Joy, purpose, and the hard work of parenting
Rod Dreher, writing at his new digs at Big Questions Online, has this to say about parenting and happiness: “The loss of parental freedom is severe, and if young marrieds had any idea how...
Author: Erik Kain
Loyalty and the Shirley Sherrod affair
I’d like to fully endorse this post from Noah Millman. I was talking to my wife about the Shirley Sherrod affair and she basically said, who cares if a blog posted the video? Most...
Freeways and the death of the great American city
Tim Lee’s post on the decline of St. Louis is fascinating and heart-breaking all at once. For as long as I can remember I’ve had a visceral dislike of city freeways. This is partly...
In defense of Mel Gibson
Perhaps this stems from my admiration of Mel Gibson the filmmaker or perhaps it is simply because I hate to see a piling-on when someone is so obviously in such a dire straits, but...
A Liberal party? Positive conservatism? Both?
A while back I proposed a third party (I know, I know third parties are total pipe dreams. The barriers to entry are too high. Tell that to the Whigs and the Tories…!). I...
On hippie-punching
Mark writes: To the extent libertarianism is a political philosophy that is primarily concerned with anti-Marxism and “hippy-punching,” rather than being primarily concerned with limited government, I can’t dispute that Erik is absolutely right. ...
One more time down this rabbit hole
To follow up a bit more on the libertarian coalition argument, I have to say it really just depends. Glancing across the pond you see the Liberal Democrats – a left-libertarian group in many...
Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who…
I agree entirely with Mark when he urges us not to confuse state and national politics. As a resident of Arizona, I understand this only too well. Indeed, it’s interesting to me to look...
Re: Liberaltarianism, Again
Mark: I understand where you’re coming from here, but I’m not entirely convinced. Libertarians are already largely on the same page as liberals on social and foreign policy issues – sometimes they’re even a...
For those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter…
…apologies for my extended absence from the blog. You see, my wife had a baby Monday. This was our second and we had him at home. It was an incredible experience. Incredibly painful if...
A few more notes on cutting defense spending
Joerg Wolf, of the Atlantic Council, disagrees that European nations would increase defense spending if America decreased its presence in Europe and around the globe as I noted in my defense-spending piece at NRO....
You say austerity, I say prosperity
Reactions to New Jersey governor, Chris Christie’s cuts and privatizations are mixed depending on where you fall on the ideological spectrum. But one thing that irks me is the reaction that all these spending...
Banning pet shops to save the pets
I have to say, when I first read that San Francisco was looking at banning pet shops I thought it sounded pretty ridiculous. But I think Claire Berlinksi makes a tremendously good point: Every...
A jukebox for Friday morning
Forest Sun is pretty unknown I think, but he’s got a lot of great stuff. This song is eerily moving. I wish I’d been to Bonaroo! Watching this next one puts a big grin...
Muddling toward an organic society
Matt Frost is blogging at Ricochet. Here’s a bit of his opening salvo: By way of introduction, I’ll share a few links and ideas that all relate to the closest thing I have to...
Wasn’t National Public Radio always NPR?
The Washington Post reports that National Public Radio is changing its name to NPR. John Miller snarks: Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC and now National Public Radio is changing its name...
The future of online advertising
Kevin Drum asks: Are magazines generating — or on track to generate — more online revenue than I think? Are there hybrid models out there that I’m unaware of? Or is the future of...
We’re already at war
James Poulos thinks I’m wrong to advocate against Arthur Brooks’ culture war: Alas, the cultural conflict is already blazing. Some people think a federal tax on tanning is a legitimate tool of economic policy....
The limits of doing this for free
Will Wilkinson links to this post by Ezra Klein, who makes a very good point: Fairly few political commentators know enough to decide which research papers are methodologically convincing and which aren’t. So we...
Should we keep mini-posts?
[updated] We’ve used them less and less frequently, especially as we’ve drifted away from our original mission and our original conversational project. I almost never post mini-posts. And there’s really no reason why short...
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