Monthly Archive: March 2010

Dragonlance

“This book was one of my earliest introductions to fantasy and thus to the limits (or lack of limits) of the imagination. I read Dragonlance before I read Tolkien, and was just amazed by...

New institutions.

Chris Hayes and Reihan Salam had a Bloggingheads discussion the other day about their latest articles in Time. Both wrote short essays about an “important trend”: Hayes diagnoses a collapse of authority in our...

I Need a Good Story

So I had a cut on the side of my nose the other day that has scarred over in a way I didn’t expect, making it look nastier than it really was.  I need...

‘A braintrust of Other Ways’

“In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves — the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of...

The First Rule of Rice Cooker

The first rule of rice cooker is that you do not talk about rice cooker. The rice cooker probably knows more about your emotional state of being in the kitchen than anything or anyone...

For Non-Blonds

I’ve learned one thing from listening to Phillip Blond’s recent talk at Georgetown: I’m no Red Tory. My turning point came about halfway through the lecture. Blond had thrown out a few zingers here...

The Sarah Palin Effect

Personally, I’m a Palin agnostic, but this line in an article in the recent Catholic Register cracked me up: “(T)he American-born professor also warns that a close association between conservative, reactionary politics and religion...

Sophocles “Oedipus Rex”

Oedipus Rex is an extraordinarily cruel play. Oedipus has seemingly done nothing wrong and lacks the fatal flaw that would justify the way that coincidences and events align against him. The punishment is completely...

The Polls and the Polis

In a really crackerjack post, Mr. Dierkes, writes: “The hallmark of the liberal procedural republic according to Sandel is that citizens are treated as consumers. The market becomes the dominant form of thought and...

Unable to Clear The Derivative Deck

Peter Atwater writes (concerning the fears of a double dip recession): Unfortunately, from my perspective there have been two very distinct recoveries. The first one is a recovery in asset prices — which I...

Push Comes To Shove

I said awhile ago that, despite some early promisnig signs, the real test of whether Governor Christie is taking our state’s budgetary problems and tax problems seriously would be in the details of his budget...

Blond with Sandel(s)

Two of the League’s brethren attended Philip Blond’s lecture at Georgetown last week.  Will’s review here, David’s here. For those interested, Blond’s thought has been a source of numerous posts in the League’s annals...