Yukio Mishima: Japan’s Cultural Martyr
Mishima’s reputation has grown in the new century and today there is more serious interest in his work than ever before.
Andrew Rankin
· 11 min read
History
A collection of 350 posts
The Case Against Galileo: A Book Excerpt
The sheer number of complaints, and the seriousness of some of the charges, were such that the pope might have been forced to take some action even under normal circumstances.
Maurice A. Finocchiaro
· 7 min read
Denial and Defamation—The ITN-LM Libel Trial Revisited, Part II: The Trial
The more someone invests in a lie, the more painful it becomes to renounce.
Jamie Palmer
· 35 min read
Denial and Defamation—The ITN-LM Libel Trial Revisited, Part One: The Camps
The story of the ITN trip to Bosnia—and the bitter quarrel about its reporting that followed—is a cautionary tale about the destructive and deranging effects of ideological hubris.
Jamie Palmer
· 33 min read
Frederick Douglass, The Columbian Orator, and the 1619 Project
This vision of universal human rights based on our common humanity was the common ground shared by these two antislavery giants in American history, and it is the common ground now renounced by the 1619 Project.
Joseph R. Fornieri
· 9 min read
The Return of the 'Witch Hunt' Analogy
The best way to prevent such perennial misuse of the “witch hunt” label would be for Americans to stop themselves before they allow their moral fervor to get out of control and run roughshod over the legal rights of others—in other words, to refrain from witch hunting in the first place.
Tony Fels
· 9 min read
Higher Education's Medievalist Moral Panic
Medievalists of Color promptly issued a statement of support, describing Ramboran-Olm as “a woman of color in an organization so dominated by whiteness that it has not yet ceased referring to itself by a name that attracts and empowers white supremacists.”
Charlotte Allen
· 13 min read
'Oikophobia': Our Western Self-Hatred
The simplest way of defining oikophobia is as the opposite extreme of xenophobia.
Benedict Beckeld
· 7 min read
'Cancel Culture,' Roaring Twenties-Style
The term “cancel culture” has become hotly contested of late. Critics say it is indiscriminately used to describe different degrees of mass opprobrium produced by transgressions that range from the trivial to the criminal. Now, while mob justice is never a particularly good idea, it is certainly true that some
Kevin Mims
· 12 min read
The Real Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The TSA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that was created as a response to the 9/11 attacks to make sure nothing like that ever happens again.
A Kelleher
· 13 min read
In Praise of Renoir's Male Gaze
Renoir’s nudes are the evidence of a tirelessly hopeful soul struggling against the dingy reality of the modern world, with its modern industry and its modern warfare, that turns all human flesh into disposable objects, without joy or humanity.
Marilyn Simon
· 8 min read
No, Jonathan Haidt is Not Like a Slavery Apologist
The unhinged reasoning in Fairbanks’s essay invites an overcorrection. It would be easy—and tendentious—to reverse her argument. The Left are the real heirs of the proslavery tradition—intolerant aggression disguised as aggrieved fragility, etc.
Adam Rowe
· 6 min read
A New Republic of Letters
Now, of course, letter-writing is dead, replaced by emails, texts, and social media. But we have lost something along the way—our social media feeds are often filled with drivel and do not provide an appropriate forum for long-form, constructive conversation and disagreement.
Daniel James Sharp
· 11 min read
John Adams and the Search for a Natural (and Needed) American Aristocracy
But a further question remains. Where are the men—and, today, women—of real merit that our form of government allows to come to the fore?
Anthony Kronman
· 7 min read
The Drayton Icon and Intellectual Vice
Nevertheless, Drayton’s diatribe does reveal something important—not much about me, something about him, but mostly about the vices that fester in certain reaches of our universities, which serve to undermine rational dialogue and public norms of liberal civility.
Nigel Biggar
· 19 min read