It’s been an odd week in these United States, to say the least. And our publication schedule reflected that.
On Monday, the latest CrowdSource — the weekly newsletter for the lover of ideas — contemplated the near-assassination of the former president.
We released our podcast early because we thought it could help listeners to process this disturbing event. Right as news was breaking about the near-assassination,
and were about to record a podcast with one of the nation’s sharpest political thinkers: Yuval Levin. In his new book, American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation — and Could Again, Levin argues that the Constitution is “a text that is meant to frame a way of life”:
In the podcast, Levin made a point that might seem counterintuitive in this time of deep division. He argues that political parties need to work harder at creating coalitions:
Give the whole thing a listen: “A More (or Less) Perfect Union.”
On Thursday, we published the first installment of our new feature: Provocations. This is your chance, once a month, to challenge one of our writers with your questions. This month,
was our guinea pig. A lot of readers asked him about his tongue-in-cheek nihilism, and about his fundamental ethical beliefs. Damir turned the tables on the question:
The more interesting question is: “why be nice?” Is one nice because there is meaning in the world, or because it’s nice to be nice? To put it another way, do we need the world to have external meaning in order to be nice? Is being grumpy (or cranky) an expression of being unhappy with the world? Or, rather, is it possible to exist more or less in the present, acting and reacting, being pleased and displeased, and not think too much about the bigger frame?
Read the whole piece here: “Beauty and Niceness in an Accidental World.”
Outside of Wisdom of Crowds,
published a humble, not-at-all-provocative column in the Washington Post: “Is Trump’s near-death experience part of God’s plan?” You can be sure that the ideas from that article will be discussed in podcasts to come.For Commonweal, reviewed the novel, The Novelist, by Jordan Castro. Santiago’s idea for the review was born in a podcast episode we did with Jordan a few months ago:
That’s it for now. Please remember to comment and subscribe! See you Monday with our latest CrowdSource!
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