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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Looking Anew at the Progressives
If you want to make sense of the Presidential Election, then you should definitely pick up Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit. The Progressive Movement has been much discussed by pundits and intellectuals in the last decade. Much discussed. Suddenly the word “progressive” became chic in some circles. It became anathema in other circles This […]
Yes, I Really Did Read Twilight
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,thou shalt not eat of it:for in the day that thou eatest thereofthou shalt surely die. As everyone knows, that quotation is the epigraph in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. You might have also heard that the author of Genesis used it. Yes, I recently read Twilight. […]
Some Books are Just Awful
Sometimes, I despair. Sometimes, I read a book that is just thoroughly bad. Unbelievably bad. As in, how-does-something-like-this-get-published? bad. And moreover, how in the world does someone who writes this book get a contract to write seven more books after this one? The book: Christmas is Murder, by C.S. Challinor (which I sure hope is a pen name […]