Austin Stone

While much of the talk on this blog, appropriately enough, has been about the opportunities presented in defeat for a rethinking of conservative principles there might also be some occasssion for a reassessment of contemporary liberalism as well. The media insists on presenting Obama’s . . . . Continue Reading »

One of our country’s most precious inheritance from the Puritans was the more or less compulsory cessation of commercial activity on Sunday.  But we Hobbesian/Darwinian survivalists increasingly think there’s not time enough to allow the wasting of even a single day.  Or . . . . Continue Reading »

Over at The American Scene, Alan Jacobs does the public service of reminding us that those medieval Christians didn’t put Earth at the center of the universe because they were arrogant: The center of the medieval cosmos is not the most important place, but the stillest and deadest place, the . . . . Continue Reading »

It’s easy for me to choose my friends: My conversation style involves blurting out bizarre and enigmatic sentences, and anyone with the patience to put up with it is a friend of mine. (Call it "argument by spaghetti": throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.) Case in . . . . Continue Reading »

Eve Tushnet has an occasional series called "Things I Know But Cannot Prove," a list that every man should compile for himself in spare moments, both to keep track of what he knows—I, for one, tend to forget—and keep a little humility about what he can and can’t prove. . . . . Continue Reading »

If I read him correctly, President-elect Obama seeks to blur the ethnic-cultural aspect of the individual to the point where we can, as a nation, achieve true "diversity," a oneness of purpose that will unite America with the people of the world in brotherhood and, no doubt, . . . . Continue Reading »

Apparently there being soul in cyberspace means that there’s adultery and divorce in cyberspace as well: "I went mad — I was so hurt. I just couldn’t believe what he’d done," Taylor told the Western Morning News. "It may have started online, but it existed . . . . Continue Reading »

One can surely make a reasonable argument that Sarah Palin was underqualified to be the next Vice President. Nevertheless, I argue here that the hyperventilated contempt shown for her by our cosmopolitan elites reveals a caricatured and ugly dismissal of the lives of ordinary Americans. It’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Niall Ferguson offers a sweeping historical explanation — the clearest and broadest I’ve seen — of the financial crisis, including a delicious (to me) critique of the arrogant "quants" (quantitative whiz-kids) who created a "Planet Finance" in the sky and led . . . . Continue Reading »

Our own Peter Lawler explains that, like Reagan’s victory in 1980, Obama’s "negative landslide" was based upon the repudiation of an incompetent  Republican party as well as his success in presenting himself as intellectually temperate, politically moderate, and . . . . Continue Reading »