Stanley Hauerwas on the modern idea of freedom
Stanley Hauerwas: “Protestant churches in America lost the ability to maintain the disciplines necessary to sustain a people capable of being an alternative to the world.”
Before and after economics
Mark Mitchell: “The ideology of economics is a way of seeing the world. It forces reality into a preconceived structure and subsequently deigns to rule this truncated world with all the authority of science.”
Digital equality and the untuning of the world
Lee Siegel analyzes how web-based pursuits of unique identity is so unbounded that personal definition becomes impossible.
A devilish temptation
Wendell Berry explains how the modern Western ideal of the sovereign self enshrines a story of the abandonment of restrictions and restraints in the name of human freedom.
Liberalism and limits
On his blog, What I Saw in America, political theorist Patrick Deneen often questions some of the fundamental assumptions of classic liberalism, assumptions which contradict the wisdom of premodern political thinkers.
People, people who poke people . . .
Christine Rosen on how social media encourages the unsociable traits of narcissism and exhibitionism.
Slower, longer, smarter
A veteran journalist laments “the sea change in the culture of literacy” and the decline of good book criticism
Stronger than death
Alan Jacobs and Mark Shea defend the portrayal of magic in the Harry Potter books.
A forgotten prophet
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy: “Moderns are puzzled by the perfectly unsystematic, irrational, antilogical institution, the poorest organization on earth but yet fully alive — the family.”
Better things for better living
Richard DeGrandpre: “When a thousand points of light shine upon you in a commercial war for your thoughts, feelings, and wants, your mind adapts, accepts, and then, to feel stimulated, needs more.”