You Don't Get to Keep The Sexual Revolution And Give Back the Sex
The Wall Street Journal recently ran a mini-symposium on whether or not the sexual revolution was good for women, a massive topic to be addressed in relatively brief op-eds. I think Hanna Rosin did a...
View ArticleChristianity Isn’t the Only Thing in Crisis: A Reply to Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan has written a cover story for Newsweek (disclosure: where I also work) that I think deserves attention and scrutiny. It could not be more timely, and in many ways more needed. But even...
View ArticleHow A Racist Blended In
As I followed—and I confess, participated in—the mini-firestorm on Twitter over John Derbyshire’s vile Taki Magazine post last night, I started wondering what the point was. National Review is...
View ArticlePhilosophers vs Breeders, Part Deux
Given that I don’t want to bore our few remaining readers to death, I’ve mostly kept silent to that piece in The New Yorker about breeding to which many on Twitter have alerted me. (I mostly found it...
View ArticleOn "Bad Religion"
(This post is written at 11pm, so it might not be coherent.) Bad Religion is an important book that should be read by anyone with interest not just in religion in the American 20th century but by the...
View ArticleA completely oversimplified look at US vs French education systems
I’m pretty sure the US educational system is superior to the French one. This is sort of a counterintuitive idea, in part because the narrative the US school reform movement tells itself is based on...
View ArticleHow To Starve The Beast With A VAT
France’s technocratic state has created many monsters but one of the great things it did for the world was when a polytechnicien and inspecteur des finances (one of the worst technocratic beasts one...
View ArticleThe Case for Regressive Taxation
Please bear with me as this is more of a thought experiment than a manifesto… We’re talking equality again. Here’s Bain Capital executive Edward Conrad, putting forth the case for inequality, and...
View ArticlePEG News
For those still watching this space and who don’t follow on Twitter, here are some PEG-related news which may be of interest: I have started a market research firm, which is called Noosphere — right...
View ArticleWhat #TDKR gets right: totalitarianism
There seems to be a fair amount of discussion of The Dark Night Rises’ politics. Since I’m going to be discussing the movie assuming readers have seen it, this post will be below the fold. Some people...
View ArticleLiberalism, Secularism and Political Theology
I have an essay up at Religion & Politics, a great new site that covers just what you would expect, reviewing two recent books by secular critics seeking to salvage the structure of religion for...
View ArticleSometimes if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
A big question on the mind of American francophiles and Parisians who don’t have Stockholm Syndrome is why so many people you meet in Paris, particularly shopkeepers, cashiers and other people you...
View ArticleBrother Nothing
It’s seductively easy for the educated Christian to poke holes ten ways to Sunday on this apologia of atheism which puts forward a distraught mom as the best defender of theodicy and firmly grounds the...
View ArticleShould We All Learn To Use Guns?
TPM’s Josh Marshall has written a very good post on the gun debate. What makes the post very good is that he recognizes something which everyone in the gun debate knows but no one says: this debate is...
View ArticleNatural Law And Secular Enlightenment Morality
Why do natural law arguments fail these days? Is there such a thing as the natural law? How should we view it/talk about it? Over at The American Conservative, ever the best right-wing journal today,...
View ArticleSame-Sex Marriage And "Equality"
Perhaps nothing highlights the fundamental misunderstanding and outlook difference at the heart of the same-sex marriage (SSM) debate than the question of whether SSM constitutes “equality.” On this...
View ArticleCutbacks or Hostile Media Effect?
Pew just came out with a State of the Media report. The main interpretation (which seems to originate with the authors) has been that the media are stuck in a death spiral as cost-cutting decreases...
View ArticleDon't Tell Me I Can't Be a Feminist House Husband
Into the ever-churning vortex of debate about leaning in/having it all comes Lisa Miller’s New York cover story bogus trend story about “the feminist housewife,” women who have, without changing any of...
View ArticleThe Radicalizing Of A Young Conservative
I like to think of myself as a pretty moderate guy. I like to think that politics is the art of the possible, and try to support policies that could get passed in the real world (while trying to shift...
View ArticleThe Pitfalls Of Impressionism In Narrative Art
The central challenge of great narrative art is to present characters that feel like real people. The problem with that, of course, is that each person is a universe. Each person is depths of...
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