Brief reflections on this weekend’s Front Porch Republic conference.
Ross Douthat
Ross Douthat: “What if progress isn’t linear, and the World Spirit’s purposes are a bit more complicated than an optimistic form of liberal Protestantism expects?”
Sometimes history does not move in a linear direction towards “progress.” Ross Douthat offers us a short lesson in historical thinking: Here is Douthat’s column on Donald Trump: In different ways in my own lifetime, American conservatism and liberalism placed […]
Ross Douthat on why conservatives are hostile to Taylor Swift
As I wrote last week, “we now live in a world where a narcissistic sociopath wants to be president again and only a global pop superstar can stop him.” Can Taylor Swift influence the 2024 election? It appears that some […]
Douthat: “It’s absurd that there was no unified opposition” to Trump in Iowa
Earlier today I watched Dana Bash of CNN interview GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley at a New Hampshire diner. I’ll let David Goldiner of the New York Daily News describe what I saw: Nikki Haley feigned ignorance about former President […]
Ross Douthat: A Christian conservative who lives among liberals and writes for them
Here is Isaac Chotiner at The New Yorker: “Douthat is highly skilled at addressing liberal Times readers in a manner that makes clear he is not one of them, without allowing them to think that he actually holds views—about Donald Trump, say, […]
Do journalists have more freedom than professors?
Ross Douthat begins his recent New York Times piece by engaging with the recent pushback against “wokeness” on university campuses. If what is happening on the campuses of Stanford, Harvard, Penn State, Cornell, and Vanderbilt is any indication, and Columbia’s […]
“Is the New York Times becoming a more complex place that is open to the views of, well, half of America?”
Over at “Get Religion,” veteran religion writer Terry Mattingly responds to my recent Current piece “The New York Times’ ‘Come to Jesus’ Moment.” Here is a taste: …This brings us to a rather short John Fea “think piece” essay that […]
Ross Douthat makes a case against abortion
Here is a taste of his New York Times column: …with the court set this week to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, it seems worth letting the lawyers handle the meta-arguments […]
Christian intellectual life: “strategy” or “vocation?”
Read Ross Douthat’s recent piece on Christian intellectuals. Now read Alan Jacobs’s critique of it. Here is a taste: It’s rare for me to disagree with Ross Douthat as thoroughly as I disagree with this reflection on Christian intellectuals. I disagree […]