Tribal Thinking

• University Neo-Puritanism

  In the classroom, backlash for unpopular opinions is so commonplace that many students have stopped voicing them, sometimes fearing lower grades if they don’t censor themselves. According to a 2021 survey administered by College Pulse of over 37,000 students at 159 colleges, 80 percent of students self-censor at least some of the time. Forty-eight percent

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• Jamelle Bouie on Civil War

  …if you’re worried about a second Civil War, the question to ask isn’t whether people hate each other — they always have and we tend to grossly exaggerate the extent of this country’s political and cultural unity over time — but whether that hate results from the irreconcilable social and economic interests of opposing groups

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• Genealogy Part 3: Axiality and the Socratic Elenchus

  Rather than proceed in some linear fashion with the genealogy of the title, I want to explore first the claim made in Part 2 concerning the legitimacy of knowledge on the vertical–or Wisdom–dimension. Without first having established that, I think it's very difficult to understand why the originary Mythos of the West–Christian Neoplatonism–worked for so

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• The Crisis of the Liberal Order, Part I

  I've pleaded here for years that the political sphere should not be the place to arbitrate cultural issues. In a pluralistic society, the political should focus on practical policy concerns, things like healthcare, energy and transportation infrastructure, and wealth distribution. In the cultural sphere, the rule should be simply to live and let live–as much

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• Cixin Liu: Democracy and Culture

  In a 2018 New Yorker profile of the Chinese science fiction writer Cixin Liu, Jiayang Fan writes– I looked at him, studying his face. He blinked, and continued, “If you were to loosen up the country [China] a bit, the consequences would be terrifying.” I remembered a moment near the end of the trilogy, when

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• Heroes of the Fourth Turning

  I have just read Will Arbery's intriguing play. I  haven't seen it on stage. I read an interview with Arbery in Vox, which motivated me to purchase the play.which I read the other day.  I come out of the Catholic world, and this blog represents what I hope is an intellectually coherent presentation of a

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• Four Years Too Late

  Mr. Trump is set to depart office on Wednesday with an approval rating of 29 percent, the lowest of his presidency, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center. About 75 percent of the public said Mr. Trump bore some responsibility for the violence and destruction of Jan. 6, which put the lives

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• The Coming Discontinuity: A Theological Reflection through the Sensibility of a Progressive Catholic

  I realize that in this moment the idea of recovering a Catholic sensibility is so much spitting in the wind, but nevertheless, in the long run something like it is called for because without a restoration of a sense of the sacramental, the machines win. I'll come back to defend this assertion toward the end. 

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• The Difference between Faith and Idolatry

  This denial of science and critical thinking among religious ultraconservatives now haunts the American response to the coronavirus crisis. On March 15, Guillermo Maldonado, who calls himself an “apostle” and hosted Mr. Trump earlier this year at a campaign event at his Miami megachurch, urged his congregants to show up for worship services in person.

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• Quote of the Day: Ross Douthat

  Trump’s authoritarian tendencies are naked on his Twitter feed, but Bloomberg’s imperial instincts, his indifference to limits on his power, are a conspicuous feature of his career. Trump jokes about running for a third term; Bloomberg actually managed it, bulldozing through the necessary legal changes. Trump tries to bully the F.B.I. and undermine civil liberties;

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