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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Fortunately, the Milk
There are these days, and to be honest it has always been thus, people who are firmly convinced that the world is becoming a worse place. There are people who believe that the children born in the years to come are being born into an impoverished world, that it would have been better to have […]
Living with Aphantasia
Close your eyes and picture a house. What color is the house? Now picture a dog? What kind of dog is it? Now picture a member of your family, a scene from your favorite novel, and the last meal you ate. When you closed your eyes, could you picture those things? If so, congratulations. You […]
A Jolly Time with Martin Chuzzlewit
If you made a list of the Best of Charles Dickens, you would almost certainly not include Martin Chuzzlewit. You would not be unusual. A sign of where this book ranks in the popular imagination: Doctor Who once met Charles Dickens and while expressing his general admiration, he did wonder what in the world Dickens […]