David P. Goldman is a senior editor of First Things.

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Banana republic law and zombie economics

From First Thoughts

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 »

Confessions of a Coward

From Web Exclusives

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 »

Fessing Up

From First Thoughts

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 »

The Revolt of Mediocrity

From First Thoughts

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 »

Will all cultures be saved?

From First Thoughts

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 predicts the end of Islam

From First Thoughts

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, 1935-2009

From Web Exclusives

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 Jack’s true-believer’s passion for . . . . Continue Reading »