A liberal is a person who can’t take his own side in a quarrel. Robert Frost Richard Rorty stands as the most controversial figure in 20th century English-language philosophy. As William Curtis documents in Defending Rorty, Rorty’s untroubled attitude and deflationary arguments were a lightning rod among analytic
Two years ago, a group of friends and I were discussing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to “intensify” the crackdown on black-market cigarettes after having enacted a tax hike on them. Since NYPD officers ostensibly looking for black-market cigarettes had killed Eric Garner a mere three
The title of Chris Arnade’s book seems at times paradoxical, as one is reading through the catalogue of indignities endured by the people he sat with, talked to, and photographed. But that, of course, is the point: even in the most rusted-through of the Rust Belt, even in the
This past Saturday, Quillette editor Andy Ngo was assaulted by counter-protesters to a right-wing demonstration. This reignited the well-rehearsed debate over the use of violence against right-wing speech by Antifa and related left-wing groups, a debate which this piece will largely avoid. What I will be discussing instead relates to
When you’re a kid, authority isn’t the stuff of political theory, it’s a feature of the landscape. A natural characteristic. Parents and teachers and some other adults have it. They also seem to know everything there is to know, as if adulthood means getting let in on
Against a liberalism of pre-political foundations and historical destiny, Jacob Levy has been working hard to recover a vision of liberalism that appreciates the complex patchwork of social life, is historically contingent, and accepts the existence of irresolvable tensions. Though he has been influenced by Judith Shklar’s “Liberalism of
F. A. Hayek was, to use Peter Boettke’s phrase, a “lifelong learner,” changing his position on a variety of topics throughout his long career as he tested the boundaries of his framework and sought to iron out its contradictions. The Hayek I wish to present here is therefore just
My fellow editor Paul Crider has critiqued and expanded upon a summary of the history of capitalism and what we mean when we use the term “capitalism” today, which appeared in the pages of Teen Vogue. While Paul’s piece is exemplary for its use of system-level analysis, I think
It is impossible to change people’s minds. Every new fact is taken as confirmation of pre-existing bias, every criticism of our in-group taken as a sign of the critic’s bad faith. We are more sure than ever that we are more sure than ever, we are of one
Estimates of the headcount for the Tea Party protests of 2009 vary, but no one can deny their long-term significance. While the protests themselves were only organized in the loosest sense, their impact on our politics and culture can be seen mostly in the response of formal organizations to the
America is a nation overflowing with love for our sports, if not always for our teams. There is a special place in our hearts for those most American of sports: football, baseball, and basketball. What could be more American than the spirited and divisive team rivalries, overcome only by a
The power of the written word is hard to overestimate. The printing press is usually blamed for the European wars of religion, with the resulting multiplication in ways of life ranging from Calvin’s Geneva to Puritan Massachusetts and the Dutch experiment in toleration. Later, the Republic of Letters would