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
One doesn’t need much detailed historical knowledge to be struck by just how recent many of the most deeply held moral and political convictions in the modern West are. Prior to just a few hundred years ago, it would have been considered eccentric (at best) or seditious (at worst)
Much ink has been spilled in recent months debating comments by U.S. Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) regarding Israel. People have argued, sometimes in good faith, that they used antisemitic tropes, unintentionally or not. However, this discussion has lacked necessary cultural and social background to make
I wish to mount a defense of all the liberals who are losing their minds because of the election and presidency of Donald J. Trump. In fact, I find this conclusion inescapable: for the first time in our lives, in this Trumpian era, the possibility that we are living through
Philosophers who study justice theorize how societies can treat their members fairly and increase everyone’s well-being. One of the most famous frameworks for approaching these questions, the capabilities approach, was developed primarily by philosopher Martha Nussbaum and philosopher-economist Amartya Sen. Some philosophers have argued that there is, ultimately, only
If [misogyny] feels like anything at all, it will tend to be righteous: like standing up for oneself or for morality, or—often combining the two—for the “little guy.” It often feels to those in its grip like a moral crusade, not a witch hunt. And it may pursue
How did religious freedom first emerge? This is the theme of Persecution and Toleration (CUP, 2019). Here I focus on one part of this question: how did Jews obtain civic rights? Antisemitism has a long history in Europe. Elsewhere, I discussed its institutional foundations in the Middle Ages. But even
When psychology professor and YouTube star Jordan Peterson or his fellow travelers use the adjective “postmodern,” they often join it to “neomarxism” and then mount some argument about how postmodernism is incompatible with “Western” values like liberty. Peterson aside, the notion that postmodernism is primarily a rebranding of socialist politics
The Democrats are presently courting electoral disaster. Not only is the field of those seeking the Party’s 2020 nomination heavily populated and expanding by the week, but those already in the ring, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, seem to be configured in what former President Obama recently
According to a familiar diagnosis, contemporary democracy is plagued by partisan divisions. In the United States and elsewhere, these have become so severe that officials and citizens who do not share a party affiliation cannot find any common ground whatsoever. Thus they cannot compromise, cooperate, or even productively communicate with
Like many others, I discovered Ayn Rand in high school and converted to libertarianism with a true believer’s zeal. I remained a libertarian for over a decade. My exit from libertarianism was comparably much more gradual. By reading broadly and meeting a lot of sharp friends from other ideological
Steven Pinker recently penned a piece reflecting on all the noise surrounding his recent book, Enlightenment Now. He says, You wouldn’t think that a defense of reason, science, and humanism would be particularly controversial in an era in which those ideals would seem to need all the help they