It was surreal. President Biden began his State of the Union speech by invoking the Nazi threat. More than eighty years ago, Biden reminded us, Franklin Roosevelt rallied the nation, as “Hitler was on the march,” and “freedom and democracy were under assault.” Today, the president warned, . . . . Continue Reading »
In the annals of quixotic American presidential runs, the candidacy of Cornel West—the seventy-year-old academic, social critic, and activist—for the 2024 election is among the more fantastic. Though Americans have shown a willingness to vote for politically inexperienced candidates so . . . . Continue Reading »
Megan Basham describes her experience of conversion into the evangelical church and present ideological pathologies growing within it. Continue Reading »
In the summer of 2020, HBO removed Gone with the Wind (1939) from its streaming service. The move came in response to an op-ed by John Ridley, screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave (2013), which charged that the film “glorifies the antebellum south,” “romanticizes the . . . . Continue Reading »
After a teaching career of fifty years, I agree with E. D. Hirsch that the primary problem in American public education is not the high schools, but the poorly organized, ineffective elementary school curricula, including the idiotic books of childish fiction. Continue Reading »
The currency of moral, political, and social philosophy, as well as other forms of abstract theorizing, is ideas. They deal not with reality as such, but with representations and explanations of it, and often with recommendations as to how reality should be arranged. Continue Reading »