As Americans and the world await the outcome of the unfolding elections crisis, I continue to grow more despondent about the glaring absence of any meaningful conversation about the political…
Editorials
The Promise of a Post-Trumpian Consensus
The Trump phenomenon has generated an endless number of strong emotions and responses reflecting the deeply polarized state of our politics and worldviews, but one thing it hasn’t done is…
Second Chance in Tangier
Very often, I go through life in a state of semi-consciousness, easily forgetting important dates, what I eat at special dinners, the names of people, or even what they look…
Dangerous Liaisons
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…
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…