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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 Prejudices of Intellectualism
By Roger BerkowitzIn 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.
03-10-2020
What We Are Reading: Normal
By Samantha HillWriting 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.
03-04-2020
Member Essay: Trials and Tribe-ulations: The Dangerous Degeneracy of Trump’s Amerika
by Phil BurpeeMy 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.
03-04-2020
An Office of Denaturalization is a Dangerous Step
By Roger BerkowitzThe 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.
03-04-2020
The Far Left Joins the Far Right in a Politics of Hate
By Roger BerkowitzThis is not a post about a particular political candidate. Nellie Bowles writes about “The Dirtbag Left,” which is the left’s answer to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, a hate-filled brand of populist outrage that is taking over a large fringe of the progressive movement.
03-04-2020
Loneliness and the Nuclear Family
By Roger BerkowitzWhat 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...
02-27-2020
What We Are Reading:
Creating Viewpoint Diversity
By Samantha HillMusa Al-Gharbi reflects upon his work for the Heterodox Academy and the difficult work of creating genuine viewpoint diversity on college campuses...
02-27-2020
Organize Don’t Mobilize
By Roger BerkowitzThe 2020 election may well come down to three states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. If President Trump wins just one of these states—he won all three by slim margins in 2016—it is likely he will be reelected. If a Democrat flips all three, there is a good chance that they will be the next President.
02-27-2020
What We Are Reading:
Against Empathy
By Samantha HillPaul Bloom discusses the difference between cognitive and emotional empathy, and why he’s against using empathy as a guide for being in the world.
02-27-2020