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…
The Ugly Truth About Not Seeing Beauty
To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it come into…
White Fragility Theory Mistakes Correlation for Causation
As I have noted before, Robin DiAngelo, the sociologist and critical race theorist who authored the bestselling book White Fragility, does not hold the “presumed neutrality of White European enlightenment…
Are We Too Irrational for Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance?
The veil of ignorance, proposed in John Rawls’ 1971 book, A Theory of Justice, is a key concept in the liberal pursuit of a just society. Rawls suggests that, when…
Give Them An Argument: Logic For The Left. Book Review.
When I was eighteen years old, I went to a party with some of my political friends. Despite being a leftist, I mostly hung out with conservative-leaning people during my…
Yes, The Intellectual Dark Web Is Politically Diverse
A Response to Quillette’s Uri Harris One of the most common criticisms of the Intellectual Dark Web from the mainstream progressive left is that they are merely a group of…
Virtual Reality Will Spark a Twenty-First Century Decadent Movement
On 20 February, 2019, Jak Wilmot put on a VR headset and didn’t take it off for an entire week. He ate, slept, worked and played in VR, and even…
Forgiving Charles Simic
I haven’t read Charles Simic in four years. Even though he’s one of my all-time favorite poets: born in Belgrade, an immigrant to the US at sixteen, a Pulitzer Prize…
The Internet Is Making You Less Free
Our current age is defined by the internet. The internet—a technology that allows the decentralized, globalized dissemination of information—has become so thoroughly entrenched in human life that access is now…
Irshad Manji’s “Don’t Label Me”: Book Review
It’s hard to know how to respond to the culture wars, which are raging all around us. Of course, we all know how we should respond: by practicing mutual respect,…
The Politics of Slavoj Zizek
Slavoj Žižek recently debated Jordan Peterson, in a conflict that was somewhat dramatically hailed as the intellectual duel of the century. One of the most amusing moments came when Peterson…
Be Like Bernie: Give Them An Argument
In my forthcoming book Give Them An Argument: Logic for the Left, I make the case that we leftists should spend more time formulating explicit arguments for our positions. Too…
Why We Join Cults
At the start of April, we were shocked to discover the details of the NXIVM cult—an organisation which “brainwashed and blackmailed women into being sex slaves.” The female members of…
Britain’s Activist Royals
By some measures, the future of the British royal family has never looked so bright. Last month, Prince Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, amassed one million followers…
Whiteness Studies and the Theory of White Fragility Are Based on a Logical Fallacy
As I have argued elsewhere (see here, here, here and here), the theory of white fragility suffers from numerous flaws. First, it relies on the premise of implicit bias, despite…
Intersectionality is Wrong for the Right Reasons
Intersectionality is right for the wrong reasons. Or is wrong for the right reasons. Originally designed as an analytic framework to better understand the nature of human oppression, intersectional theory…
The Dangerous Myth of Nations
In 2019, we are living in the age of the nation, or so it seems. We can see a very particular breed of populist nationalism almost everywhere we look—think of…
Diversity Drop-Out
Austin, Texas prides itself on being a very progressive, liberal city. One of the mayor’s crowning achievements has been putting together a taskforce on Institutional Racism and Systemic Inequities. As…
