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Building Back Better

Once upon a time, in a faraway place called Brooklyn, there lived a museum director named Anne Pasternak. Because she was a member of America’s self-appointed cultural elite, she liked to travel to trendy places like Aspen and make sweeping statements about art and society. If we don’t . . . . Continue Reading »

Impersonal Responsibility

How are we to assign responsibility for the opioid epidemic? Patrick Radden Keefe—the New Yorker staff writer who in 2017 wrote a lengthy profile of the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma—offers an easy answer in his new book Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the . . . . Continue Reading »

Rights in Common

The dazzling efficiency with which corporate America exchanges its turkeys and pumpkins for snowmen and reindeer each year confirms that our society is fully post-Christian. The occasional earnest performance of “O Holy Night” is a rule-proving exception. For the most part, endless ranks of . . . . Continue Reading »

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