David P. Goldman is a senior editor of First Things.
Radical evil sets the threshold of victory so high that we risk contamination by confronting it on its own terms. Terrorists tempt us to torture them, by striking against innocent noncombatants out of the shadows. The present debate over torture is a black cloud as big as a man’s hand . . . . Continue Reading »
Over at Asia Times I have been maintaing a financial blog called Inner Workings. Most of the material is technical, but I posted a Jeremiad today about the end of the rule of law in American business that is generally relevant.Don’t zombies come from places where they grow bananas?Over a year . . . . Continue Reading »
Sandro Magister’s website remains the publicly available guide to Vatican politics — I have quoted him frequently in past “Spengler” essays — and the linked report on Benedict XVI in the Holy Land is essential reading. The strongest objections to the Pope’s visit, . . . . Continue Reading »
Early in April, with the publication of the May issue of First Things , I stepped out from behind the pseudonym Spengler to begin arguing my more considered ideas under my own name. The experience has been an interesting one: constricting in some ways and yet freeing in others.My Spengler columns . . . . Continue Reading »
Bearing public witness isn’t Jewish custom. We confess our collective sins corporately on the Day of Atonement. But an editorship at First Things is not a seat on a Wall Street trading floor, or a teaching gig at a conservatory of music; it is a position of public trust, and I owed the . . . . Continue Reading »
If the New York Times shuts down, at least I won’t have to respond to mind-numbing items like David Brooks’ April 30 peroration, “Genius: the modern view.” Aldous Huxley’s wife Laura infamously said that her husband looked like a stupid man’s idea of what a clever . . . . Continue Reading »
Rod Dreher over at BeliefNet has a weather eye for religious oddities, and yesterday posted a note about an evangelical missionary to the Amazon jungle who lost his faith after getting to know a tribe that saw the world in a radically different way:[Dan] Everett spent decades living with the Piraha . . . . Continue Reading »
Ali Allawi’s book on the crisis of Islamic civilization received more attention than most recent volumes on the subject, including a brief note in the London Economist April 16. I reviewed it in a “Spengler” essay this morning in Asia Times. It is a very good book, in the sense . . . . Continue Reading »
Jack Kemp passed away this weekend, of cancer at age seventy-three. Former vice-presidential candidate, congressman, and Housing secretary, he was the most improbable and the most important hero of the Reagan Revolution after the Gipper himself. Without Jacks true-believers passion for . . . . Continue Reading »
Over at the Asia Times “Spengler” Forum, a reader posts this gem from today’s Daily Telegraph: The EU’s working age population will peak next year before tipping into decline for half a centuryThis will cause a relentless rise in pension and health costs that risk . . . . Continue Reading »
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