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Temptations of Tyranny
Rod Dreher’s conflicted support for President Trump illustrates a broader crisis among intellectual conservatives who fear the "soft totalitarianism" of liberal institutions yet embrace the hard authoritarianism of executive overreach. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s political thought, the essay contends that true freedom is preserved not through charismatic leaders but through the multiplication and decentralization of citizen power. Revitalizing democracy, it argues, requires stubborn, local acts of collective governance rather than the dangerous temptation to concentrate authority in a single figure.04-27-2025
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The Strongmen
Ariel Dorfman reviews Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s The Strongmen that offers a synoptic account of the dictators, fascists, and strongmen that emerged on the world stage in the 1920s and continue till today. Ben-Ghiat divides these Strongmen into three periods and seeks to discover their common thread.05-14-2021
A Club Drug, Posttraumatic Stress, and Hannah Arendt
Craig RothsteinThis week, the New York Times reported on the successful phase III FDA trial of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, MDMA, more commonly known as the club drug Ecstasy or Molly. The introduction of an intense drug-experience-as-medicine represents a particularly Arendtian moment for Western healthcare.
05-14-2021
University of Toronto Censured
The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has censured the University of Toronto for canceling the hiring of a professor because of complaints by a University Trustee about the professor’s politics.05-06-2021
Does It Matter Where it Came From?
Roger BerkowitzThere is a new journal dedicated to difficult topics, The Journal of Controversial Ideas. But the most provocative and well-researched essay of the week was published independently on Medium. Nearly three million people have died from the Covid 19 novel Coronavirus, and yet we still know remarkably little about how the virus emerged. The origin-story of the novel Coronavirus became a political hot potato under the Trump administration.
05-06-2021
History Is Watching
Roger BerkowitzShortly after the January 6th failed insurrection in Washington DC, PEN held a writers benefit that featured a panel of writers talking about post-Trump politics. Peggy Noonan adopted a hopeful tone, arguing that after a short period of time where feelings of loss would be respected and salved, Republicans would come to their collective senses and re-enter the real world.
05-06-2021
On Grade Inflation
Roger BerkowitzAs an academic year of unprecedented trials limps to a close, the predictable articles on grade inflation rise like daisies. It is hard to get worked up. Grade inflation is one of the few facts we can all agree on in our increasingly fact-free world. It is here to stay. But one thing often forgotten is that grade inflation actually hurts students.
05-06-2021
The Atom(ization) Bomb - Hannah Arendt’s Warning, Critical Race Ideology and the Coming Totalitarian Nightmare
Seventy brief years have passed since the controversial political theorist, Hannah Arendt, published what many consider her seminal work, On the Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Now, standing at the fiery dawn of the new Age of Victimhood, with collectivist ideology once again in the ascendency and the haunting spectre of identity politics looming large across the West, Arendt’s key insights are simultaneously as poignant and, one fears, prescient as ever.04-23-2021
Regulating Artificial Intelligence
The European Union has issued a “Proposal for a Regulation on a European Approach for Artificial Intelligence.” Download it here. Sam Schechner and Parmy Olson write that “European officials want to limit police use of facial recognition and ban the use of certain kinds of AI systems, in one of the broadest efforts yet to regulate high-stakes applications of artificial intelligence.”04-22-2021
Our Epistemological Crisis
Roger BerkowitzThe crisis of truth is upon us and for many this is a phenomenon associated with Donald Trump. But Hannah Arendt diagnosed the crisis of truth in modern politics over 60 years ago. And in her essay “Truth and Politics” Arendt argues that one foundation for that crisis is the loss of a non-political standpoint from which one can speak about the world and politics.
04-22-2021