Intellect
A self-described leftist writing in to Andrew Sullivan summed it up well: [Y]ou see classic conservatism as the defense of liberty from brutality through doubt, caution, common sense and rigorous self-examination[.]
Intellect
Freud asked, "What do women really want?" It is the kind of question people ask when they do not want to know. Confessions of a Conservative
Intellect
Franktrying Confessions of a Conservative
Intellect
We can learn a great deal about something without learning of something; we can perceive the outline with remarkable clarity without perceiving the essence; we can see how a thing is seen without feeling how that thing is felt. Maybe Fox News knows something about liberals. Maybe atheists know something
Books
Martha Nussbaum's review of Harvey Mansfield's book Manliness is a demonstration of what can make a book review worthwhile. She explores not just the intellectual failings of a book purported to be an intellectual work, but goes on to examine how those failings could plausibly have
Intellect
In a recent post, Ross Douthat at The American Scene asks his readers to accept (without evidence) his characterization of the new book by Ramesh Ponnuru as smart and worthy of serious debate. Douthat begins his post with a series of questionable presumptions about people who disagree with him. He
Intellect
To follow up on my last post... It is said that the opposite of love is not hate, but rather indifference. Two kinds of passion differ less with each other than they both do with a lack of passion. In the same way, the opposite of a left-wing polemic is
Intellect
From an article in the once-august Times of London: Professor Lynn, who caused controversy last year by claiming that men were more intelligent than women by about five IQ points on average, said that populations in the colder, more challenging environments of Northern Europe had developed larger brains than those
Intellect
RedState is a prominent Republican group blog. On consecutive days this week, it featured: 1. A post interpreting the graying of the conservative movement as an opportunity for the young'uns of RedState to advance in that movement. 2. A post conditionally supporting Ben Domenech on the occasion of
Intellect
[I]f morality represents an ideal world, then economics represents the actual world. Freakonomics
Intellect
The Multnomah County Library has a set of the Everyman's Library six-volume edition of Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Volume 1 has seen hard use: The cover bent and frayed at the corners, the fabric threadbare in places, the spine lettering
History
The distortion of Soviet intelligence analysis derived, at root, from the nature of the one-party state and its inherent distrust of all opposing views. The Soviet Union thus found it more difficult than its Western rivals to understand, and therefore to use, the political intelligence it collected. Though the Soviet