PhilocritesMichael Scott Doran carefully unpacks the symbolism of Palestine in Arab politics in Foreign Affairs, although you’ll have to pick up a copy to read his article (“Palestine, Iraq, and American Strategy,” January/February 2003). His main point — which Western pro-Palestian activists often seem to forget — is that “although Palestine is central to the […]
My review of The Place of Tolerance in Islam by Khaled Abou El Fadl and At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew’s Search for Hope with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land by Yossi Klein Halevi is in the January/February issue of UU World magazine. Highly recommended.
In an earlier post, I wrote: There is one solo in which the soprano sings that she wants to “engrave” the crucified Jesus in her heart; the German pun is amazing in itself… The aria isn’t always sung by a soprano, so if you have a recording, watch for the aria that begins, “Mache dich, […]
Bach’s St. Matthew Passion is perhaps the most powerful reflection on the crucifixion I know.
“The crisis at hand is not that Kim Jong Il has suddenly become more evil,” writes Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek. “It is that North Korea will, within months, become a plutonium factory.” As Josh Marshall points out, the Bush administration didn’t bother to come up with a policy for Jong Il, and now the U.S. […]
William Ellery Channing believed in the reliability of scripture, not its inerrancy.
It’s an easy kind of religion that finds evil only in its opponents; a much better religion helps us see where we ourselves fall short.
Liberalism has been weakened not by some vast right-wing conspiracy, but by a loss of confidence in liberal ideas.
Tyranny cannot effectively be challenged, nor can democracy be extended in the world, without American leadership.
George Packer, author of the most compelling book I’ve read recently on American political history, Blood of the Liberals, knows what it means to be a committed but self-questioning liberal. In this week’s New York Times Magazine, he asks many of the most influential liberal intellectuals why they are not visible in the emerging antiwar […]