Oh For Two “If both of these authors are correct, then we have two political parties that aren’t really about anything. They’re competing fiercely and inarguably offering Americans some kind of choice – only someone truly out on a limb would argue that there is no difference at all between having Trump or Hillary in […]

The War on Work—and How to End It “Yet every underemployed American represents a failure of entrepreneurial imagination. We can do better. Our educational system must improve the way it provides skills that bring higher earnings, and we need to experiment with new forms of vocational training. We should encourage entrepreneurial energies, including by making […]

How A.E. Housman Invented Englishness “Housman insisted that the task of poetry was “to transfuse emotion—not to transmit thought”; it was to make your throat clench and your hair stand on end. The emotion his own poetry most often elicits is that of overwhelming sadness.”

you can’t fake it “Tricks of evolution aside, I’m left to wonder: what makes people insecure? Why is the condition so common? An obvious culprit, if you’re in my position, is capitalism” … SMH, the ancient religions answered these questions a long time ago. But modern atheists can’t get past the ‘wrongness’ of the literal […]

Sunbathing in the Rain: Do we all need a little time to sit and think? “A recent study by psychologists at the University of Virginia asked subjects to simply sit in a room and ‘just think’ for 6 to 15 minutes. In the room was a button allowing subjects to electrocute themselves if they wanted. […]

Michael Lewis and the Parable of the Fourth Cookie “With incredible consistency the person arbitrarily appointed leader of the group grabbed the fourth cookie, and ate it. Not only ate it, but ate it with gusto: lips smacking, mouth open, drool at the corners of their mouths. In the end all that was left of […]

The future of conservatism in an age of alienation: A long-read Q&A with Yuval Levin “But I also think that we are now at a point—we have been for at least ten years—where the policy argument between left and right has become exhausted. Both the left and right in our politics are repeating old mantras […]