Arendt’s wisdom provides a unique of understanding the spectre haunting the American university – the spectre of protest. Across the country, universities have erupted in largely non-violent, very public protests. Aligning themselves with groups such as Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street, the new American protest culture is intimately
Al Franken is a strange hero for a 14-year-old in a petit-bourgeoisie household to have. Even stranger is the indifference felt by that same 14-year-old 13 years later when Al Franken resigned from the Senate in disgrace amongst well-documented accusations of sexual assault. Al Franken was a fixture in my
TaLynn Kel argues at The Establishment that Thor: Ragnarok is really a subversive takedown of white supremacy and colonialism. Spoilers follow. Hela, the film’s villain, tears off the mask of beautiful Asgard to reveal something wicked. As Hela points out in one particularly stunning scene, the spectacular gold of
In a talk given to the largely conservative audience of the Manhattan Institute, Jonathan Haidt discussed some of the reasons why Americans are becoming more polarized (transcript here). In doing so he uses a metaphor from physics, referring to centripetal social forces, those that pull people together, and centrifugal forces,
In the wake of the maelstrom (or, perhaps, horrific dumpster fire) that has marked our entry into a worrying, dark timeline, there’s been much discussion over the relative value of identity politics. One primary conflict is played out again and again: does identity politics require mere toleration or strong
* The new volume Freedom in Sweden: Selected Works of Erik Gustaf Geijer, ed. Björn Hasselgren, trans. P. C. Hogg (Timbro, 2017) rediscovers Geijer—pronounced yay-yer. Page-number citations in the following are to that volume. The name Erik Gustaf Geijer (1783–1847) is little known outside of Sweden. But a book
“Four score and seven years ago” are words Americans learn in school and hear echoed in popular culture. To the child who memorizes them, as in the movie Kindergarten Cop, the words may seem to be a secular incantation. For me they seemed similar to the words of the liturgy
The importance of believing the victims of sexual misconduct prior to, and even in lieu of, hard evidence in support of their allegations has become something close to a consensus view. Yet some commentators have gone a step further, and argued that we must tolerate a few innocent men taking
When a critical concentration of white men are present in early days of a movement or ideology, it sets in motion a vicious circle of attracting more white men and repelling others. This isn’t necessarily conscious. If a few white guys want to put something together, perhaps like a
America is a nation overflowing with love for our sports, if not always for our teams. There is a special place in our hearts for those most American of sports: football, baseball, and basketball. What could be more American than the spirited and divisive team rivalries, overcome only by a
Jazz is intimately tied up with freedom. It has deep origins in African-American spirituals and other mixes of slave folk music and classical theories that came from Europe. Socially, like many artistic innovations, jazz was originally scorned and condemned by the mainstream for many reasons, the most prominent of which
Anarchism is surely underrated in the popular mindset, unjustly besmirched as it is by thesauruses juxtaposing anarchy with chaos and disorder, even nihilism. Anarchism has a place in the public discourse as a critical lens through which to analyze the state. But however unfairly anarchism is treated, as a substantive
Liberal Currents LLC © . All rights reserved.