Earlier this week economist Tyler Cowen started a meme by asking bloggers to list the top ten books that have influenced their view of the world. (See the lists by Peter Suderman, E.D.Kain, Arnold Kling, Michael Martin, Niklas Blanchard, Bryan Caplan, Will Wilkinson, and Freddie deBoer.) Because it . . . . Continue Reading »
The Awl points out this interview with Tina Brown . At about 19:40, Brown asks: “Are we building this new sort of subculture frankly of impoverished, living in garret writers? Because the fact is writers can hardly make a living right now because they don’t get paid.” Leon . . . . Continue Reading »
I am currently reading Carlos Eire’s A Very Brief History of Eternity (Princeton, 2009). Eire is the author of the memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy, which won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2003, and a number of works of religious history, including From . . . . Continue Reading »
I opened my mail box today and happily found a package with Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Viking, March 2010), a monumental work by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University and author of The Reformation and Thomas Cranmer, both highly acclaimed . . . . Continue Reading »
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” John 1:1,2. Following Edith Stein in her discussion of Essential and Eternal Being we see that all “meaningful” existents are enclosed by the “divine . . . . Continue Reading »
I think America’s system of easy bankruptcy is one of the jewels of our economic and political institutions, because it allows people who genuinely cannot repay their bills to get a fresh start as quickly as possible. I think non-recourse mortgages are an excellent idea, which I would like to . . . . Continue Reading »
Perhaps I was raised in an overly-Confucian manner, but Conor Friedersdorf’s latest sets my head a-buzzing with questions and my stomach a-churning with unease. Of course, insofar as an administration must work as a team toward common ends, its employees should be loyal so long as they are . . . . Continue Reading »
So the fall semester is finally in sufficient order that I can return to blogging. I don’t imagine that I was particularly missed. But I’ll proceed on the assumption that at least some readers liked to alternate their reflections on the very serious matters we usually discuss with one . . . . Continue Reading »
In comments below on my post about Yuval Levin’s book, Imagining the Future , Michael Peterson asks : “Will someone, somewhere, define human dignity?” Not me, at least not in this post . . . but here’s an account of what needs to happen first. One of the best passages in . . . . Continue Reading »
My review of Yuval Levin’s excellent and thought-provoking book, Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy , is up now at First Principles. Yuval’s closing exhortation to conservatives, to write more clearly, probingly, and persuasively about human dignity, is problematic, . . . . Continue Reading »
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