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Obama, Technocracy, and Honor

Another excerpt from some recent work: The basic political premise of techno-politics is that the classic question regarding competing claims to rule has been decisively answered: instead of Plato’s philosopher king we get its emasculated modern descendant, the rational bureaucrat. The . . . . Continue Reading »

Togetherness Today

Here’s a nice contrast. First, Rod : As Wendell Berry explains, especially in “Sex, the Economy, Freedom & Community,” you cannot have community without order, and you cannot have a workable order as long as both economic and sexual decisions are wholly privatized — that . . . . Continue Reading »

Liberty, Rights, and Judicial Activism

Conservatives, postmodern and otherwise, often discuss the difficulties associated with the sometimes promiscuous assignment and declaration of rights in political discourse today. If we look at the American founding narrowly from the perspective of its Lockean influence, it’s easy to see the . . . . Continue Reading »

Blowing Up the University

Marc C. Taylor, chairman of the religion department at Columbia, wants to “end the university as we know it.” But he wants to do it wrong: “The division-of-labor model of separate departments is obsolete and must be replaced with a curriculum structured like a web or complex . . . . Continue Reading »

Of Empire

There is a compelling start of a conversation, I see, between Daniel Larison and Noah Millman . Noah began in reaction to Andrew Bacevich’s latest introduction to a book . Bacevich, of course, takes the anti-imperial position of William Appleman Williams to be a clarion wake-up call for any . . . . Continue Reading »

Obama the Scientist

So I spent a few days this week attending a conference at Berry College in Rome, Georgia hosted by Peter Lawler and Eric Sands. It was a terrific and well organized series of events capped off by a thought provoking presentation by our own Jim Ceasar on Tocqueville, his consideration of the . . . . Continue Reading »

What Do We Owe the Puritans?

So we had an interesting discussion at Berry College tonight, featuring our own Jim Ceaser, on why Tocqueville talks up the Puritans and slights the Declaration of Independence. Ivan the K already mentioned the observation of our French visitor R. L. Bruckburger , who reminded us that the . . . . Continue Reading »

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