Who killed the American Dream? David Leonhardt, a senior writer at The New York Times, picks up his magnifying glass and investigates in Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream. Note the past tense in the title. In order to find the culprit, we must first learn about the deceased. What was the American Dream? As Leonhardt notes, while the range of definitions is vast, at its root, the American dream is about progress. In particular, he zeroes in on a “core part” of the dream, that children will lead better lives than their parents did. Leonhardt makes the definition … [Read More...] about Whither the American Dream?
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Stuck in the Middle With You
In 1944, Friedrich Hayek wrote in “Why the Worst Get on Top” in his The Road to Serfdom: It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program—on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off—than on any positive […]
Battle Cry in the Culture War
Let’s start with a quick quiz. Name this book: The United States is in great peril because it has abandoned its Christian roots and is being taken over by people who are immersed in a humanistic worldview which is antithetical to God. The result will be a tyranny which will oppress Good Christians everywhere. Trick […]
Crafting a New Evangelical Imagination
“All great systems, ethical or political, attain their ascendancy over the minds of men by virtue of their appeal to the imagination; and when they cease to touch the chords of wonder and mystery and hope, their power is lost, and men look elsewhere for some set of principles by which they may be guided.”Russell […]
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Fiction Posing as Nonfiction
“Writing enters into us when it gives us information about ourselves we’re in need of at the time we’re reading.” Reality Hunger, by David Shields. I liked the book for reasons that have nothing to do with the author’s main thesis, but that isn’t the sort of thing that would bother Shields in the least […]
Celebrating the Mundane
The Origin Story is a staple of Superheroes. But what about heroes who aren’t super? Do they also merit an origin story? How does a perfectly normal person become a hero? John Le Carre’s Call for the Dead is the origin story of George Smiley. Le Carre is a pen name for David Cornwell, who […]
Dickens in America
In 1842, C. Dickens sailed the ocean blue and landed in America. Then he wrote a book about his journeys, cleverly titled American Notes. This is not a well-read Dickens’ volume. For good reason. Charitably, it is an uneven book. Uncharitably, it is a pointless ramble punctuated with some interesting things here and there. Dickens […]