now. Scholars working on the connections between capitalism and slavery have produced some interesting, helpful, provocative, and controversial work. Much of...
Three Sundays in April (Part 4)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOxuBs5sR_s&w=560&h=315] If you had thirty minutes to say something to the most powerful man in the world, what would you say? This is how I started our short series titled “Three Sundays in April.” On April 19, 2020, the...
Churches Will Not Be Open on Easter. But What If They Were?
Donald Trump is hoping to celebrate three resurrections on April 12, 2020. Here they are in order of how I believe the president has prioritized them: His own political future The American economy The resurrection of Jesus Trump knows that...