Blogito, ergo sum . I blog, therefore I am. This epistemological premise would seem to describe more than a few who inhabit the blogosphere these days. One wonders what would happen to the likes of an Andrew Sullivan or a Jonah Goldberg if they awoke one morning to discover that they were unable to . . . . Continue Reading »
Andrew has a fairly careful and modest essay at the Times on the progress of religious faith in the face of scientific progress. The issue of whether faith should gird us to not fear scientific truth is an intriguing one; the Holocaust was scientifically true, after all, meaning the facts could not . . . . Continue Reading »
There are two models of rapture — one super-worldly, one this-worldly, one in which we are abducted, from here to eternity, and one in which we are inducted, to infinity and beyond. The first model is depressing if it’s the only opportunity we have to experience eternity. Even the . . . . Continue Reading »
Another excerpt from some recent work: The basic political premise of techno-politics is that the classic question regarding competing claims to rule has been decisively answered: instead of Platos philosopher king we get its emasculated modern descendant, the rational bureaucrat. The . . . . Continue Reading »
Here’s a nice contrast. First, Rod : As Wendell Berry explains, especially in “Sex, the Economy, Freedom & Community,” you cannot have community without order, and you cannot have a workable order as long as both economic and sexual decisions are wholly privatized — that . . . . Continue Reading »
Conservatives, postmodern and otherwise, often discuss the difficulties associated with the sometimes promiscuous assignment and declaration of rights in political discourse today. If we look at the American founding narrowly from the perspective of its Lockean influence, its easy to see the . . . . Continue Reading »
Marc C. Taylor, chairman of the religion department at Columbia, wants to “end the university as we know it.” But he wants to do it wrong: “The division-of-labor model of separate departments is obsolete and must be replaced with a curriculum structured like a web or complex . . . . Continue Reading »
Here is a short excerpt of an aticle I just finished writing and that is relevant to Ralph’s Manifesto 1.3.1: The differences between Bushs Executive Order Expanding Approved Stem Cell Lines (June 20, 2007) and Obamas Executive Order overturning it are striking . . . . Continue Reading »
There is a compelling start of a conversation, I see, between Daniel Larison and Noah Millman . Noah began in reaction to Andrew Bacevich’s latest introduction to a book . Bacevich, of course, takes the anti-imperial position of William Appleman Williams to be a clarion wake-up call for any . . . . Continue Reading »
So I spent a few days this week attending a conference at Berry College in Rome, Georgia hosted by Peter Lawler and Eric Sands. It was a terrific and well organized series of events capped off by a thought provoking presentation by our own Jim Ceasar on Tocqueville, his consideration of the . . . . Continue Reading »