A Thinking Reed

  • Conscience of a torturer

    I’ve really been enjoying the subscription to Mother Jones my in-laws got me for my birthday. They do exactly what you’d want a monthly magazine to do: run long, in-depth investigative articles that go beyond the surface coverage you tend to get in weeklies or dailies. I used to subcribe to half a dozen or…

  • The dismal prospects of anti-war conservatism

    Speaking of the prospects for anti-war conservatism, Michael Tomasky reviews (free registration required) Bill Kauffman’s upcoming Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle American Anti-Imperialism. Tomasky gives a largely sympathetic hearing to Kauffman’s history-cum-commendation of conservative isolationism and notes that “it wouldn’t be a bad thing to see the Republican…

  • Marty and Wright

    One noteworthy fact mentioned in this Nicholas Kristof column on the Obama/Jeremiah Wright brouhaha is that, apparently, noted religious historian and veritable dean of American mainline Lutheranism Martin Marty is a longtime associate of Wright’s: Many well-meaning Americans perceive Mr. Wright as fundamentally a hate-monger who preaches antagonism toward whites. But those who know his…

  • Why resurrection?

    Slate has a pretty decent article on why resurrection, rather than the immortality of the soul, is the key Christian belief about life after death. Though I do sometimes think these two notions are needlessly set in opposition. It seems to me that the insistence of bodily resurrection qualifies a too spiritualistic idea of human…

  • Bacevich on Obama

    Andrew Bacevich offers a cold-blooded argument for an Obama presidency. The key point is that electing Obama will serve as a repudiation of the Iraq war and, to a lesser extent, the imperial trajectory of which it’s a key part. This, Bacevich thinks, could set the stage for a revival of “genuine conservatism,” which he…

  • The progress delusion

    It’s become commonplace to observe that atheism can display many of the same traits as the religions it criticzes, but British political thinker John Gray is a master of exploring the quasi-religious themes in the myth-making of secular modernity, something he’s done for everything from communism, to global capitalism, to human uniqueness, to the idea…

  • Environmentalism for the rest of us

    I meant to link to this piece from Orion magazine earlier (via Russell I think). It’s all about cultivating an environmentalism that can appeal to working class people (specifically white ones in this case), not just by appealing to their interests, but by understanding and sympathizing with their culture. It’s no secret that much of…

  • What I did on my winter vacation

    I wanted to say something about my trip to Germany. I stayed in Berlin, in what was formerly part of East Berlin, a neighborhood called Prenzlauer Berg. Under communism it was a locus for dissidents and artists but is now almost indistinguishable from trendy yuppie neighborhoods in DC or about a dozen other cities I…

  • The speech

    I haven’t read much of the commentary, but I thought this Obama speech was pretty darn brilliant. Not only did he convincingly refute the worries that he was too close to his fiery and eccentric pastor, he wove the issue into a broader narrative about race, resentment, and injustice in America. Not only that, but…

  • Spinoza on Christ

    This post from Brandon on Benedict (a.k.a. Baruch) Spinoza’s views on the person of Jesus is really interesting. I spent a lot of time as an undergrad reading Spinoza and even considered myself a “Spinozist” of sorts for a while. It served as a stepping stone from atheism to theism.