Don’t Let Environmentalism Turn into Anti-Capitalism (or Worse)
It’s evident that we have a problem with climate change and pollution. The world is heating up, we’re losing species, and plastics plague our oceans. These expansive problems are not…
Documentary Photography: A Long-Form Art Form Amid the Culture Wars
The intensive use of photographs by mass media lays ever fresh responsibilities upon the photographer. We have to acknowledge the existence of a chasm between the economic needs of our…
Why I’m Leaving My Race. And Why You Should Leave Yours.
One of the more controversial pieces I’ve written critiques Ancestry DNA mania for legitimizing and exacerbating tribal thinking at a point in history when people already see reason enough to…
Identity Rules, Group Rights and the Promise of Liberalism
In nineteenth-century Japan, the Shogunate came under pressure from Western powers. One point of tension was religious freedom. Christianity had been illegal in Japan for centuries. But, with the opening…
A Stout Heart: Thomas Paine and His Legacy
Tom Paine is a paradoxical figure. He was one of the great men whose fierce scribblings made an indelible mark on the course of several major events: most notably, the…
Despite the Heartbeat Bills, America Is Becoming Less Religious
Europeans who keep a moderately close eye on American politics and culture may assume they are observing a strongly religious nation. Certainly, polls proclaiming the unsuitability of an atheist to…
There’s Little Reason to Worry About the SAT’s New Adversity Score
Last week, the College Board, the company in charge of developing and administering one of the United States’ standard college aptitude tests, known as the SAT, announced that, in addition…
A More Open Digital Democracy Could Help Overcome the Crisis of Representation
Many on both the right and the left are frustrated with the representative democracy that delegates pivotal decision-making to professional politicians. Given the technological transformation of most fields of human…
Disaster for Democracy: How The Modi Wave Has Flooded India With Fascism
“In the west, we have labels,” commented journalist François Gautier on WION TV, during a panel about the results of India’s 2019 general election. “Right, left. Far-right, far-left. We keep…
The Myth of American National Unity
Americans want unity, but achieving it requires acknowledging that we’ve never truly had it. In these politically polarized times, many Americans, regardless of their political proclivities, are in anguish over our…
The Anatomies of Two Academic Scandals
Recently, much attention has been drawn to several methodologically vacant papers in molecular and cellular biochemistry. They were all written by the same author, Dr. Yan Xin, and argue for…
Personal Narrative at the Expense of Fact: Ariel Saramandi’s Essay on the Alt Right
An earnest and moving essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books about the alt right in Mauritius is sadly plagued by lazy factual errors that undermine its intellectual integrity,…
Is Philosophy Conservative or Progressive?
In their book What is Philosophy?, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari argue that it is advisable to wait until the end of your career to ruminate on the nature of…
A Defence of Social Justice
Argue as if you are right and listen as if you are wrong.—Karl Weick It’s easy to feel agitated by the brand of Social Justice currently trending on the left,…
The Grain of Truth Behind Calls to Restrict Debate
Statements about the oppressive nature of academic debate or the need to balance free speech with a consideration of people’s feelings are often seen as outrageous enough to be instantly…
Zuckerberg: The Digital Gutenberg
On Thursday the second of May Facebook drew a line in the sand, banning from their platforms people who purvey ideas they deem dangerous. Being purged from Facebook and Instagram…
Why We Need Fantasy Literature
J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has sold around 150 million copies worldwide, which makes it one of the bestselling fiction novels of all time. Some even…
A Values Proposition
This week, the Los Angeles Review of Books published a piece that includes the following sentence, about a man whom the author does not like: “He posts things on Heather…
