The Theology of Papa
You really should read Br. Will’s post on Ross Douthat’s recent op-ed. The comment thread is a particularly interesting read and is also highly recommended. The link to Ross’ column is here. Ross’ column...
Monthly Archive: October 2009
Libertarians and Diversity (or lack thereof)
The forthcoming issue* of Reason features an exceedingly thoughtful essay by Kerry Howley, in which she argues that libertarianism would be well-served by widening its scope and paying far more attention to infringements on...
revisiting my thoughts on a productive racial dialogue
Forgive me for rerunning a post and looking like I’m not doing my homework. But there’s been some discussion about our racial dialogue lately, and it seems to me that while genuine progress is...
Douthat calls for open religious warfare; thousands perish in ensuing Crusade
I am, frankly, taken aback by some of the reactions to Ross Douthat’s latest column, which makes the commonsensical observation that wavering Anglicans may find the Pope’s combative approach to Islam more attractive than...
The Case Against the Death Penalty
Spurred by a harrowing investigative piece from The New Yorker on the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, Rod Dreher has written a powerful op-ed opposing the death penalty: First things first: If Willingham really...
NFL “debunks” player concussion studies
Seriously, this should be a bigger deal. The NFL is literally making shit up about the long-term impact of player collisions:
The New White City, continued
At Vogue Republic, Kyle points us to this article on Portland’s racial shift.
The Real Story
Today’s non-story appears to be the gender makeup of President Obama’s pickup basketball games. The real story, however, is that our President, at 48 years old, still has fantastic form on his jumpshot. Seriously...
Weak Become Heroes
Via Sociological Images is this pretty awesome “pro-capitalist” propaganda cartoon from 1948: The Miller Center of Public Affairs (my employer) is holding a conference on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin...
The Prince of Nothing
R. Scott Bakker’s debut trilogy, The Prince of Nothing, is one of the best fantasy trilogies I’ve read in a long time. Despite it being a bit slow at times, and despite some of its...
It’s a hard knock life, for unions
E.D. has a new post up at his True/Slant digs asking why John McCain hasn’t done much to participate in the health care debate. I don’t have much to say about the main substance...
Progressives for a value-added tax?
Via Megan McArdle is this interesting graph from the Congressional Budget Office showing the impact the recession has had on tax revenues, organized by type of tax: I am also surprised to see that...
Rewriting the conservative narrative
“While I agree that it’s fairly pointless, as a tactical matter, for dissidents to attack the talk radio giants, this comes, I think, out of a deep frustration that people with little more than...
Must Read for the Day: Iran Edition
Andrew Lee Butters has a really excellent piece in Time that tries to discern Iran’s thinking on the enrichment question. Do read the whole thing: The response to the nuclear deal could be an...
The Course(s) of Iraq
Sully writes the following in the wake of the recent horrific bombing in Iraq: But the surge failed in its core task: to create an environment in which the three major sects in Iraq...
“The Rise of Nuclear Alarmism”
John Mueller, at his counter-intuitive best. I routinely pimp his Foreign Affairs article on the terrorist threat, which is also worth reading if you’re looking for a measured assessment of the capabilities of stateless...
“50% of marriages end in divorce…”
You can chalk this up to the list of things that I complain about once a year. So feel free to skip this if you’ve heard it before. Here’s the deal: the divorce rate,...
The New White City
I know this article on race and progressive cities has taken a lot of criticism, but its central observation – that liberal policies and homogeneous cities are closely correlated – seems pretty intuitive. Progressives...
12 Steps to a Healthy Republican Party
by Jaybird There is a scene in C.S. Lewis’s _The Great Divorce that has been sticking in my craw in the last month or so. It’s the scene where they talk about Napoleon. If...
