On Political Correctness
Let us eschew the familiar examples: the disinvited speakers, the Title IX tribunals, the safe zones stocked with Play-Doh, the crusades against banh mi. The flesh-eating bacterium of political...
View ArticleA Jane Austen Kind of Guy
I was sitting there at MLA, the annual convention of the Modern Language Association, interviewing for an academic job. This was about 10 years ago. The conversation had been going on for a while (it...
View ArticleAnd Let Us Say, Amen
I continue to be vigilant for signs of the religious impulse in secular culture. The old emotions don’t disappear; they just assume new guises. One place to look for them is language. Here’s the sort...
View ArticleGreat Expectations
I recently reread The Great Gatsby, for obvious reasons. (And no, I haven’t worked up the stomach to see the movie yet.) Here’s what I discovered: it’s about the American Dream. I know, I know, but...
View ArticleIn the Land of the Tsars
Is there a sadder spectacle, in world affairs, than Russia and its history? Other nations know their periods of darkness; only there does darkness seem a permanent condition. Other nations develop,...
View ArticleAll That Is the Case
I wrote a recent post about what I called the persistence of faith—the difficulty even hardheaded rationalists appear to have accepting, as I put it, “the fact that this is all there is.” Several...
View ArticleSeeing Things
In the eighth episode of the most recent season of Mad Men, Don Draper asks his underlings a rhetorical question. “What is advertising about?” He waits a beat, then answers it himself. “It’s about...
View ArticleHeal for America
America faces a growing shortage of primary care physicians, especially in chronically underserved inner-city and rural communities. By 2015, according to a recent report, the shortfall will amount...
View ArticleStretchers
I’ve been taking a lot of yoga lately—good for the soul, the digestion, and the IT bands, which I didn’t know I have but which apparently are quite important. Besides, I live in Portland, where there...
View ArticleTake it Easy
A couple of months ago, I tried to explain what I saw as the secret of Portland’s success: an atmosphere of civic goodwill, which, I said, was more important than the brains of which the city has a...
View ArticleThe One Thing Needful
In his latest HBO special, the comedian Louis CK tells the following story. He is sitting in the courtyard of the luxury apartment building to which he has recently moved, looking like his usual...
View ArticleAdieu
This will not be pretty. I mean our national decline, and yes, it’s going to happen, sooner or later, one way or another. We can stave it off for a while, especially if we manage to get our heads...
View ArticleThough He Doth Tarry
I wrote a post, a couple of months ago, about the persistence of religious belief under secular guises, including in our public discourse. God, the Devil, Heaven, Hell, sin, redemption—all remain...
View ArticleOslo Remembered
Friday marks the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords. A second agreement, known as Oslo II, was concluded in September 1995. A few weeks later, a friend of mine attended what turned...
View ArticleThe Last Post
The present column marks my final post for The American Scholar. After two-plus years, 115 pieces, and more than 60,000 words, I’ve decided that the time has come to call it quits. It’s like this:...
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