Ross Douthat Reads Them For The Articles
Naked people in pornography and naked people in media are two very different types of naked people, implies Ross Douthat routinely.
Tagged: Ross Douthat
Trouble with Teaching Authority
The church expects the faithful to assent to its teachings, but as Douthat’s speculations show, the faithful are not always clear on where this teaching authority is actually exercised.
Instant Philosophy: Marriage, Freedom, and Society Edition
by New Dealer The Atlantic’s Jordan Weissmann provides some very interesting statistics on what life is like for the average 27-year old in 2014.[1] The most interesting statistics to me were that high school...
Toxic Relationships
Masses of people agreeing to vote for officials who want to go to war, continue using the death penalty, and tend to oppose programs that would support the poor all so those officials will do little more than pay lip service to the virtue of female chastity surely isn’t the ideal arrangement for a democracy.
God Digs Ambiguity (?)
When I look at the ways in which I believe revelation has taken place, I’m led to conclude that instilling clear certainty of meaning is not high on the Almighty’s agenda. God speaks and there is ambiguity.
On Ross Douthat, “Glass Jaw” Analogies, and Always Trying to Find a New Angle
Ross Douthat seeks to diagnose what’s ailing the left and more specifically, the President. Naturally, it’s “liberalism’s glass jaw,” “There is no world in which all of these hopes could have been perfectly realized....
The Bush Revival
Inspired by this incredibly silly post, I thought I’d recommend an old but prescient article from Ross Douthat on the all-but-inevitable recovery of Bush’s foreign policy reputation. It is staggering to think that a...
A thought, a farewell, and a song.
“Christmas is hard for everyone. But it’s particularly hard for people who actually believe in it. . . . In a sense, of course, there’s no better time to be a Christian than the...
Still missing the point
Daniel Larison goes another round with Ross Douthat: On the one hand, Ross urges us not to believe that “all religious cultures are identical, or that the intellectual climate in contemporary Islam is no...
Paul Ryan Week Continues
Ross Douthat’s piece on Paul Ryan’s position within the Republican Party is almost as worthwhile as the Ezra Klein interview I linked earlier. I know that we’re rapidly reaching overkill on Paul Ryan this...
The first draft of history is always poorly edited
Last year, Ross Douthat wrote a perceptive article on the inevitability of attempts to revive Bush’s flagging presidential reputation. Now Big Government is offering a sneak peak at what future Bush revisionism might look...
Sex, literature and limits
A few people have objected to a Naomi Wolf article on pornography I linked to earlier. If you don’t buy the idea that rampant over-exposure to porn deadens our erotic senses, I recommend you...
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...
Reform Conservatism, Not Conservatives
It’s clear to me that Conor and to a lesser extent Rod don’t understand what Jamelle, Freddie, E.D., and myself have been driving at in our various critiques of reform-minded conservatism. Conor’s misunderstanding is...
Ross Douthat Strikes Back
I know he’s taken quite a beating around these parts, but I really liked Ross Douthat’s latest column, which endorses the same Singapore-style approach to health insurance that E.D. championed earlier (Is there any...
Conservative Fusionism Is To Blame
In his response to Freddie, Conor writes: This is sloppy reasoning. It treats conservatism as though it is indistinguishable from the Republican Party and the Bush Administration — as though a political philosophy and...
But What Are You For? The Death of Modern Movement Conservatism
I had the good fortune yesterday afternoon to attend a panel discussion on the future of conservatism featuring Ross Douthat, David Frum, Daniel Larison, and Virginia Postrel. It was a rather enlightening discussion, but...
How do those Northern Europeans do it?
Responding to Ross Douthat’s latest column, Jamelle raises an interesting question: And finally, I wonder how Douthat explains away Northern Europe’s high economic growth rates and robust welfare states? I’m no economist, but I...
I’m sure you could find a less embarassing conservative for the NY Times op-ed page
Reading Ross Douthat’s (terrible) column this morning, I really only have three thoughts: 1) Someone should tell him to shy away from writing policy columns; not only is he not very good at them,...
