f the Jews made Jerusalem famous, the Protestants made the New Jerusalem of America a light unto the nations. By Protestants, I mean the founders of our civil religion; the architects of many mansions on behalf of laws, language, culture, institutions, literature, history, and tradition. More specifically, I mean the way of those men who […]
eterring harm starts with assembling arms. The transformation of labor, the division of labor, the labor necessary to arm military divisions—from the assembly line do these things flow. From film reels do images of these things continue to flow, inspiring us by the power of motion itself. Were the images to fade to black, the […]
hen the pandemic ends, future generations will say of us now living: Why did the United States chain itself to a slave state, so as to strengthen the bonds of the supply chain? Why did our political parties finalize trade agreements with the Chinese Communist Party? Why did so many do so little for so […]
etween the iron hand of tyranny and the hidden hand of the presidency lies a myth: that the winning hand of capitalism and freedom is invisible. More than a sentiment about morality or a statement about the efficiency of markets, the invisible hand does not exist. It is either a blur or a bludgeon, but […]
ouTube is the gateway drug of home confinement. With a channel for everyone and everything, including original content and uploads of old movies and commercials, every view is like a transfusion—a fix—to sate, soothe, or stimulate the bodies of one mass body: a body whose sinews are strands of light, whose points of light are […]
f corporations want to maintain the legal fiction that they are people, they would be wise to support the rights of actual people. Because one right that corporations ask us to defend for them—the right of freedom of speech—is the same right they happily deny their own workers. Thus do public rights vanish behind the […]
efore the plague ends, expect an end to what plagues workers and capital. Expect people to stop listening to speakers who conflate passion with profundity, intensity with intelligence, enthusiasm with enlightenment. Expect motivational speakers to go the way of so many televangelists and online preachers, sermonizing to cameras instead of congregants; repenting to millions instead […]
n a room that had housed the telegraph came a telegram to the nation. The message was clear, the messenger confident. Thus began the first of 30 radio addresses from the 32nd president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Thus began the president’s fireside chat on a crisis that threatened the health of the […]
or good people to believe in the innocence of evil people, for true believers to believe in the goodness of evildoers, for extraordinary claims to refute extraordinary evidence of evil, that takes religion—the religion of the Chinese Communist Party. The party rewrites the gospel in real-time, turning ruins into relief missions and missionaries into martyrs. […]
FDR refined it, JFK romanticized it, LBJ relaxed it, Richard Nixon restored it, Ronald Reagan revered it, and Donald Trump continues to respect it—the tuxedo jacket. If Democrats are to retake the White House, they had better pin more than their hopes on the only candidate who looks somewhat presidential in black tie and tails. […]
The timeline of history is like a mechanical timepiece, dependent on the advances of men rather than the autonomy of the most advanced machines. The clarity of the dates is the work of the timekeeper, of the man who thinks the start of a new year and a new decade validates the accuracy of his […]
The lights of Hanukkah and Christmas reveal themselves in both the ratio of a spiral and the golden ratio of the curves of a candle. The lights shine from the gold of a candelabra and the glory of a chosen people. The lights shine unto all people, guiding a path to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The […]
If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wants to retain her gavel, she should use her megaphone. She should speak into her papier-mâché trumpet, so she may change sets before viewers change the channel. She should change the story to fit the season, or switch the plot and production, because Frank Capra’s most political film is […]