Joseph Knippenberg

I offered my preliminary reflections on the 2012 presidential exit polls and promised more to come. I’m a man of my word. Thus far, I’ve argued that, in effect, the Obama campaign executed a plan based on a theory of electoral behavior (ideology and identity) that was superior to . . . . Continue Reading »

Here are the exit polls, which I’ve spent some time contemplating. First, let’s count our blessings. We didn’t have to stay up late, and we likely won’t have a nightmarish recount anywhere. The country can move on knowing who its leaders will be, and (for both . . . . Continue Reading »

This article makes it seem as if the only churches that engage in the kind of speech the IRS proscribes for tax-exempt organizations are conservative Evangelical churches. Given the long history of African-American churches as centers of political organization in their communities, that can’t . . . . Continue Reading »

In certain parts of the south and southwest, it is hard to distinguish football from religion. Some high school cheerleaders in Texas have tied them together too closely for the taste of the Washington Post editorial board . Applying the journalistic version of the Supreme Court’s endorsement . . . . Continue Reading »

I live in Georgia’s newest city, which actually won’t be a city for a couple of months yet. But we have to get organized, and so we have to elect a mayor and city council to get the city up and running. Last evening I attended a forum for city council candidates in my district. Much of . . . . Continue Reading »

Much has and will be made of a report issued recently by the Pew Forum, finding a significant increase in the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as religiously unaffiliated. Commentators have seized on one fact—less than half of Americans now identify themselves as Protestant, a . . . . Continue Reading »

This piece in the New York Times unwittingly takes a page out of John Locke’s reimagining of marriage in the Second Treatise.  Consulting with social scientists and therapists (but no defenders of more or less traditional marriage), the author wonders if we might do better to formalize . . . . Continue Reading »

President Obama’s generally pretty good speech at the U.N. contains this paragraph: The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or . . . . Continue Reading »

Erstwhile conservative (if I’m being generous) David Brooks laments  the state of the conservative mind. When, apparently in another life, he worked for National Review , there were traditionalist conservatives and free market types. Now, he says, the free marketeers have totally . . . . Continue Reading »

I promised to say more about this survey . In many respects, white working class Americans take a view of our current economic circumstances that lines up reasonably well with conventional Republican wisdom. They are more likely than their college-educated fellow citizens to think that the . . . . Continue Reading »