Uncategorized
-
Advent
A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek towards that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky’s stars as a pattern of perfect, concentric circles. I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off. At the seashore you
-
Why I Was Wrong about Harris Walz
think that I always suspected that my blindspot about the election was likely to come from my not being on social media–at all. I text with a few friends and family, and that's it. This blog hardly counts, at least if its immunity to virality is any measure. I get most of my information from
-
The Tao of Charles Taylor
From Chapter 15 of Cosmic Connections: The biggest error is to think of the history of ethical growth as linear: on this understanding, we would just have to keep moving ahead, bringing more and more people to Enlightenment, liberalism, and freedom. Rather, the whole process should be seen more “dialectically,” in a sense that even
-
Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November
There are signs that the Democratic Party not only has adopted left orthodoxy on social and cultural issues but also is still not prepared to tolerate debate over these choices. This is reflected in the hostility expressed toward Democratic leaders who suggest moderating the party stance on transgender rights — a seemingly peripheral issue, as
-
The Failure of Democracy is the Failure of Elites
In a very blunt sense, Qanon, insane as its specific assertions are, isn't wrong. Elite culture may not be dominated by Satan-worshipping pedophiles with space lasers made by Jews, but there is a kind of nihilism in which ego, greed, and will to power are simply accepted as normative as the main motivating driving forces
-
Worst Case Scenario?
We've truly turned a corner. And why? Because people were annoyed about of the cost of eggs? No.There's much more to it than that. I fear we've become the capitalist version of the Soviet Union in '91. What happened there then and what is happening here now was the result of a profound loss of
-
Secession?
Back in November 2020—after Biden’s victory but before J6, and before French was a columnist for the NYT— I wrote a piece reflecting on David French’s book released that year entitled Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How We Restore Our Nation. It didn’t get much attention at the time. After all Biden won,
-
The Battle for Normal
“When the dust settled, Donald Trump had bested Kamala Harris in the battle for normal. But Trump’s victory didn’t come down to a simple case of the right defending “traditional values” from progressives. There was some of that, to be sure, not least Trump’s opposition to transgender athletes participating in women’s sports and his vow
-
The Voice of Echo
Given that I am, like most of you, preoccupied with the horrifying consequences of the American people having chosen Caligula to be their president, I feel the need to get back to the positive, constructive things that I can do something about, which is to make the attempt to frame in thought and imagination where,
-
Darkest before the Dawn?
You know the cliche—that It’s always darkest just before the dawn. I can attest to its truth—at least in the Caribbean Sea. After I finished college, I took the best part of the next year to work as a deckhand on a charter boat in the Caribbean. We island-hopped all the way down to Grenada,