Welcome to the Moorfield Storey Institute
Longtime online friend Jim Peron launched a new project over the weekend — a blog for the Moorfield Storey Institute. Here are some highlights from the first few posts: The classical liberal founders of...
Monthly Archive: November 2010
Let’s Get Our Islamic Terminology Straight
Image via Wikipedia Playing off of Mark’s post against the Oklahoma ban on sharia law, it’s important to note that most of the contemporary debate over Sharia law in the United States seems to...
Formatting update
So there’s been lots of good feedback from commenters and writers on the new formatting. Basically what I’m trying to achieve is something that looks very much like the old format, but with more...
Private Arbitration and Islamic Law
In one of the recent threads on the supposed “threat” of sharia law and the resulting need for anti-sharia legislation, such as the recently passed resolution in Oklahoma, a commenter argues: By allowing Sharia...
The war on barbershops
Yet another example of our ludicrous economic policies mixing it up with our ludicrous law enforcement policies: As many as 14 armed Orange County deputies, including narcotics agents, stormed Strictly Skillz barbershop during business...
Thoughts about the League.
Tim Burke’s recent meditation on the future of blogs has got me thinking about the evolution of The League, and not just in terms of format and color scheme. Though this blog hasn’t yet...
Poems for Sunday
I remember a bookstore cashier once flirting with me over my purchase of Catullus, whose poems she considered to be very sexy. I suppose it depends on your tastes. Most of his poems are either...
Debate: Constantine and Theodosius (Updated)
Joe Carter has now responded to my own opening argument, and I reproduce that response below. As we are now entering the phase of the net-based back-and-forth when formatting itself becomes the greatest potential...
Some new formatting…?
In an attempt to widen the comments section, modernize the site’s functionality, etc I am experimenting with some new formatting. Please leave feedback. We can switch back very easily, so DON’T PANIC! Again, perhaps...
Debate: My Opening Argument
Before this debate began I introduced a quotation from the Emperor Theodosius I, who reigned at the end of a long and telling struggle between the two major Christian factions of the time: those...
Charles Taylor Saturday #5: Purposes and buffers.
Charles Taylor is a Canadian philosopher and social theorist. His most recent book, A Secular Age, is an examination of modern secularism and the cultural conditions that gave rise to it. First, an administrative...
A Metaphysical Train Wreck is Music to Skeptical Ears
Chris — no philosophical slouch he — writes: It’s interesting that Joe brings out the “no true atheists” trope in his first post, claiming that atheism is ultimately “incoherent” (at least as much as...
Debate: Response to Joe Carter’s Extended Opening Argument
Apologies for the delay; I’ve been obligated to work on some other projects over the past few days but I should now be free to give this debate the attention it merits. In addition...
The Hunger Games (and other books and such)
I just finished the second book of Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy – Catching Fire. Both books have been really great reads – fast paced, suspenseful, extremely and surprisingly violent given their intended audience....
Teams
This really speaks to how I view politics: In one of the most shameless displays of political narcissism in recent memory, presumptive Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) choked up on Election...
Should we ban roses because they give us pleasure?
Via Andrew, here’s TPM’s Josh Marshall: I just don’t know if I think marijuana should be legalized at all. Maybe it’s that I’m getting into my 40s. And maybe I’m a hypocrite… But do...
Status redistribution and American exceptionalism
“It occurs to me that there’s an obvious link here with the idea that the contemporary populist right is heavily driven by ressentiment—and that a lot of our current politics has less to do...
Sophocles: Antigone- Estrangement, the Divine, and the State
What a coincidence! Today, Mr. Brown and Mr. Carter debate the role of religious belief, or disbelief, and the state- largely about what ground of being provides the best common basis for society- and...
The True Tragedy of the Midterms
Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi will no longer be represented in Congress by William Faulkner.
The Principle of Laudatory Criticism
I’m told that the original expression is “critique élogieuse”: People say we can no longer write about our colleagues. Obviously it becomes difficult having a coffee with someone if that afternoon you have to...
