Post Tagged 'Charles Murray'

March 19, 2026

Seeking God at the End of the World

Is the end of the world drawing nigh? This is the question at the heart of Christopher Beha’s 2020 blockbuster novel, The Index of Self-Destructive Acts. A deranged-looking street preacher appears at the beginning of the novel, predicting the end times, setting a concrete date to the end of it all. Continue Reading...

October 09, 2025

Taking Charles Murray Seriously

All happy conversion stories are alike. Every unhappy conversion story is unhappy in its own way. Is how Tolstoy might have put it, if he weren’t, you know, dead. Charles Murray, he of Bell Curve fame and attendant controversy, has gotten religion. Continue Reading...

August 26, 2021

How America’s ‘creative class’ learned to love conformity

In 2000, columnist David Brooks wrote Bobos in Paradise, hailing the dawn of a new phase in America’s longstanding story of meritocracy. The “bobos” were a peculiar breed — part bohemian, part bourgeoisie — blurring class divides in a way that would introduce a new form of enlightened, activist citizenship in a country with an otherwise ambivalent middle class. Continue Reading...

August 12, 2021

A disconnected society: Americans have replaced relationships, civic involvement with ‘games and spectacles’

The decline of civil society has become a running theme of social and political commentary, marked by disruptions in marriage and family, diminishing church attendance, and the dilution of social capital. Continue Reading...

August 24, 2017

When online conformity mobs imitate government coercion

The social-media outrage machine is rather predictable these days. It doesn’t take much for companies and celebrities to offend the cultural consensus, spurring online mobs to respond, in turn: not through peaceful discourse or by turning their attention elsewhere, but by fomenting rage, abuse, and assault on the subject(s) in question. Continue Reading...

May 26, 2017

Charles Murray: ‘We need a cultural Great Awakening’

In response to increasing economic disruption and drastic social shifts in American life, Sen. Mike Lee recently launched the Social Capital Project, a multi-year research project dedicated to investigating “the evolving nature, quality, and importance of our associational life.” Continue Reading...

May 16, 2017

The Social Capital Project: Reviving ‘associational life’ in America

Over the past few decades, America has experienced a wave of drastic economic and social disruption. In our search for solutions, we’ve tended to look either to ourselves or the State, resulting in a clash between individualism and collectivism that forgets or neglects the space between. Continue Reading...

March 28, 2017

The future of work: Arthur Brooks on human dignity and ‘neededness’

Although unemployment continues to hover somewhere around 4.7 percent, the labor-force participation rate offers a grimmer outlook, falling from 67% in 2000 to 63% today. With the continued acceleration of globalization and automation, the future of work looks increasingly uncertain. Continue Reading...

May 11, 2016

How Diversity Can Save Conservatism (and the Nation)

The fabric of American society is tearing at the seams. Whether witnessed through the disruptive insurgencies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders or the more mundane fissures of pop culture and daily consumerism, Americans are increasingly divided and diverse. Continue Reading...

April 03, 2014

Is American Innovation Fading?

In a fascinating essay in Mosaic, Charles Murray examines the spirit of innovation in America. He asks, As against pivotal moments in the story of human accomplishment, does today’s America, for instance, look more like Britain blooming at the end of the 18th century or like France fading at the end of the 19th century? Continue Reading...

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