As we sit huddled in our homes, insulated behind our walls from the threats lurking outside, I wonder whether we have reached another milestone in our own self-inflicted dehumanization. Like…
Editorials
The Deplorables’ Manifesto
In 2016, the year Britons, eager to reclaim their sovereignty, voted to exit from the European Union and Donald Trump was ushered into the American presidency against all odds, the…
The Peril of Democracy Without Aristocrats
When I first read an essay by Anthony Kronman excerpted from his new book The Assault on American Excellence in the Wall Street Journal, I immediately drafted a letter to the editor to point out …
The Fake Promise of the Internet
Earlier this century, when a friend of mine who was in the Web business asked me to join his company not as a techie but as a thinker about the…
A Damning Audit of Education
When I picked up my son from the airport on a cold December night, one of the first questions I asked him was about his courses in the private liberal…
Corpus americanus
Barbara Ehrenreich, the celebrated activist writer (not sure what title suits her best), has unleashed a sobering critique of American society and its obsession with perfect bodies, wellness, and the…
The Quest for Antifragility
Not long ago, I wrote about Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Skin in the Game, his latest book in a series of book publications that form a whole called Incerto (Latin for…
My Vanishing America
I was raised in the distant lands of Morocco, on the southern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar, a waterway—I was solemnly told by my elders—that was opened for maritime…
America and the Future of Europe
In a recent review essay, I discussed the future of Europe in the time of Muslim immigration into the Old Continent; but, in this one, I share Régis Debray’s lament for…
Nations Without Honor
Respect to Tamler Sommers for daring to write Why Honor Matters, a book about a subject that, in my opinion, hasn’t had any currency whatsoever in the life of Americans…