Articles

What We Are Reading:
Impotent Bigness

By Roger Berkowitz
Matt McManus writes about a dimension of Hannah Arendt’s work that he believes is given short shrift: Arendt’s critique of bigness and of “political leaders who embody the traits of “impotent bigness,” as she framed it.” Bigness in politics for Arendt is a danger to freedom. It goes together with the rise of bureaucracy and centralized government. 

What We Are Reading:
Los Angeles

By Samantha Hill

Alex Ross writes about “The Haunted California Idyll of German Writers in Exile.” Bertolt Brecht, Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer, among others, found refuge in Los Angeles during the war years, and turned the city into “the capital of German literature in exile.”  

Political Hobbyism

By Roger Berkowitz
Eitan Hersh argues that college-educated voters only think they are engaged in politics, while what “they are doing is no closer to engaging in politics than watching SportsCenter is to playing football.” When college-educated voters donate online, follow the polls, and become fans of a candidate, they are less doing politics than participating in a spectator sport as spectators. And these hobbyists, Hersh writes, are hurting American politics. 

The Prejudices of Intellectualism

By Roger Berkowitz
In an essay on Hannah Arendt in a series on the Great Thinkers, Finn Bowring rightly focuses on Arendt’s worry about the power of intellectual elites. At home in abstraction and theories, intellectuals have an uncanny ability to lose themselves in flights of fancy and reject or deny the facts of this world. The philosophical temptation is to live amongst logically coherent fictions and deny those real facts that frustrate their beautiful forms.

What We Are Reading: Normal

By Samantha Hill
Writing for The Point, Becca Rothfeld critiques the work of Irish novelist Sally Rooney. Rothfeld’s analysis reflects upon the distinction between Rooney’s public persona as a writer, and what her novels reveal about this political moment. 

Member Essay: Trials and Tribe-ulations: The Dangerous Degeneracy of Trump’s Amerika

by Phil Burpee
    My people on my father’s side first came on record on this continent in the person of one Thomas Burkby who was put in the stocks in Boston in 1632 for ‘taking of strong waters whilst on watch duty’. Thomas seemingly sobered up enough to go on to have five sons from whom was spawned the misspelled diaspora that was to become Burpees.

An Office of Denaturalization is a Dangerous Step

By Roger Berkowitz
The  Department of  Justice announced last week the creation of a special section to denaturalize American citizens. The sovereign right of a nation to control who is nationalized or denationalized is unchallenged, and yet in practice the rise of mass denationalization first emerged in Europe in the 1930s.

Loneliness and the Nuclear Family

By Roger Berkowitz
What are the great problems facing the country? If one follows the political theatrics these days, it is whether we should have Medicare for all or Medicare for all who want it. Add to that questions about how much to tax billionaires and the middle class, how many immigrants should be welcomed, and National Disclosure Agreements. Arguably, however...

What We Are Reading:
Creating Viewpoint Diversity 

By Samantha Hill
Musa Al-Gharbi reflects upon his work for the Heterodox Academy and the difficult work of creating genuine viewpoint diversity on college campuses...