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Playing With The Wild Things

David Brooks tells us that Where The Wild Things Are accurately shows that, for us, the “philosopher’s” way of thinking about the good life is out and the “psychologist’s” way is in. The wild things, just as the tagline tells us, are inside us all, just one of . . . . Continue Reading »

Scattered Preliminary Thoughts on Ephemerisle

Those looking for the full-Gonzo narrative account of some of the more interesting 48 hours of my life will have to look elsewhere, if I ever get around to writing it. Short version: It was fun, nobody died. What follows is more like a post-mortem that includes things that surprised me, things that . . . . Continue Reading »

What’s in a Word?

I must confess that I wasn’t entirely expecting Conor to go in the direction that he did in his reply to my question for him about l’Affaire Latimer. In this case, I think the people is a very well-defined concept. It refers to all the citizens of the United States of America. The same . . . . Continue Reading »

Not History but Novelty

Michael Gerson’s latest column bemoans the death of historical meaning in our personal romantic narrative. It’s true that the therapeutic historicism that still seems to undergird a lot of popular culture — people telling their stories to one another — is actually being . . . . Continue Reading »

Questions for Ephemerislers

In a few weeks, I’m heading to Ephemerisle — the Seasteading Institute’s first annual anarcho-capitalist convocation on the high seas. Call it a fact-finding expedition. A few words of explanation: While I’m probably the most libertarian of the PoMoConners, I’m not . . . . Continue Reading »

Newton and Bacon

My rabid pro-Leibniz partisanship notwithstanding, I have to give kudos to Thomas Levenson for his article on the faith of Isaac Newton over at Killing the Buddha. The article closes with a somber reminder: Hence the pathos, the danger that I think Newton himself glimpsed. There is a serious . . . . Continue Reading »

Incoherence and Independence

A semi-tangent apropos of the thread developing below on Reagan’s is-it-or-isn’t-it conservatism: it’s true that Reagan’s public brew of conservative moralism and vigilence combined with western-libertarian free-range thought, inclusive of religion, reflects in telling or . . . . Continue Reading »

Sex and Control

Matt Zeitlin should be less surprised by the final sentence of his post (link not suitable for children): I’m not familiar enough with the safe-sex corpus to really comment on it authoritatively, but in my own experience (health classes and so forth), the near-obsessive focus on the . . . . Continue Reading »

Why do they want marriage?

One used to see a great deal more of this kind of rhetoric : Instead of applying its impressive muscle to creating an alternative to this hoary, unsecular, historically sexist, and needlessly restrictive institution, the movement instead opted to perpetuate it. If the status quo could be expanded . . . . Continue Reading »

Celebrating Obscenity

It’s official. Cultural libertarians have jumped the shark. Read this Reason.com article and marvel. That’s right, the author isn’t celebrating the fact that citizens have a right to be vulgar, but rather the fact that citizens are vulgar. James’ article on the ‘Sex . . . . Continue Reading »

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