James Poulos

Apropos of my remarks below , a reader writes: It seems to me that you’re taking his quote about the politicization out of context, first of all. He’s downright Aristotelian, it seems to me, in his conception of what politics is. What makes me say this is the role he sees marriage . . . . Continue Reading »

I was going to post something on the latest dreadful new census commercial, but this will serve us all pretty nicely. . . . . Continue Reading »

And now, my conclusion about where Obamacare falls into the law-versus-politics schema I mentioned, below, in the context of marriage and divorce. There was one real highlight and moment of clarity for me in Obama’s now-infamous Baier interview: the sequence where the President insisted that, . . . . Continue Reading »

Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate ‘relationship’ involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and . . . . Continue Reading »

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Courtesy of Alan Jacobs , I see some academics are starting to grapple with the issue. But how successfully? Danah Boyd tackles Google Buzz: “Nothing that the Buzz team did was technologically wrong,” Ms. Boyd said. “Yet the service resulted in complete disaster.” Google got . . . . Continue Reading »

Some policy controversies are wearying. Not because they have worn their importance down over decades spent in the argumentative rock tumbler, of course. High-stakes issues tend actually to get more portentous, over time, as we sink greater and greater emotional and intellectual investments into . . . . Continue Reading »

David Brooks thinks so. But to link the tea parties to the ’60s left by way of Rousseau, he has to draw our attention away from the nationally disaggregate and locally-rooted character of lots and lots of the tea partiers. The recent tea party convention does underscore how the tea parties . . . . Continue Reading »

First, go read the great symposium at The New Atlantis , starring Pomocon’s own Peter & Ivan plus the good Professor Deneen. Then, go read this grim report at the Washington Monthly . . . . . Continue Reading »

Don’t call it a simulacrum . . . . . Continue Reading »