When it comes to Donald Trump, two fundamental questions have kept many of us up late far too many nights over the last four years. First, what makes Trump so…
America
The Racist Culture of Capitalism
I finally found the time to read Ibram X. Kendi’s How To Be an Antiracist, published last year to enormous critical and cultural acclaim. It is very hard to overstate…
Anton’s Manifesto: Whither America?
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…
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…
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 …
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…
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…