Raphael Warnock delivered a real stemwinder last night at the Democratic National Convention. Speeches like this remind me of why I felt compelled to argue in 2018 that the early civil rights movement provides the best historical model for evangelicals, […]
individualism
Should we fear “collectivism?”
Over at Jacobin, Luke Savage explains and counters the Right’s misunderstanding of “collectivism.” Here is a taste: Contrary to what the Right asserts, the Left is not animated by a rigid determinism that seeks to stamp out the individual or […]
The Author’s Corner with Scott Gac
Scott Gac is Professor of History and American Studies at Trinity College. This interview is based on his new book, Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America (Cambridge University Press, 2024). JF: What led you to write Born […]
On the “perpetual panic” of liberal individualism
Shadi Hamid is a columnist at The Washington Post and a research professor of Islamic studies at the Fuller Seminary. Here is a taste of his moving piece on the limits of liberal individualism: I can imagine being both more […]
What did the founding fathers mean by “virtue”?
Recently a follower on one of my social media sites asked me for some reading material on the 18th-century understanding of virtue. I have tried over the years to inform many of my fellow evangelicals that when the founders talked […]
The Author’s Corner with Alexandra Filindra
Alexandra Filindra is Associate Professor of Political Science and Psychology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. This interview is based on her new book, Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture (University of Chicago […]
“The idea that we can enjoy the benefits of society while owing nothing in return is literally infantile. Only children owe nothing.”
Last night I read author and television script-writer Noah Hawley‘s piece about what he saw, experienced, and thought as he took a family road trip between Austin, Texas and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Here are a few snippets: As we drove, […]
The Author’s Corner with Maurizio Valsania
Maurizio Valsania is Professor of American History at the University of Turin. This interview is based on his new book, First Among Men: George Washington and the Myth of American Masculinity (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022). JF: What led you […]
The Author’s Corner with Alex Zakaras
Alex Zakaras is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont. This interview is based on his new book, The Roots of American Individualism: Political Myth in the Age of Jackson (Princeton University Press, 2022). JF: What led […]
How the British monarch defies modernity
Here is Sebastian Milbank at the British website The Critic: In an increasingly secular and individualist world, it is very rare to see people who have given over their lives to a calling or vocation that swamps and overshadows their […]
I’m not going to pay for that guy’s kid to be educated
What is the common good? Should a person or couple with no children have to pay taxes to support public education? It seems to have to come this. Here is Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic: The Times’ Dan Barry reported on […]
The Author’s Corner with William Novak
William Novak is Charles F. and Edith J. Clyne Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. This interview is based on his new book, New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State (Harvard University Press, 2022). […]
The Author’s Corner with Robert Gross
Robert A. Gross is Emeritus Draper Professor of Early American History at the University of Connecticut. This interview is based on his new book, The Transcendentalists and Their World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). JF: What led you to write The Transcendentalists […]
Historian Jonathan Couser responds to George Will’s column on individualism and identity politics
Yesterday I wrote a post on George Will’s recent column on identity politics and modernity. Over at Facebook, historian Jonathan Couser responded to Wills. Here is his take, published with his permission. –JF George Will is one of the few […]
George Will on the premodern origins of identity politics…
…and national conservatism. This is a really interesting column. A taste: Prophecy is optional folly but an irresistible end-of-year temptation. So, at the risk of allowing a wish to be the father of a thought, a plausible prediction is that […]
Jill Lepore on the state of “society”
Here is a taste of the Harvard historian’s recent piece at The Guardian: In March 2020, Boris Johnson, pale and exhausted, self-isolating in his flat on Downing Street, released a video of himself – that he had taken himself – […]
Joan Chittister on the Beatitudes
Here is the Benedictine Sister at the National Catholic Reporter: In Scripture, we find the Beatitudes, the signs of what it means to be a good human being, an ethical government, a moral country. The renewal of the United States […]
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 […]
Tocqueville said that “selfishness originates in blind instinct: individualism proceeds from erroneous judgment.” Both are at work in our mask wars.
What is happening to America? The Donald Trump presidency is primarily responsible this mess. He lifted the veil of civility and empowered the kind of people you see and hear about in the video I posted below. If the republic […]
Do Americans still believe in the common good?
It’s a fair question. Here is Kentucky-based writer Silas House at The Atlantic: Refusing to sacrifice for the common good is an American problem, not just a Kentucky one; opposition to masking and vaccination is happening in such disparate places […]