In his 2010 acceptance lecture for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa praised the civilizing power of fiction. As a result of storytelling, “civilization is now less cruel than when storytellers began to humanize life with their fables. We would be worse than we are without
It’s beginning to sound cliché to say liberalism is in crisis, but anti-liberal parties are on the rise across Europe, Brexit is generally understood to be a setback for liberalism, and in America, Donald Trump rode anti-liberal sentiments to power and early signs point to a deeply anti-liberal agenda.
Libertarians have long harbored reservations about democracy, and some of their concerns have lately won mainstream attention amid an ongoing crisis of democratic confidence. Now, it could be that libertarians just don’t like losing elections. It’s never quite proper, though, to ask about an arguer’s hidden motives
I sit down to write this essay having just finished washing the dishes from the breakfast I made for my boyfriend. The neighborhood we live in, with an olive oil shop next door, a sushi bar across the street, and an artisanal cheese shop around the corner, I could not
In my office there’s a framed poster of Godwin’s Law: as the length of a conversation increases, the probability of a Nazi reference rises to one. After that, all rational discussion comes to an end. The author of the meme, internet legend Mike Godwin, autographed it for me,
In the movie Sabrina, the character David Larrabee (William Holden) confronts his brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart) about his obsession with running their family business. He accuses Linus of caring only about money. To which the elder brother responds: Linus: Making money isn’t the main point of business. Money is
If “populism” is the first word on everyone’s lips these days, “nationalism” isn’t far behind. To critics, the word seems to be little more than a synonym for prejudice. To Trump’s defenders, it is akin to pride in one’s community, and a belief in communal self-determination.
The conversation about ideals in our culture has grown profoundly trivial. Our articulate class is very wishy washy about the ideals they promote, and hold opponents to the highest imaginable standards while sloppily and reactively moving goalposts on their own side. Meanwhile, everyone wants to pigeonhole good and evil. They
We’ve all heard the bad news. Liberalism is on the run, they say. From its birthplace on the British isles, to the European continent, to the Philippines. Most pressingly for us, it has taken a beating here in the United States—a country that was self-consciously founded on the
In moments of crisis for the liberal democratic system, it’s worth asking ourselves whether the system is even worth it. When human rights are being violated and unjust wars waged in our names, when some of us can be killed by the authorities with impunity, and when a liberal