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The Agonist Journal A journal of essays, reviews, fiction, poetry, and more.

"Although today a hotbed for the preaching and propagation of social activism, in spirit comparative literature is the a...
06/07/2020

"Although today a hotbed for the preaching and propagation of social activism, in spirit comparative literature is the antidote to modern cultural and literary sectarianism." http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2020/07/01/essays-shaw.html

Using a great guide to get literary study back on track.

"Uncanny parallels may be drawn between the reaction to George Floyd’s killing and the aftermath of the Asia Bibi case i...
03/07/2020

"Uncanny parallels may be drawn between the reaction to George Floyd’s killing and the aftermath of the Asia Bibi case in Pakistan, presenting a dire warning for what can happen when rationale and the law are overwhelmed by the fervour of the lynch mob." http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2020/07/01/essays-mccrae.html

Important parallels in two cases of mass hysteria.

"Literacy fragmented from the literary celebrates superficiality; its crowning glory is unambiguous transparency of comm...
15/05/2020

"Literacy fragmented from the literary celebrates superficiality; its crowning glory is unambiguous transparency of communication. Richness of meaning, however, flourishes beneath the surface. It works with the permeability and porosity of language saturated with the struggles of life. Literacy rates have skyrocketed, while a genuinely literary sensibility is ever harder to find." --Jacob Phillips http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2020/04/15/essays-phillips.html

Why much of contemporary literary writing is so superficial.

"This fundamental irrationality is the key to understanding the ascendancy of identity politics and, despite its falsity...
03/05/2020

"This fundamental irrationality is the key to understanding the ascendancy of identity politics and, despite its falsity, the immense difficulty in combating it." --Jeffrey Ketland

http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2020/04/15/essays-ketland.html

Making sense of a false but powerful and pernicious idealogy.

"No one in the whole cafeteria recognized him, though most did manage to get a good glimpse of his resigned eyes, and th...
03/05/2020

"No one in the whole cafeteria recognized him, though most did manage to get a good glimpse of his resigned eyes, and the itching lower lip reined in by a bite. He did not say a word before, during, or after he riddled seventeen bodies dead." --Joshua Hren

http://www.theagonist.org/fiction/2020/04/15/fiction-hren.html

A chilling story of a mass murder that nobody saw coming.

"Self-examination can be healthy, especially if it helps us think of ways we can build better afterwards. But in the mea...
29/04/2020

"Self-examination can be healthy, especially if it helps us think of ways we can build better afterwards. But in the meantime, we dwell on dark history, and wonder if we can possibly match the courage and toughness of those who lived through the 1340s, 1640s, or 1940s." --Derek Turner

http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2020/04/15/essays-turner.html

How the corona crisis shows us what counts.

"White liberals and conservatives will go to great pains to explain to people like Tan what they take to be axiomatic po...
28/04/2020

"White liberals and conservatives will go to great pains to explain to people like Tan what they take to be axiomatic political truths, blind to the simple reality that it is not all a bad thing for minorities—especially immigrants—to conclude there is something good, and therefore worthy of imitation and respect, about 'white men’s culture.'" --Pedro Gonzalez

http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2020/04/01/essays-gonzalez.html

Taking race, demographics, and culture seriously.

"Asian actors decide to put on a play about how a bunch of insignificant losers with weird personal issues found a simpl...
28/04/2020

"Asian actors decide to put on a play about how a bunch of insignificant losers with weird personal issues found a simple way to alter the course of human events. And the play gets canceled because a bunch of insignificant Asian losers with weird personal issues found a simple way to alter the course of human events." --David Cole

http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2020/04/15/essays-cole.html

The deep irony of a politically correct Asian play.

"Exactly what effects have the Civil Rights revolution, feminism in all its phases, and the 'immigration reform' begun i...
23/04/2020

"Exactly what effects have the Civil Rights revolution, feminism in all its phases, and the 'immigration reform' begun in the 1960s had on the American body politic? I’d like to know how Reno would answer these questions, although I doubt that he’d even try." --Paul Gottfried

http://www.theagonist.org/reviews/2020/04/15/reviews-gottfried.html

An unsurprisingly risk-free analysis of the current situation.

"This fundamental irrationality is the key to understanding the ascendancy of identity politics and, despite its falsity...
22/04/2020

"This fundamental irrationality is the key to understanding the ascendancy of identity politics and, despite its falsity, the immense difficulty in combating it." --Jeffrey Ketland

http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2020/04/15/essays-ketland.html

Making sense of a false but powerful and pernicious idealogy.

“[W]hatever may be the motives of free traders, when they promote free trade under the pretense that already-wealthy nat...
22/04/2020

“[W]hatever may be the motives of free traders, when they promote free trade under the pretense that already-wealthy nations like the United States will become 'wealthier' by its practice, it’s hard to believe that this is really part of their agenda.” --Andrew Cairns

http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2020/04/15/essays-cairns.html

How Mises the Economist exposed Mises the Philosopher’s curious reliance on the Ricardian framework to sell “free trade.”

Yes, Alexander Pope is long dead, but we may thank God for Anthony Esolen: Our blest land let none disparage,Where first...
21/04/2020

Yes, Alexander Pope is long dead, but we may thank God for Anthony Esolen:

Our blest land let none disparage,
Where first comes the baby carriage—
If at all—without a marriage.

Let the praise be hyperbolic!
Here no babies wake with colic;
Men are free, and alcoholic.

Still some serpent hates our being
Gleeful in our glogg and skiing:
He tempts boys to stand while peeing!

Should some Swedish Rip Van Winkle
Wake in Stockholm, all a-wrinkle,
Still he’d have to sit to ti**le.

So he sits, obeys our rule or he
Finds how fast we punish foolery—
Locking up his family joolery!

We’ll reward him when he waxes
Pliant, and at last relaxes:
Down he goes, and up his taxes.

Let none think our ways are dotty.
Man, we find, learns to be naughty
Once he stands to use the potty.

http://www.theagonist.org/poetry/2020/04/15/poetry-esolen.html

Poetry by Anthony Esolen

"Liberal rationalism is, at least at the moment, an electoral dog: the quickest way to annoy or bore an English middle-c...
20/04/2020

"Liberal rationalism is, at least at the moment, an electoral dog: the quickest way to annoy or bore an English middle-class or working-class voter is to talk political theory or to lecture him on questions of political principle." --Andrew Tettenborn

http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2020/04/15/essays-tettenborn.html

From vain idealogy back to the practical.

"This fundamental irrationality is the key to understanding the ascendancy of identity politics and, despite its falsity...
20/04/2020

"This fundamental irrationality is the key to understanding the ascendancy of identity politics and, despite its falsity, the immense difficulty in combating it." --Jeffrey Ketland http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2020/04/15/essays-ketland.html

Making sense of a false but powerful and pernicious idealogy.

"If you’re not basking in Hart’s transcendent brilliance, you’re attesting to it by privation. An elect few see the ligh...
19/04/2020

"If you’re not basking in Hart’s transcendent brilliance, you’re attesting to it by privation. An elect few see the light of his 'irrefutable' (that’s Hart’s word) argument, and all the other benighted fools, be they willful heretics or ignorant heathens, must wait until the eschaton before they’ll really understand anything." --Sean Haylock

http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2020/04/15/essays-haylock.html

A genius marred by vanity.

"[David] Berlinski is something of a cartographer of our cosmic powerlessness. He points to these puzzling sigils of hum...
18/04/2020

"[David] Berlinski is something of a cartographer of our cosmic powerlessness. He points to these puzzling sigils of human experience, demanding we acknowledge them, while the sophists and money men distract themselves with Faustian illusions of secret knowledge and ultimate power." --Scott Beauchamp

https://the-agonist.github.io/reviews/2020/04/15/reviews-beauchamp.html

An acute contrarian debunks the herd of independent mind's pretensions.

"It is one of the great ironies of the post-modern era that women’s liberation has resulted not in liberty for women, bu...
17/04/2020

"It is one of the great ironies of the post-modern era that women’s liberation has resulted not in liberty for women, but in a new and insidious enslavement to the neoliberal corporate state." --Jack Trotter

http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2020/03/01/essays-trotter.html

Freed from the patriarchy, women now answer to corporate masters.

"With an unflinching rigor [Christopher] Caldwell takes on the pieties that now substitute for thinking and reflection. ...
17/04/2020

"With an unflinching rigor [Christopher] Caldwell takes on the pieties that now substitute for thinking and reflection. He has written a book that will be remembered as one which succeeded in capturing the spirit of this dishonest and delusional time." --Peter Y. Paik

http://www.theagonist.org/reviews/2020/04/15/reviews-paik.html

The civil rights movement produced many unexpected problems, and it’s unclear how they’re to be solved.

"It was the Movement that got me fact-checking my delusions. I began to think of the incident with Jack, along with tw...
16/04/2020

"It was the Movement that got me fact-checking my delusions. I began to think of the incident with Jack, along with two other 'near rapes,' which happened after I left Charles and started dating again." http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2020/04/15/essays-burroughs.html

There's more to the Movement than the standard narrative allows.

The spring issue of The Agonist is up: Essays by Jacob Phillips, David Cole, Pedro Gonzalez, Derek Turner, Jack Trotter,...
16/04/2020

The spring issue of The Agonist is up: Essays by Jacob Phillips, David Cole, Pedro Gonzalez, Derek Turner, Jack Trotter, Sean Haylock, Joseph Salemi, Jeffrey Ketland, and others; reviews by Paul Gottfried, Peter Y Paik, Scott Beauchamp, and Titus Techera; fiction by Tony Esolen, Joshua Hren, and Jennifer Reeser; poetry by J.M. Jordan, Tony, Joseph, Peter, Jenn, Jane Zwart, and others. We hope you will read, enjoy, and share the writing! http://www.theagonist.org/index.html

A journal of essays, reviews, fiction, poetry and more.

"[O]ne could criticize any of the points structuring Areo’s manifesto at great length. But what is held in common with o...
10/02/2020

"[O]ne could criticize any of the points structuring Areo’s manifesto at great length. But what is held in common with other, more subtle and thus less self-aware propagandists for rationalism is the unambiguous veneration of amorphous concepts of science and reason." http://www.theagonist.org/essays/2019/07/01/essays-kemple.html

A philosopher explains why the centrists are so shallow.

"When we feel ourselves oppressed, we are more tempted to imitate the vices of our oppressors, rather than their virtues...
09/02/2020

"When we feel ourselves oppressed, we are more tempted to imitate the vices of our oppressors, rather than their virtues." --Peter Y. Paik http://www.theagonist.org/other/2019/12/31/other-paik.html

These fragments arise from an attempt to discover the riddle contained in every insight.

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