modesty in Afghanistan
I think Reihan is right to be distressed, given his inclinations for Afghanistan, by the perceptible shift in expectations for the country. And he’s right to note that it’s a major shift with some...
Author: Freddie
I, troll
Alan Jacobs has some thoughts on the virtues and vices of blogging, vis a vis the seemingly endless “is religious belief rational” merry-go-round. He says As everyone knows, the less complex and nuanced the...
calling bullshit on bullshit
Andrew links approvingly to another frivolous experiment that seeks to show that bootstrapping rhetoric isn’t dead, and that if you are hard-working and smart, you can rise up and overcome, etc. etc., into the...
“All I want… to kno-ow! All I want!”
lyrics feature adult language The Misfits, to me, are genius, and I don’t know why they don’t get more credit as essential pop-punk forefathers. So many great, two-minute punk rock songs, major-key and ecstatic....
the grad trap
John Schwenkler has some wise words about the college debt trap. As I said in the comments at his blog, I think that there are some pieces missing from that version of the story,...
the inevitability dodge
In the comments to ED’s post, Roland Dodds writes “First of all, the ‘meddling’ the United States engages in is the very thing any unipolar (or hegemonic) power would pursue”. Well, you might say...
eating my vegetables
So you should follow Scott’s lead and read Sonny Bunch here… I have been engaged in a little pissing contest with him in his comments section. I really shouldn’t. Look, obviously, I disagree with...
Sunday Poem
P The Salt of the Sea by Philip Primeau Above the eastern sill of sky, at early tide, arrives the sun to light the sea. Its ruddy blood from heaven spills and fills the...
not everyone who says he’s your friend is your friend
So here’s my dilemma. Real partisanship, I mean real, nasty, cut-off-the-country’s-nose-to-spite-the-other-side’s-face partisanship, can be fun, as the average college Republican can tell you. But among it’s many, many downsides is the fact that you...
compromising yourself into the discussion
I feel like Ross is sort of missing the point concerning Matt Yglesias’s post that he quotes. To me, the central point of Matt’s post isn’t that deficits don’t matter in a time of...
goodbye to Culture11
If you Google “Culture11” you’ll find a ton of entries that say “My article at Culture11”. That’s because, in addition to tons of content from established (and David Brooks approved!) writers, the editors went...
pragmatics first
Hey, why would someone like me be more invested in building a legal defense of gay marriage specifically and a larger lattice of rights to defend gay people generally? Why, maybe because of things...
atheism and monsters
Reading over the various responses to Ross Douthat’s piece on celestial teapots and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it occurs to me once again that there is a very obvious difference between a Flying Spaghetti...
human beings, human limits
(The video above in part inspired me to write this post. I’m including it for context. This isn’t intended as an indictment of either Wilkinson or Yudkowsky, although I do think that Yudkowsky, it’s...
Sunday Poem
PSong of Man Chipping an Arrowhead by WS Merwin Little children, you will all go but the one you are hiding will fly.
knowing when to get out of the way
It’s gratifying to be away from the Internet for a day, and come back to find a couple of thoughtful responses to what you’ve written. (Actually, it’s gratifying, sometimes, to be away from the...
a little more on party and perspective
To extend the question of partisan positioning leading to inconsistencies just a bit further (and I promise that I’m done after that), consider James Poulos, echoing Peter Suderman, “If movies aren’t always, or even...
earnestness is mine, sayeth the conservative
I was pondering Erik and Mark’s thoughts on partisanship, and this video fell in my lap. I first saw this via Andrew, but it appears to be making the rounds in the right-of-center blogosphere....
I got the mic, I rock it how I please
Max Socol wrote a post that I think is an example of rhetorical bad faith. To put it simply, those who say “let’s talk policy, not morality” are always, in fact, talking morality, they’re...
incoherent blockbusters and the Dark Knight
I think it was Eagle Eye that finally broke me. I just can’t take any more movies that don’t make any sense. Not because that forgettable Shia Labeouf vehicle was particularly nonsensical– it didn’t...
