President Abraham Lincoln delivering his second inaugural address, March 4, 1865. Photo by Alexander Gardner. Library of Congress.

The Politics of Humility: Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural

September 14, 2025

For us to rebuild a robust democratic culture, we need to get over having our egos offended and accept that we don’t have all the answers. In short, we need a politics of humility. If we all committed ourselves to thinking before we spoke, listening more instead of shouting over others, and doing the homework needed to articulate informed opinions, this country would be a lot better off. Abraham Lincoln provides us with such an example to emulate. As he said nearly two centuries ago, at the start of his political career, we must gain the esteem of others by rendering ourselves worthy of their esteem. The way to do that is by correctly apportioning our confidence in relation to our competence. Only then can we genuinely make a more just, peaceful, and generous nation.

Getting at the Root: Revisiting Christopher Hitchens’ god is not Great

June 5, 2023

It is important to remember that polemicists like Hitchens are here to galvanize as much as enlighten; his book is a call to arms as much as it is a lecture. He’s challenging the religious status quo, which for most of human history has not been pretty, and in that task, we should applaud him. While many believers are bothered by his strident critique of religion, they should nevertheless heed his warnings about the deleterious effects of fundamentalism, especially in public life. Hitchens had far less respect for religion than I do, but his commitment to human rights and the defense of an open, free society are something to celebrate. Despite his acerbic, tactless appearance on the surface, Hitchens can be read in the best light as a humanist, dedicated to the Enlightenment project of democracy, liberty, and tolerance. At his worst, Hitchens can be read as a cultural imperialist and elitist whose sniveling disdain for religion displays actual intolerance. Like with most people, I think Hitchens is somewhere in the middle, bolstered by his better angels and hampered by his inner demons. Regardless of your feelings on Hitchens, he’s one of the most profoundly engaging, entertaining, and enlightening public intellectuals of the last half century, and god is not Great might be his most enduring work.

Rejecting Dogma, Embracing Freedom: Mike Rinder’s Journey Out of Scientology

February 6, 2023

Cults can take so many things from a person— their money, their dignity, their ability to think critically— but the most powerful thing a cult can take is someone’s freedom. If you can take someone’s freedom, you can take anything else. Rinder learned this firsthand being involved in scientology, a cult that destroys families, degrades its staff, and swindles its members, and has dedicated his life to exposing scientology’s pernicious effect on the world. In rejecting the dogma of scientology, Mike Rinder embraced freedom, the most precious thing one can ever have.

“Steadfast Even in Persecution”: Voltairine de Cleyre and the Legacy of Thomas Paine

June 9, 2022

American anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre carried the torch of freethought and radicalism exemplified by revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine, an iconoclasm infused with deep moral righteousness and an unrepentant sense of individualism. She defined her struggle for a stateless society in many of the same terms that Paine defined the fight for American independence, emphasizing political liberty, individual rights, equality, and mutual cooperation. She also stressed the importance of his character in her work. de Cleyre wrote of Paine that “he stood firm, proclaiming what he believed, not counting the cost. We may not believe as he; most of us do not. But that is the man we love: who has something in him superior to the judgments of men; who holds steadfast—steadfast even in persecution, even to death.” Likewise, we may not always agree with the convictions of Voltairine de Cleyre, but her own steadfastness echoed the legacy of America’s most underappreciated, and perennially misunderstood, founding father.

Daniel Dennett - Breaking the Spell 15 Years Later.jpg

Daniel Dennett’s "Breaking the Spell": 15 Years On

April 13, 2021

Fifteen years later, do the criticisms of Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell hold up? Are Dennett’s concepts of religion off base, or has new scholarship vindicated him? In this re-review of sorts, I will address the main critiques discussed above and evaluate whether they, or the book itself, stand the test of time. We’ll review whether Dennett’s call to “break the spell” is so revolutionary, if religions are “memes,” if people believe in religion because they believe that belief is itself a virtue, what Dennett calls “belief in belief,” and what we should do with religion in the modern age. In the final estimation, we’ll find that each of these conclusions is deeply flawed and the reviewers were right to call out Dennett for his mistakes. In closing, I’ll also challenge the oft-heard notion that Dennett is the “nice” one of the group. While he’s certainly the more level-headed of the bunch when comparing his book to say, The God Delusion or The End of Faith, Dennett still displays all the usual hallmarks of mainstream atheism in our culture: smugness, arrogance, condescension, and intolerance. In short, Breaking the Spell isn’t a bad book, but it isn’t much of a good book, either.

“Militant Materialism”: V. I. Lenin, Socialism, and Religion

February 25, 2021

In his writings, Lenin defended traditional secularist values, such as the separation of church and state, liberty of conscience, and free religious association, while also calling for the political separation of religion from political parties and strategically advocating for the atheist/materialist worldview. While it would be too much to say that Lenin was a “humanist” in the general sense of the term, he was nevertheless a secularist whose insights on religion provide left humanists with clear, tactical advice on the interrelationship between faith and politics in the public sphere.

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March 21, 2026

The Joy of Finitude: Lessons from "The Bicentennial Man”

March 21, 2026

In an age that promises expanded lifetimes and even the “singularity,” a melding of humans with technology for the purposes of immortality, grappling with the finality of death doesn’t seem like a topic for science fiction. But it was for science fiction legend Isaac Asimov. Fifty years ago, he wrote a story that tackled the subject head on with grace, humanity, and empathy: “The Bicentennial Man.” In this short but poignant tale, Asimov paradoxically reflects on the finality of death in a way that celebrates life, and ultimately concludes that consciously anticipating our death is what makes us fully human.

March 21, 2026

January 25, 2026

A Gore Vidal Retrospective: Part 2: Playwright, Essayist, and Provocateur (1956-1974)

January 25, 2026

In the mid 1950s, Gore Vidal took a sabbatical from writing novels to try writing plays—specifically plays for television. At the time, television was an extremely new medium, with broadcasters green-lighting a wide swath of productions. In this milieu, live television plays became wildly popular, and Vidal wanted to get in on the action. His plays varied, from wholly original creations to adaptations of famous works.

January 25, 2026

October 3, 2025

America’s Biographer: A Gore Vidal Retrospective: Part 1: Early Years (1946-1954)

October 3, 2025

I’ve come to the conclusion that Gore Vidal is, without question or reservation, my favorite author. His interests are my interests (politics, literature, philosophy, history), his politics are largely my politics (a liberal or libertarian socialism), and his writing is what I aspire to as a wordsmith.

October 3, 2025

September 14, 2025

The Politics of Humility: Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural

September 14, 2025

July 29, 2025

Short Book Reviews: American History

July 29, 2025

The novelist and essayist Gore Vidal once remarked that, “my subject is America,” and I, too, have devoted my life to understanding the United States. And like Vidal, I often research and write about American history in the form of immanent critique, which underscores the difference between the nation’s ideals of liberty and equality and its actual manifestations of power. The following book reviews cover the complex nature of American history, from Lawrence Wright’s day-by-day account of the Camp David Accords to Timothy Egan’s narrative history of the rise and fall of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana during the 1920s. Acknowledging America’s successes—and its profound failures—is an indispensable practice for possessing a real picture of the United States. I hope that the following reviews are but a small contribution to such a picture.

July 29, 2025

April 16, 2025

Short Book Reviews: Science and Society II

April 16, 2025

What ties all these disparate reads together is a grappling with the human condition and our relationship to the broader world. Each book left me with a better understanding of the cosmos than I had before, even when I didn’t always like them. Such is the life of a curious reader amongst the billions of stars and stories.

April 16, 2025

March 17, 2025

Crypto and Financial Euphoria

March 17, 2025

While it would be easy to say this is all new, a consequence of the internet’s revolutionizing effect on capitalism, history shows that speculative booms and bust are a recurrent, endemic part of the economy. This is especially true for items that provide little “use-value,” as Marx referred to it in Capital. Cryptocurrencies are overwhelmingly purchased as a speculative asset rather than a means of exchange in the United States. Only 4.4% of crypto users actually use it to purchase other things, with 92.6% keeping it as a speculative asset, Business Insider noted. Crypto is nothing more than another permutation in a centuries’ long metamorphosis of financial flim-flam.

March 17, 2025

February 17, 2025

Short Book Reviews: Presidential History

February 17, 2025

The following seven short book reviews cover a wide-range of topics related to the American presidency. Two works on Lincoln, from renowned historian David Herbert Donald and travel author Jan Morris, explore the multifaceted life and times of America’s greatest president. Doris Kearns Goodwin, an aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson and acclaimed presidential historian, gives us a penetrating portrait into LBJ and an insightful meditation on presidential leadership. Michael Dobbs’ day-by-day breakdown of the Watergate scandal and the downfall of President Richard Nixon is a gripping account of a presidency in crisis. The short presidency of Warren G. Harding has been much maligned by historians, but Ryan Walters’ revisionist history of the “Jazz Age President” will make you take a second look at Harding and his accomplishments. Finally, in master historian H.W. Brands’ book on FDR and Charles Lindbergh, we see the debate between internationalism and isolationism, a debate of growing importance in our era.

February 17, 2025

January 15, 2025

Obsession and Desire: Stephen King and John Carpenter’s Christine

January 15, 2025

Orson Welles reputedly said to filmmaker Henry Jaglom that “the enemy of art is the absence of limitation.” Whether Wells actually said this is up for debate, but nevertheless the statement rings true. John Carpenter, like Stanley Kubrick and Welles himself, epitomizes this maxim as a filmmaker, especially with Christine. He removes so much of the unnecessary fluff of King’s novel to get to the heart of the story, which is that an unhealthy obsession can kill us all. No object of desire, whether it be inanimate or human, makes us whole. Only our own inner life and the meaningful connections we make with others completes our humanity. Arnie represents the perennially broken soul in post-war America, placating his own limitations through an object of adoration. However, in the end, the adored object obliterates him. The world is not full of spiritual phantoms, but human ones— the refuse of unfulfilled dreams. We don’t need ghosts to make the world scary; it’s haunting enough as it is.

January 15, 2025

November 1, 2024

Hope in the Machine: Towards a Humanistic Technology

November 1, 2024

Today we face a choice, one that Fromm anticipated all those years ago. “We are at the crossroads:,” he wrote, “one road leads to a completely mechanized society with man as a helpless cog in the machine—if not to destruction by thermonuclear war; the other to a renaissance of humanism and hope—to a society that puts technique in the service of man's well-being.” I believe that the path of humanism and hope outlined by Fromm is our chance to rebuild the world for human beings, rather than machines. It only takes us imagining a better world and then advocating for it.

November 1, 2024

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