Why Hope Isn’t Always a Good Thing
Hope isn’t wishful thinking. It’s full of requirements.
Learn MorePolitics After the Apocalypse
If all the libraries in the world were destroyed and you could save only two books of political theory, which would they be?
Learn More100 Days Citizen Test
On President Obama’s hundredth day: five questions for citizens.
Learn MoreRCB Bookmarks, Mid-January, 2009
Links on culture, reading, and the web.
Learn MoreExhilaration, Exhaustion, Tennyson
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Passing of Arthur
Learn MoreIntermission Music
“I have to admit, it’s getting better…”
Learn MoreWisdom versus Winning
After all this, is your world not larger than it was before? Show me you both are looking for wisdom and understanding, rather than victory.
Learn MoreLetter to a Young Voter
It’s late in the election cycle, and I do not know if you have yet registered to vote, but I exhort you as my fellow citizen, my political friend, to go and vote. And after that, to participate in other ways, by reading, commenting, contributing, serving, listening, speaking, advocating. Politics grows from the practice of everyday life in the presence of strangers and friends. It doesn’t matter whether you have everything figured out yet — just participate. Be devoted — make a sacrifice of devotion — to the city and nation in which you have found yourself. They are your family, and they need you.
Learn MoreAnother Halloween
It’s that time of year again, when our culture takes a holiday originating in fall harvest and the passing of generations, and turns it into a celebration of imagination, childhood, community, misrule, aggression, terror, & trauma (as well as another opportunity for a capitalist binge).
Learn MoreMy Kind of Expert
“The very idea that there is no truth, but only the filter of narrative through which truth is invented is something I learned at the feet of the most leftist professors at Yale and am learning again from Sarah Palin during the Vice Presidential debate, and I find that very disorienting.”
Learn MoreMath Against Tyranny — Understanding the Electoral College
“Experts, scholars, deep thinkers could make errors on electoral reform,” Alan Natapoff decided, “but nine-year-olds could explain to a Martian why the Yankees lost in 1960, and why it was right. And both have the same underlying abstract principle.”
Learn MoreDashed Hopes (or, Nonsense in Nashville)
Richard Harwood: “When this campaign started, many people, including myself, thought it was a golden opportunity for a real debate between competing visions for the nation’s future. Remember that?”
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