A few weeks ago, I found myself in the process of getting my nails done when a fellow patron of the salon noticed my Michigan apparel, leaned towards me conspiratorially and asked, “Do you know the students who destroyed that ski resort?” Ah ski trip. That certainly was not the first time I’ve been asked […]
Category: Arts & Culture
Our Common Stagnation: On Mad Max and Laudato Si
With its focal point being material progress, liberal modernity fixates so much on efficient means that we forget the basic ends of economic development and democratization: the human being.
What The Bachelor Got Right
My friends know me to be an outspoken super-fan of the Bachelor franchise. I’ve been told that it’s worth watching the weekly episodes just to understand my Twitter diatribes, and upon my return to campus last week my roommate asked me how Bachelor in Paradise was developing this season “because I know that’s a really […]
In Defense of the Individual
The protagonist of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead is Howard Roark, a young, principled architect who is pitted against manipulative forces that fear his individualism and seek to destroy him. The first such instance takes place in the beginning, when Roark is expelled from the prestigious Stanton Institute of Technology. The Dean dismisses Roark’s work because […]
A Gay Man Walks into a Gun Shop
The NRA, in defending citizens’ right to “keep and bear Arms”—a right clearly enumerated in the Second Amendment—is imposing its values on everyone else. But when social conservatives make the case that gay activists and left-wing academics in Obergefell have forced their own moral views upon the rest of the nation by redefining marriage to make into a genderless institution more focused on the romantic desires of adults at the expense of the needs and rights of children, we are laughed out of the room.
From Turkey to Ann Arbor: A Beautiful Headscarf
To the gentle man, who waved his hand at me from the other side of the street in the autumn of 2004, I hope you read this and remember the Muslim woman with a beautiful headscarf. This letter is to tell you that your courtesy has not been forgotten. On that autumn afternoon, you touched a wounded heart that had been bleeding for twenty-four years. Whoever you are, wherever you are, may God touch your heart too.
Confessions: Why I Became a Libertarian
Over the years, I noticed that the political right had been deserted by Muslims and thus had to resort to its own, often times – but not always – misinformed, voices about who Muslims and Islam are. More importantly, I noticed an incursion upon the principles and values of the Muslim community in America.
The Confederate Flag: To Fly or Not to Fly
No, banning the flag solves nothing. It only serves to lull us into believing that we have “Done something important.” Banning the flag reifies the legitimacy of its symbolic power. The flag does have power, but only if we allow it to have such sway. A clear and unabashed analysis of the flag is the only way in which we can hope to nullify its power. We expunge it at our own risk. Much like martyrs inspire more powerfully their causes than they ever could while alive, so too will the Confederate flag if it is removed from the public square. We will have merely facilitated the nightmarish transformation of the flag: from visible abomination to invisible abomination.”
What the Secular Left and the Religious Right Get Wrong in the Josh Duggar Fiasco
Is what Josh Duggar did disgusting and reprehensible? Yes. Are liberals hilariously hypocritical in their criticism of him? Yes. Are the so-called Christians defending him deeply mistaken about the nature of forgiveness and how it relates to Josh’s actions? Yes.
The Curious Case of Caitlyn Jenner and What We Ought to Do About It
Needless to say, I think this is all malarkey; that is, all of this jargon is merely academic posturing dressed up in high-sounding definitional rhetoric—all to obscure a deeper reality: that modern gender theory is merely a cover under which those confused about their maleness or femaleness can work out their own misgivings, past hurts, and future insecurities under and within what appears to be a large, welcoming tent of legitimacy. It is no such thing.