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E.B. White’s Touching Letter to Man Who Lost Hope in Humanity 0
- Culture
- February 27, 2017
I’m a longtime fan of E.B. White. Intellectual Takeout readers likely know he wrote a lot more than just Charlotte’s Web. His short story The Door is one of my favorite short stories. (We’ll deconstruct that one another other day; as you can see, it’s quite mad.) I bring up White because an old friend
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The Death of Outdoor Recess 0
- Culture
- February 24, 2017
A mom in New York tells me she’s in a fight with her kid’s preschool. You might think she’s unhappy with the zero-tolerance policy for Kombucha? Too much enrichment? Not enough? In fact, it’s none of the above. Her fight is over the children playing outside. The mother wants her kid to be outside more
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Does America Still Believe in its Own Ideas?0
- Culture
- February 24, 2017
The other day, my mother handed me a couple of books she had found while sorting through my late grandfather’s belongings. One was entitled Military Science and Tactics: Infantry Basic Course, which I presume was left over from his days in basic training during World War II. While most of the book revolved around weapon
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Every Book Lover Should Be Able To Pass This Literature Quiz 0
- Entertainment
- February 24, 2017
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Justice and ‘Social Justice’: Two Very Different Things 0
- Philosophy
- February 24, 2017
Recently, Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen wrote in the Washington Post of “The most important phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance” — “with liberty and justice for all.” Allen recognized that justice required “equality before the law” and that freedom exists “only when it is for everyone.” But she confused democracy — defined as progressives “build[ing] a distributed
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Lincoln’s Suicide Note 0
- History
- February 24, 2017
The depths of Abraham Lincoln’s misery following the death of fiancée Ann Rutledge is well known. (Lincoln’s close friend Josh Speed provided a detailed and captivating recollection of the Lincoln-Rutledge courtship, an unlikely romance that was nothing short of Shakespearean in both beauty and tragedy.) Lincoln was remarkably frank and open about his persistent “melancholy”, which
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