Most Read from past 24 hours
What Makes Someone an American?
- Culture, Featured, History, Philosophy, Politics, Western Civilization
- June 17, 2026






It’s the end of the world as we know it and we don’t feel fine. We see it in the “how dare you” of Greta Thunberg and in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s lament over colonialism, climate change, and the impact on her future children. It shows up in the condemnation of national sovereignty movements by Pope Francis,
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New data has revealed that it is our own behavior that is the greatest threat to our staying alive. Poor diet is the number one risk factor, followed by high blood pressure and smoking. A bad diet was behind more than 19 percent of all deaths worldwide in 2017, and almost 70 percent of coronary heart disease deaths, and a
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Is self-control something you can acquire, like a new language or a taste for opera? Or is it one of those things you either have or don’t, like fashion sense or a knack for telling a good joke? Psychologist Walter Mischel’s famous results from the “marshmallow test” seem to suggest self-control is relatively stable and
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In his classic book on practice, Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment, George Leonard observes how many of us have conditioned ourselves to think life is an “endless series of climatic moments.” Writing in the early 90s, Leonard observed television commercials, “The race is run and won; beautiful young people jump up and
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One day early last summer, we pulled our Alcuin Interns out of their normal work routine at Intellectual Takeout and informed them that they would be having a professional development day. This professional development involved going to a fancy club in downtown Minneapolis and taking a course in business etiquette. Knowing the instructor and having
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I had already completed 16 years of schooling when I took a class to prepare for entrance exams to law school (I decided not to go). First order of business for nailing the exam: the study of logic. My mind was absolutely blown. I was stunned to discover that there are rules for thinking, proofs
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