Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
The American Pageant were often used in “advanced placement”
James W. Loewen • Lies My Teacher Told Me
David Foster Wallace • Deciderization 2007—a Special Report
William Zitser
@pensamientos
A few years later, on the occasion of the centennial of Fort Sumter, Warren wrote a small book, The Legacy of the Civil War. In it he posited that the war had given the South the “Great Alibi” and the North a “Treasury of Virtue.” The Great Alibi “explains, condones, and transmutes everything.” Evil became good; the inexcusable explicable,
... See moreJon Meacham • The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
No thinking person should be indifferent to our society’s disinvestment in the humanities.53 A society without historical scholarship is like a person without memory: deluded, confused, easily exploited. Philosophy grows out of the recognition that clarity and logic don’t come easily to us and that we’re better off when our thinking is refined and
... See moreSteven Pinker • Enlightenment Now
The prophets count on us to be appalled by injustice.
Shai Held • Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life
Founding Father Benjamin Franklin
billofrightsinstitute.org
As someone who had spent several years on American campuses, all of these ideas rang familiar to me. They echoed the sixties’ revulsion to military strength, the romance with developing societies, and the questioning of American primacy. Regarding the Middle East, in particular, one could discern the reverberations of Edward Said’s Orientalism,
... See moreMichael B. Oren • Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide
