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  • Welcome to After the Future.

    This site is currently in transition from its original host at TypePad.

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  • Zombie Traditionalism Series

    Part 1: Tradition vs Enlightenment Liberation fever is not new; it’s at the heart of the Modern impulse. It started with the Reformation, progressed through the Enlightenment, and ultimately manifested in the liberation movements of our own era. The modern spirit from its earliest manifestation has always been a movement to shuck off the constraints

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  • Sinning Originally Series: Five Parts

    Part 1: Christianity vs Naturalism As an idea that lies at the very foundation of the Judeo-Christian narrative, original sin competes with other narratives, which for the sake of a short essay like this I’ll simplify into two categories: Eastern (as in Hindu & Buddhist) and Pagan (as in Greek, Germanic, and Celtic).  All three

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  • The Roots of Nationalism: Taking Hazony Seriously

    Maybe I’m wrong, but my working assumption is that whatever it is we thought we had during the Obama years is dead. Liberals are going through the stages of grief, most now either in denial or anger. Someone like Corey Booker exemplifies the anger stage, and I sympathize, but that doesn’t mean his outburst on

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  • What Makes Democracy Possible

    Maybe I’m all wet, but my assumption until proven wrong is that the second election of Donald Trump is a complete game changer. But almost everything I read or watch in the MSM proceeds as if we’re still in an era of politics as usual, and all the old rules still apply, and so therefore

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  • Why Philosophy Matters

    In our own culture academic philosophy is a highly marginal and specialized activity. Professors of philosophy do from time to time seek to wear the clothes of relevance and some of the college-educated public are haunted by vague cartoon-like memories of Philosophy 100. But both would find it surprising and the larger public even more

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  • Reality: Not What It Used to Be

    Not long ago, we sat in Steve Bannon’s Capitol Hill rowhouse, where he records his War Room podcast, pressing him on Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, and his denial of what transpired on January 6. “Our reality is that we won” and that January 6 was a “fedsurrection,” Bannon said,

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  • Lasch on Narcissism

    Modern technology has achieved so many dazzling breakthroughs that we now find it difficult to envision any limits to collective human ingenuity. The secret of life itself is within our grasp, according to those who predict a revolution in genetics—in which case it may be possible for us to keep ourselves alive indefinitely or at

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  • Francis and the Future of the Church

    Conservative Christian politics are not everywhere and always destructive, but today’s right is more extreme than its recent predecessors. I fear that the next era of American Christianity will be about conquest and triumph rather than peace and humility, and will profligately lend its imprimatur to nationalist agendas that are hostile to the weak and

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