April 2012
2 posts
2 tags
Animals
By Jaime Karnes.
“I folded my problems into pretty paper animals to keep me company. I set them on the Formica dinette set. I jammed some into cracks so they’d stand up straight: organized warfare.”
A Short Story.
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I had twenty-three new problems that week. I knew because I’d stayed...
2 tags
47 Days
By Paul Lisicky.
“How often were two men in sync when they weren’t worn out or hyped up on drugs? Maybe their good luck had something to do with the fact that the two were wounded.”
A Short Story.
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Jake wanted the cop again. If he couldn’t have him, then Jake wanted the guy he was...
March 2012
2 posts
2 tags
The Liberal Case for Intellectual Property
By Yascha Mounk.
“Let us drop the deluded pretense that the defense of intellectual property is inherently conservative, or even reactionary.”
Why our society would be less egalitarian and artistic without intellectual property rights.
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Given how technical a topic intellectual property is, most...
3 tags
Bárbula Copies, A Funeral Home
By Slavko Zupcic.
(Translated by Jeremy Osner.)
“We ran to him. We had a fucking corpse! Finally, we had a corpse.”
A Short Story.
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— Death takes us all. — That was all we would say when customers asked us how we had made the decision to go into the funeral home business here next to the...
February 2012
2 posts
2 tags
A Rights-Based Utopia?
By Adam Etinson.
“Rather than worry about how we might preserve the utopian status of human rights into the future, we ought to worry about how to rescue utopia from the clutches of human rights. “
A plea for substantive utopias.
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A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing...
2 tags
After Utopia?
By Samuel Moyn.
“There is a risk that human rights will be called on to do so much, precisely because no powerful imaginative alternatives exist, that they will lose even the minimal promise of transformation that allow the norms to inspire so many.”
A response to Adam Etinson.
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After Utopia is the title of a...
December 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Occupy Wall Street and the Rediscovery of Politics...
By Jeremy Kessler.
“In taking to the streets with their peculiar brand of leadership and organization, the Occupy Wall Street movement taps into a deep American tradition of outdoor politics: for much of American history, the motor of progressive political change was the assembly of the people out-of-doors, coming together to debate and organize beyond the prescribed avenues of official political...
2 tags
Thatcher and Conservatism
By Timothy Stanley.
“Ask a Conservative what kind of society they’d like to live in and they’ll generally identify the 1950s. This is highly ironic, because the faithful, decent national community that we imagine the 1950s to have been was also economically highly regulated and strongly wedded to the postwar consensus that Margaret Thatcher tore up.”
...
November 2011
1 post
2 tags
The Age of Uncertainty
By Sheri Berman.
“Particularly in the West, what seems striking about the current period is the widespread sense of the need for change combined with the lack of any coherent plans for it.”
On discontent and its failure to effect transformation.
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We seem to be living in an age of uncertainty. Wherever one looks, there are...
October 2011
1 post
Towards a New Manifesto
By Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer.
“We cannot call for the defence of the Western world.”
In 1956, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer sat down to write an updated version of the Communist Manifesto. These are previously unpublished notes from their discussions.
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12 March 1956 (as recorded by Gretel...
September 2011
1 post
2 tags
What is Populism?
By Jan-Werner Mueller.
“What populism necessarily denies is the pluralism of contemporary societies: in the populist imagination there is only the people on the one hand and the illegitimate intruders into our politics, from both above and below, on the other.”
An account of what populism is, and why it is dangerous.
...
August 2011
7 posts
2 tags
A Lack of Leadership
By Timothy Stanley.
“Most voters are conservative in that they want peace in the streets yet liberal in that they don’t want to use water cannons to get it.”
What Britain can learn from America’s reaction to the riots of the 1960s.
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The riots in London made me think instantly of the urban disorder in America in the...
2 tags
England Burning
By Alexander Lee.
“If there is a single underlying cause for the riots, it is to be found in the shocking social problems in Britain’s depressed suburbs and in the gradual abandonment of social questions by mainstream political discourse.”
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For four days and nights, England burned. Catalysed by the shooting of 29-year-old gang...
2 tags
Seeing King Lear
By Charles Petersen.
Will there ever be a persuasive staging of Lear, or is the aging king condemned forever to remain most at home in the theater of the mind?
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There is a long and celebrated tradition of talking about books you haven’t read — see last year’s How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read (which I...
2 tags
The People Who Might Still Make the Egyptian...
By Martin Eiermann. “If you are confused”, Amado assures me, “you are on the right track. Everyone in Egypt is confused.” A Letter from Cairo.
_______________________________________________________________ On January 28, tens of thousands gathered on Cairo’s Tahrir Square for a “Day of Rage,” setting in motion the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. Now, on the...
2 tags
The Demonization of “Chavs”
By Owen Jones.
“Demonizing people at the bottom has been a convenient way of justifying an unequal society throughout the ages.”
An Anatomy of Britain’s supposed underclass.
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It’s an experience everyone in England has. You’re among a group of friends or acquaintances when suddenly someone says something that...
2 tags
Shatter the Trees and Blow them Away
By Mark Chiusano.
“Like everyone else, someone had come up to me, put a pointer finger in the center of my chests, and said, serve your country. Make us the Gadget, they said, and your name will be forever.”
A short story.
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It was 1944 and they told us to take the overnight to Jemez Springs, New Mexico, and when I said,...
2 tags
Decline
By David Hayes.
“In case of rams and horses, Kurnus, / We seek the highest class, / And select the finest specimens / Of ass to breed with ass.”
A new translation of Theognis 183-92.
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In case of rams and horses, Kurnus,
We seek the highest class,
And select the finest specimens
Of ass to breed with ass.
But the noble man no...
May 2011
1 post
2 tags
Utopias, Vol I: Alastair Campbell
By Alastair Campbell.
“Just because something is unreachable should not deter us from striving for it. So here’s the vision…”
The Utopian inaugurates a series of utopias, written by today’s most interesting philosophers, social scientists, politicians and writers. First up: Alastair Campbell.
...
April 2011
1 post
2 tags
Nothing to Lose But Your Cubicles
By Ross Perlin.
How to earn nothing and learn little in the brave new economy.
The Intern Manifesto.
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“Do the interns get Glocks?”
“No, they all share one.”
—The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou...
March 2011
1 post
11 tags
February 2011
8 posts
4 tags
The Last Word
Daniel Bell reflects on Friends, Foes, Influences, Ideologies, the State of the Novel, the State of the Union, and the Old Neighborhood.
By Roberto Foa and Thomas Meaney.
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This interview was conducted on September 21, 2010, a few months before Daniel Bell’s death, at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
I. Adversaries
Who was your...
2 tags
Why Europe Is, and Will Remain, Powerful
By Joseph Nye.
Predictions of European decline rely on an outmoded understanding of power. On all issues that require power with - rather than over - others, Europe has impressive capacity.
A defense of Europe’s relevance.
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The closest thing to an equal that the United States faces at the beginning of the 21st century is the...
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The Childless Revolutions
By Justin Reynolds.
“Once upon a time, revolutions devoured their children. Of late, they seem to have gone on birth control.”
Can the mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt succeed even though they have failed to produce real political leaders?
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The twittering classes are on the march. What will come of the recent upheavals...
2 tags
In Defence of Revolution
By Alexander Lee.
As revolutions unfold in the Middle East, we must not look on these brave actions as foreign measures, alien to democratic nations. They are not the distant, muffled sounds of nations from which we are separated by an unbridgeable divide, but a call to arms for all those who suffer.
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A spirit of revolution is in...
2 tags
Sylvia's Ghost and Poe's Tomb
By Pierre Troullier.
“No Pardon / Can wash blood / When it’s spilt / And since flood / No garden / Can hide guilt.”
Two poems.
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Sylvia’s Ghost
Your ghost is here to stay
No matter how we’re sane
It can’t be chased away
And will bring us more pain
Your ghost is here to stay
Your ghost is here to hurt
You hope...
2 tags
Adam Smith, the Mensch
By George Scialabba.
“It is far from obvious that Smith would have entertained cordial feelings toward Alan Greenspan or Margaret Thatcher … Smith was, in short, a mensch.”
A review of an intellectual biography by Nicholas Phillipson.
Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life by Nicholas Phillipson. Yale University Press, 346 pp,
...
2 tags
Liberal Myths, Religious Realities
By Timothy Stanley.
On Politics, History, Sex and Morality.
A Response to Damon Linker.
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In the last issue of this magazine, Damon Linker wrote an excellent article on the subject of sexual traditionalism. I would recommend reading it. It is well conceived and well written. But it also engaged in a certain amount of liberal mythmaking.
Linker...
2 tags
Pigman's Fingers
By Ian Fraser.
“A soft wind blew and rustled the leaves on the trees.
‘Heh,’ said Pigman. ‘Isn’t this a genuine made-in America love story, huh?’
‘What’s America?’ I said.”
A short novella.
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Once upon a time, Mom told me that the trail that ran past our house used to be filled...
December 2010
8 posts
10 tags
4 tags
Spiritual Gains
by: Thomas Meaney and Yascha Mounk
Religion, politics, and ignorance past: philosopher Charles Taylor in discussion with The Utopian.
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Charles Taylor in conversation with The Utopian.
Is it possible to be religious in today’s world?
What did Aquinas say? From being to possibility? I think I am religious, so it...
3 tags
Religion for Immortals
By Michel Houellebecq.
(Translated by Thomas Meaney.)
“Sexual needs are more urgent than spiritual needs. But what if our sexual needs are satisfied and our spiritual needs take over?”
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1. The Disappearance of Metaphysics
We still haven’t quit the state of metaphysics. Never have we had less intention of quitting...
2 tags
A Holiday in North Korea
By Michael Goldstein.
“You have not seen many shades of grey until you have seen Pyongyang.” Our correspondent reports from the Hermit Kingdom.
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We crossed the border by train on a May morning. At 9:05 the train shunts into motion, crawls forward, and rattles on, rail by rail, until we reach the bridge separating...
2 tags
The Impossibility of Sexual Consensus
By Damon Linker.
“The liberal state is not predisposed to defend and enforce sexual liberation.”
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What do religious traditionalists think about when they think about sex? To judge from the flurry of emails and blast faxes launched daily by the interdenominational coalition of religious groups that claim to speak for...
2 tags
A Short History of Desire
By Alexander Lee.
“Is it better to be chaste and restrained but moral and sociable, or promiscuous and free but atomised and isolated?”
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Of the myriad impulses which bind humans to one another, desire — and specifically sexual desire—is unique. Unlike love or friendship it touches on our most basic, feral...
2 tags
Those Wings of Yours
By David Hayes.
A new translation of Theognis 236-54.
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Those wings of yours have been my gift to you: Take them and fly from party to party. Land Upon the lips of all the beauties and listen. The song they sing will be the song of you, Kurnus. I’m sad to say that death is just Around the corner. Human beings end As...
2 tags
White Flower
By Sam Munson.
A new translation of Heinrich Heine’s poem “Die weiße Blume.”
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White Flower
In my father’s garden grew A secret flower. White and sad. Winter’s end. Spring wind. Our flower, by frost or thaw Unchanged … Pale, pale. A sick bride.
She spoke: Brother, pluck me. Hoarse and quiet. My...
November 2010
1 post
1 tag
March 2010
11 posts
12 tags
2 tags
Sacrificial Nation
By Paul W. Kahn.
The United States is a political theological project. Popular sovereignty is the mystical corpus, and sacrifice is the act of self-transcendence.
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What sort of political phenomenon is the United States? Arguably the first modern nation-state, it seems increasingly anachronistic. Long committed to the...
5 tags
Two Views of Justice
- Too much justice? Harvey Mansfield in conversation with Yascha Mounk. [more]
- Justice: the whole story? Onora O’Neill in conversation with Alexander Lee. [more]
3 tags
Raging for Democracy
By Nadia Urbinati.
(Translated by Yascha Mounk)
Race riots, Italian style. Why recent confrontations between immigrant workers and mafia clans might strengthen Italian democracy.
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Just off the coast of Calabria in Southern Italy, Rosarno was home to hundreds of African migrant workers, many of them illegal immigrants. Working...
2 tags
When Humanitarianism Hurts
By Stephen Wertheim.
The language of duty in politics feeds self-delusive moralism. Humanitarian interventionists take note.
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A duty to intervene. The responsibility to protect. Never again. This is the language of international ethics in our time. It is the language of justice construed as categorical imperatives. To deny...
2 tags
Stepwells and Civilization
By Karan Mahajan.
Novelist Karan Mahajan descends into the stepwells of Gujarat and Rajastan to report on one of modern India’s disappearing treasures.
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The stepwell lacks a proper analogue in the modern world. Sunk into earth like a man-made canyon, it is impossible to imagine whole. Viewed from the sky, it looks...
2 tags
Earthly Paradise
By Sam Munson.
“Two days before his forty-fourth birthday the authorities release an obscure writer (whom I’ll call, with amazing presumption, Telemachus) from prison.”
A short story.
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So: two days before his forty-fourth birthday (according to whatever foreign power has seized control of my already cramped and stinging ...
2 tags
The Hardest Choice
By Alexander Lee.
In 1993, two ten-year-olds tortured, abused, and killed a toddler. In 2001, they were released from prison. One of the juvenile murderers has now been rearrested on child porn charges. The question is: where does justice lie?
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“For the sort of man who is unwilling to take up the course of well-doing,...
2 tags
Not Even Zeus
By David Hayes.
A New Translation of Theognis 19 - 26.
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With skill I placed a seal upon my words, Kurnus. They can’t be stolen — or if They are, the truth will out. My lines will not Be changed from good to bad. Every Man will say, “Look! Verses by Theognis, The world-famous...
2 tags
The Mercy Shot
By Yascha Mounk.
In 1997, Tony Blair promised that “things can only get better.” Did they?
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If you switched on a British TV in the spring of 1997, you would probably have heard a catchy, optimistic tune: Things Can Only Get Better. Puzzled, you would have watched the back of an unidentifiable man. Leaving...
2 tags
An Englishman at CPAC
By Timothy Stanley.
Timothy Stanley reports from the front lines of the Conference for Conservative Activists in Washington, D.C.
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I am here in Washington DC at a revolutionary moment. The Tea Party has come to town and hijacked the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Women with stately hairdos share the cameras...
December 2009
6 posts
6 tags
