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Remembering John Searle: A Mind That Changed How We Think
Remembering John Searle: A Mind That Changed How We Think
The philosophical world has lost one of its most distinctive and influential voices. John Searle, whose work reshaped our understanding of language, consciousness, and social reality, passed away on September... Read more...
Double Dealing in the Desert: How Israel Betrayed Its Greatest Ally
Double Dealing in the Desert: How Israel Betrayed Its Greatest Ally
There’s a certain mythology that surrounds Israel in American political life: the plucky democracy in the Middle East, the indispensable ally, the partner that shares both values and interests. It... Read more...
Born to Believe: How Religion Hijacks Reason
Born to Believe: How Religion Hijacks Reason
Religion has always struck me as a dangerous narcotic. At best, it offers comfort, a psychological crutch to get through life’s bruises. At worst, it corrodes reason, politics, and even... Read more...
T. S. Eliot: The Man Who Measured Out Modernism
T. S. Eliot: The Man Who Measured Out Modernism
He yearned for order yet thrived in chaos, an American expatriate who became the most English of poets, a devout Anglican charting spiritual desolation, a banker in pinstripes who reinvented... Read more...
We Are Not Angels, and Trump is Proving Madison Right
We are living in an age of the political messiah, and his name is Donald Trump. His supporters believe he alone can fix the system; his detractors see him as a singular threat to the republic. In 2025, the national conversation revolves entirely around the man himself—his intentions, his decrees, his persona. We are fixated on the figure at the helm, watching his every move with bated breath. This obsession, while understandable, is a dangerous distraction from the deeper constitutional crisis unfolding. It is a crisis that James Madison, the... Read more...
William Faulkner: The Chronicler of the Cursed South
William Faulkner: The Chronicler of the Cursed South
He rarely left Mississippi, drank too much, and spoke in elliptical riddles, yet his fiction tunneled deep into the American psyche and emerged somewhere near truth. William Faulkner was a... Read more...
“Kids, What’s the Matter with Kids Today?”
“Kids, What’s the Matter with Kids Today?”
The line was written as satire in Bye Bye Birdie, a cheeky refrain poking fun at the eternal generational divide. Yet every time I hear “Kids, what’s the matter with... Read more...
Your Freedom Was a Radical Idea: A Thank You Note to the Liberals History Hated
Your Freedom Was a Radical Idea: A Thank You Note to the Liberals History Hated
Take a moment to appreciate the pillars of your daily life: casting a vote regardless of your gender or race, the guaranteed respite of a weekend, breathing air that won’t... Read more...
Arnold Schoenberg: The Revolutionary Who Hated Revolutions
Arnold Schoenberg: The Revolutionary Who Hated Revolutions
He was the man who shattered centuries of musical tradition with a single method, then spent much of his life insisting he was merely restoring order. Few figures in art... Read more...
Obscene in His Time, Obscured in Ours: Rereading D. H. Lawrence
Obscene in His Time, Obscured in Ours: Rereading D. H. Lawrence
He was both a prophet of renewal and a chronic malcontent, railing against the modern world even as he dissected it with surgical precision. Few writers embodied contradiction quite so... Read more...
Of God and Man: The Perpetual Provocations of Leo Tolstoy
Of God and Man: The Perpetual Provocations of Leo Tolstoy
He was an aristocrat who dressed like a peasant, a soldier turned pacifist, a novelist of worldly grandeur who ended by denouncing novels as vanity. His life was a running... Read more...
When Politics Runs on Fear Instead of Facts
When Politics Runs on Fear Instead of Facts
Picture this: a crowded subway car in rush hour, people packed shoulder to shoulder, exhausted faces staring at their phones. One rider sees a headline blaring that Zohran Mamdani wants... Read more...