Austin Stone

Alan Jacobs : Stikkin’ it to ya . Apart from being self-satisfied and intellectually shallow , Linda Hirshman misses the real source of inequality between the sexes and adheres to a myopic, one-dimensional view of human flourishing, making it impossible for Hirshman to understand how any . . . . Continue Reading »

Larry Arnhart provides this characteristically astute response to my post below about Darwinian Conservatism. Instead of offering a genuinely postmodern view, he criticizes me for adopting a "distinctly modernist assumption of transcendendalist dualism" that traffics in the . . . . Continue Reading »

Thru Walter Olson at Secular Right , I perused this morning the Buckley-hosted Sharon Statement , "adopted in conference at Sharon, Connecticut, on 11 September 1960." Olson wanted to get this point across: the statement’s choice of language can also be seen as a deft stroke of . . . . Continue Reading »

One reason I’m so eager to defend "shame culture" is that I think there are spiritual goods to be gained by courting shame. An early Christian story in support of that idea: As Thecla listens to Paul’s preaching through a window of her home, her virginal chastity is already . . . . Continue Reading »

"I hold that life is intensely painful but that the good man does not complain." "I suppose you read that in a book?" "No, sir. It struck me quite personally." "Then your idea of perfect happiness is to meet the maximum of pain with the minimum of complaint?" . . . . Continue Reading »

When anyone writes anything positive about smoking, I can predict with deterministic confidence that some commenter with a dead or dying grandparent will appear to tell his story in the comments section. A wag would compare it to the deterministic confidence with which I can predict the increased . . . . Continue Reading »

Larry Arnhart is surely the best proponent of Darwinian Conservatism, and not just because he has a blog with the same name.  In his view, an evolutionary biological account of nature properly captures our intellectual and moral capacities, the emergence of consciousness itself, and grounds a . . . . Continue Reading »

Since I first started blogging at Postmodern Conservative several years ago, I have been picking away, in extremely unsystematic style, at answering this question — largely because I’ve been thinking it through as I’ve been going along. I think that’s a feature, not a bug . . . . Continue Reading »

The tragedy of my career as a political(-ish) blogger is that, at the end of the day, I’m a captive to my interests; I don’t spend my time wondering whether ideas can ever affect politics because, relevant or not, they’re the only thing that can get my blood moving. That’s . . . . Continue Reading »

I have a book review in the November issue of The New Oxford Review of Niall Williams’s novel, John (Bloomsbury USA, 288 pgs., $24.95). I’d link to it but I’m a computer challenged Luddite. UPDATE: here it is [scroll down]. I bring this book to your attention because it is . . . . Continue Reading »