Austin Stone

We cannot forget that, because of the 1960s, America is more just and in some ways less cruel than it once was.  That decade’s objection to "soulless wealth" and technocracy in the name of personal significance and personal love also retain some force.  They do so . . . . Continue Reading »

Mr. Poulos’ acute observations prompted these thoughts on the subject of Mr. Ricoeur:   Paul Ricoeur, in Oneself as Another , strives to reconcile the ancient quest for a substantive good with the modern respect for formal individual rights – which is not unlike . . . . Continue Reading »

Joe Carter provides a gentlemanly defense of Sarah Palin’s credentials right here at Culture11. He’s right to point out that her performance on one television show, especially one that has deep reserves of ideological contempt for her and anyone like her, is less than . . . . Continue Reading »

He’s sponsoring this bill entreating President Bush to pardon heavyweight champ Jack Johnson, nearly a century after Johnson’s racially-motivated conviction under the Mann Act and sixty-two years after his death. A similar bill passed by voice vote in the House on Friday. A five-minute . . . . Continue Reading »

Francis-Noël Thomas has written an aces piece on A. J. Liebling’s World War II reporting. It does not happen to include my own passage from Liebling’s army travels, so I reproduce it here: . . . the instant of that day that recurs to me most often has been that when I sat with . . . . Continue Reading »

The man himself in New York magazine : NY: Do you have a theory about why the culture keeps getting coarser? WA: The country has, over the years, moved to the right. And it’s possible that accompanying that move to the right, you also get a lessening of taste. But I don’t know if what . . . . Continue Reading »

I’ve already promoted Dan Mahoney’s excellent analysis of the socio-political import of 1968, especially from the perspective of France. Our own Peter Lawler provides his original critical commentary here cautioning us that as seminal as ‘68 was, a fuller picture of the . . . . Continue Reading »

Commenter Paulie wants to know. Well, there’s no denying that postmodern theory is intimately intertangled with the "hermeneutic of suspicion." Ricoeur helped us level against Habermasian liberal thinkers the complaint that ideologies could become so clever that what appeared to be . . . . Continue Reading »

Here’s something I say in "Natural Law, Our Constitution, and Our Democracy,’ MODERN AMERICA AND THE LEGACY OF THE FOUNDING (ed. Pestritto and West, 2007):   . . . in Locke’s ‘Of Property, the frequent references to God disppear once money is invented—with . . . . Continue Reading »

Contra Ivan, Nick Troester levels a miniature defense of Locke. There is definitely an ‘anti-natural law’ aspect of Locke which actually remains fairly powerfully Aristotelian. If Aristotle was right that the political relationship was fundamentally different in kind from other sorts of . . . . Continue Reading »