B.D. McClay is an essayist and critic.
Cancel ’s murkiness has made it a very useful word for pushing already contentious or delicate matters into the realm of total confusion.
Genuine risks to public health are commingled with selective punishment and prejudice.
True crime is not quite about watching people die, but it does require an interest in the subject.
It is natural to seek reassurance that we are good people, but from whom?
What if our weakness were the best part of us?
Property and ownership themselves are strange concepts to apply to this question, since the statement that our lives aren’t really our own has implications beyond suicide.
To what extent is “virtue signaling” a useful, or at least meaningful, phrase?
The trouble, as Robinson sees it, is that Americans have accepted a story about America that has stripped the country of its moral resources and heritage.
Symbols, like events, never float free from their context.
Most people involved with the issues of sexual assault and harassment—both victim’s advocates and advocates for the accused—believe that the present Title IX system needs reform.
Insincere virtue may be preferable to sincere vice, but only by a hair.
In memory of a happy half a decade.
On living the same day over and over.
Efforts to protect public health can often lead to selective punishment and prejudice.
A zero sum reality, in which every win is someone else’s loss, exists in a constant state of crisis.
Noteworthy reads from the last week.
A translation of English to English presumes that ambiguity of language is always a flaw—but it’s not.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; even smaller minds complain about the rest of these people.
Summer reads from THR staff and friends.
Stop me if you think you've heard this one before.
Humility, laziness, true confessions, and The Karate Kid—an interview with Alan Jacobs on his 79 Theses for Disputation.
Looking for some stories for Halloween? Start here.