Searching for Consolation in Max Weber’s Work Ethic
People worked hard long before there was a thing called the “work ethic,” much less a “Protestant work ethic.” The phrase itself emerged early in the twentieth century and has since congealed into a...
View ArticleHurricane Season Traps People on the Wrong Side of the Income Gap
I was in college when I lived through my first hurricane. I don’t even remember the name of the storm. What I do remember is that those who could afford to leave campus flew home to California, New...
View ArticleElena Kagan’s Fiery Defense of the Administrative State
Selia Law v. CFPB wasn’t among the highest-profile cases of this Supreme Court term, but it was far from insignificant. In a 5–4 decision along the usual partisan lines, the court struck down part of a...
View ArticleHirokazu Kore-eda’s Ingenious Families
Two women are playing a tender scene. The brunette, who can’t be 30 yet, strokes the blonde’s hair. The blonde is in her seventies, but her lips tremble as if she’s a child trying not to cry, and she...
View ArticleCan the White People of Small-Town America Get Behind the Movement for Black...
In rural Fairfield County, Ohio, just outside downtown Millersport, a nine-year-old boy named Elijah Monroe held up a sign on the side of the road that read, “Justice for George.” Millersport has a...
View ArticleTrump’s Extraordinary Gift for Self-Sabotage
The publishing industry, knocked first by the loss of Oprah’s Book Club and then by Jon Stewart’s departure from The Daily Show, has found an unlikely savior: Donald Trump. The president’s tweets about...
View ArticleThe Democrats’ Dumb Idea to Cut Pandemic Unemployment Benefits
Unemployment fell for the second straight month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today, from 13.3 percent in May to 11.1 percent in June. This constitutes further evidence that the $600...
View ArticleConservative Austerity Created the Mask Wars
As coronavirus cases soared this week in a number of states—not a few of them red—a handful of GOP leaders and right-wing pundits had a desperate message for conservatives: Wear a mask, please. Mike...
View ArticleReckoning With Anti-Blackness in Indian Country
“Just spray the hell out of ’em,” one man shouted to the police officer standing in the middle of the road in Pembroke, North Carolina. “Goddamn pack of lazy sons of bitches,” mumbled another. The...
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What Woodrow Wilson Did to Robert Smalls
Last week, Princeton University announced that it would remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from the School of Public and International Affairs because his “racist thinking and policies make him an...
View ArticlePolicing Doesn’t Protect Women
On June 30, as part of a virtual discussion on the topic of “Prison as Abuse,” feminist activist Monica Cosby recounted a memory from when she was incarcerated. It was the day after armed police in...
View ArticleWoodrow Wilson Was Even More Racist Than You Thought
Princeton University’s school of public policy has long been named for Woodrow Wilson, the twenty-eighth president of the United States. But on June 27, the university announced that his name would be...
View ArticleThe Willful Blindness of Reactionary Liberalism
It was always a given that 2020 would be a year to remember. Even so, it continues to surprise. It seems likely that June will go down as one of the pivotal months of our political era, a period when...
View ArticleHow Anti-Pipeline Protesters Made the Fossil Fuel Industry Face Economic Reality
Well-heeled climate and energy wonks have long sought elegant market solutions to lower greenhouse gas emissions—tax incentives for green energy, or carbon pricing to gently nudge companies toward a...
View ArticleThe People Killed the Pipelines
On Sunday, Duke Energy and Dominion announced the cancellation of their natural gas pipeline project, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Citing constant legal challenges and rising construction costs—the...
View ArticleMonopolies Make Their Own Rules
When Mitchell and Karen Krutchfield got into chicken farming, they were told that it wasn’t for everyone; it would take about 10 years for their investment to pay off. If they could wait that long,...
View ArticleThe Left’s Deafening Silence on China’s Ethnic Cleansing
In an Alaska-sized chunk of western China known as Xinjiang, the greatest human rights atrocities of this unfurling decade continue to sprint forward, tipping toward genocide. The region has long been...
View ArticleThe Wrong Way to Grapple With a Public Health Crisis
Over the July 4th weekend, The New York Times’ editorial board unveiled a series of policy proposals to “move America society closer to realizing its ideals,” ranging from directing the Federal Reserve...
View ArticleThe American Obsession With Conspiracy Theories, Explained
The residents of Olympia Springs, Kentucky, all agreed that Mrs. Crouch was an unimpeachable witness. One afternoon in 1876, she was making soap in her backyard when meat “which looked like beef” began...
View ArticleThe Impossible Math of the Pandemic
Back in March, right as the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global pandemic, Joe Biden, now essentially the nation’s only choice for replacing Trump this fall, reaffirmed his...
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