Activism and the Conflict of Visions
I recently read Thomas Sowell’s classic work A Conflict of Visions. In it, he attempts to describe two different foundational worldviews, or visions, which are implicit in the thinking of…
Politics
140 posts
Sam Harris, Ezra Klein, and the Politicization of Science
The year long feud between cognitive neuroscientist Sam Harris and Editor-at-Large of Vox Ezra Klein is one that has pitted advocates for a group identity based approach to politics against…
Enlightenment Thought: A Very Brief Primer
The controversy surrounding Steven Pinker’s latest book, Enlightenment Now, has led to a scurry of casual pronouncements on Enlightenment philosophy, some of which are misguided. While this is far too expansive…
The Necessity of Postmodernism in the Post-Truth Age
Although we have published several articles highly critical of postmodernism as a mode of thought, we remain committed to publishing well-written counterviews and found this submission to be thoughtful and…
Are Campus and Media Conservatives Asking For It?
Recent interruptions of Christina Hoff Sommers at Lewis & Clark College (and reactions to Bari Weiss’s New York Times editorial about them), and the Atlantic’s quick hiring and firing of Kevin…
In Defense of Hypocrisy
“As witnesses not of our intentions but of our conduct, we can be true or false, and the hypocrite’s crime is that he bears false witness against himself. What makes…
Profiling a Mass Shooter: Why Is It So Complicated?
The recent massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida has brought up the expected responses of both anguish and fear we have sadly grown accustomed to over…
Communications 101 for the Modern Left
By reacting to disagreements with hostility rather than cogent argument, modern leftists not only fail to persuade but actively make enemies.
Minorities Don’t Always Want Your Help Being Heard
This article was originally offered to Huffington Post Living as a transgender woman, I deal with vitriol and love from people from all walks of life. Being transgender is no…
An Appeal to Male Feminists
Dear feminist men: you are promoting sexism against me, and I do not appreciate it.
Don’t Shoot the Messenger When Confronted with Inconvenient Ideas
We need to focus on evidence and arguments, and on ordinary fairness and compassion to others, even when we disagree.
A Liberal Who Remembers
Lefty friends keep asking me if — or telling me that — I’m a conservative now. But I’m just a liberal who remembers what they’ve forgotten. I remember what it meant to…
Protagoras on the Google Memo
In a recent piece for Quillette, Bo Winegard talks about what he calls “cosmic egalitarianism,” a thoroughgoing sort of egalitarianism that reacts strongly to arguments that some groups of people…
This Is Why We Need to Talk About Diversity
We simply cannot address any issues productively if we cannot talk about them.
Check your Progressive Privilege: John Rawls vs Moral Relativism
In 1971, liberal political philosopher John Rawls proposed in his influential book A Theory of Justice what is perhaps the most famous and compelling progressive thought experiment ever considered. He…
Understanding the U.S. Political Divide, One Word Cloud at a Time
America’s political divide goes by many names – rural-urban, blue-red, metro-non-metro and left-right. We are told it is bad and that it is only getting worse, thanks to phenomena like…
Conservative Victimhood
Since Jason Manning and I first started writing about victimhood culture, we’ve been interested in the culture’s spread beyond the campus left where it began and where it appears in…
Progress, Animal Welfare, and Our Moral Circle
Given the abundance of bad news propping up our social media feeds and TV screens — a possible nuclear war between the U.S. and North Korea, the spread of far-right…
