Leviathan

Patrick J. Deenen on the modern state and religious freedom.

Freedom to love

Heart's Home in the New York Times.

How do you raise sane human beings?

David Brooks identifies a major problem (if people fall apart nothing else in society will work) and proposes yet another ludicrous scientistic solution (psychology! Yeee, that will do it! It's "scientific" isn't it?)

Declinism

There is some truth to Mark Lilla's criticism of those who reconstruct our history as one long process of decline since the 12th century, but it needs to be qualified. There was certainly a consistent development of ideas from the Reformation to the Enlightenment to us. The point is that it was not inevitable, it was not all that happened, and our task is not to go back to a mythical past, because a tradition has to become alive in the present.

Narrowly defined success

Rod Dreher gives a balanced assesment of Mitt Romney's worldview.

Education as an examination system

Or, college as a certificate of social conformity.

Victimization Studies

On the unstoppable expansion of pseudo-scholarship.

And the sky is green

The British government argues that being fired for wearing a cross is not a form of religious discrimination.

Perfectism

If even the NYTimes is concerned about excessive regulations in California, there must be something to it...

Still broken

Francis Spufford makes a good negative argument against rationalism, but ultimately seems to embraces the very same separation between reason and affectivity.

Ideology at the top

A provocative column by Mike Lofgren.

The law of existence

Eve Tushnet observes that deep down people have a need to make a gift of their life.

Light

A short, previously umpublished story by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Nihilism in action

Brendan O'Neill on a curious phenomenon: nobody seems any longer able to think anything through.

Libertinism

Ross Douthat on the fact that the defining goal of contemporary liberalism is NOT freedom.