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How the Media Became the Pentagon’s Plumbers1
Last month New York Times international correspondent David Philipps offered a mea culpa. “I just deleted a tweet that lacked nuance,” the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner wrote. Philipps, who in 2022 received the top award in journalism for his reporting on previously undisclosed US military strikes that killed thousands of civilians in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, was
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Against Determinism7
- Philosophy
- May 10, 2023
In Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir published a long discussion she had with her companion—the world-renowned, radical-left philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre—in the last years of his life. Though the two of them believed many things I find unpalatable, this phrase served me for some time as an email signature: Simone de Beauvoir: Broadly speaking,
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Why It’s Time to Treat Communist Symbols Like the Swastika2
If someone were to ask you to think of either extreme of the political spectrum, odds are you would immediately picture a swastika at one end, and a hammer and sickle at the other. Regardless of your views of the left-right paradigm, or whether you subscribe to horseshoe theory or not, we (rightfully) tend to
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Rediscovering Meaningful Skills with Ray Bradbury’s Gardener2
- Philosophy
- May 9, 2023
‘Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people
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Euthanasia in Canada: Let Them Die—They Know What They’re Doing0
As Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying regime expands, it is meeting more resistance. One of the most powerful criticisms, one which has surfaced often in the media, is that some people with chronic illnesses, whose death is not reasonably foreseeable, are choosing to die because social services are inadequate. They do not want to, but
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Understanding Consciousness: A Case for Good Fiction1
- Literature
- May 8, 2023
Books have, without a doubt, done great things for humanity. In them, we have recorded some of the weightiest thoughts ever to enter the human mind. By them, we have sustained deep and substantive theological, philosophical, and moral discussions. And with them, we have influenced minds, arguments, and even culture itself. These are all good
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Georgia and Arkansas Revive an Old-School Teaching Method0
In his rousing keynote address at The Heritage Foundation’s 50th anniversary gala last month, then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson offered an unexpected piece of advice: “Don’t throw away your hard-copy books.” Unlike digitized books, films, and albums that can be canceled, rewritten, or vanished altogether, physical copies are “the enduring repository that cannot be disappeared.” With their resurrection of
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One Thing We Can All Do for Our Country1
You [Lord] who have imbued us with unalienable rights that we may serve you in freedom … we ask your blessing upon us now. Conscious that unless you build the house those who build it labor in vain and unless you watch over the city we keep vigil in vain, we ask you first to
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Why So Many ‘Tolerant’ People Are Actually the Opposite4
It’s become common to point out that those who most preach “tolerance” are often themselves highly “intolerant.” But why is that? As University of Texas professor and ethics expert J. Budziszewski explains, it may have a lot to do with tolerance’s character as a virtue. Let me explain. Or rather, I’ll explain Budziszewski’s explanation from his excellent
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