About This Site
Posted on March 12th, 2010 by Jim Sleeper
This website is a buffet or smorgasbord of civic republican “dishes” — columns, essays, podcasts, interviews, and videos that you can sample. Whenever you’re tempted, dig in. Each “meal,” or thematic section — “What is Civic Republicanism?”, “Why Foreign Policy Isn’t so ‘Foreign’ Anymore,” “Why a Skin Color Isn’t a Culture,” and eleven others here below — opens with an appetizer, prepared in 2022, followed by a menu of recent and not-so-recent entrees on that theme. The column to the right has a long essay, “Looking for America,” that explains, quite personally but also politically, how I came to all this and why I look beyond the left-vs-right binary that narrows our choices even as new global riptides sweep the old, familiar coordinates away. Some things haven’t been swept away and probably won’t be: Greed, power lust, and yearnings to belong to tribes, faith communities, or herds antedated capitalism and post-modernism by millennia, and they’ll outlast them: Tyrants, fanatics, and rogues will rush into abysses opening at our feet and in our hearts. Stressed, dispossessed people will follow them, believing — craving — lies about who to blame and who to trust. But others of us will walk forward on a “left” foot of public provision and a “right” one of individual autonomy and responsibility to others, and some of us will keep looking for America with urgency and depth. Sample here what I’ve looked for and found. The chef is at jimsleeper12@gmail.com . |
What is Civic-Republicanism? Who Needs It? Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), from a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics secured the two Greek philosophers as two of the most influential political philosophers. Liberal Education and Leadership Training Yale President Kingman Brewster, Jr, 1967. Leaders and Misleaders(Public leaders I’ve known or watched closely) Why Trumpism is Still in Us White House/Flickr Why Foreign Policy Isn’t So ‘Foreign’ Anymore A visit to the U.S.S. Stennis: Yale-National University of Singapore College Facebook page. News Media, Chattering Classes, and a Phantom Public Scoops and Revelations: Getting stories right.(You never know where you’ll find them:) How Business-Corporate Speech is Killing Us Why Skin Color Isn’t Culture or Politics (CNS photo/Andrew Kelly, Reuters). Folly on the Left  Katrina vanden Heuvel  Daniel Ortega Conservative Convolutions William F. Buckley, Jr., George Will (Wikimedia/AP/J. Scott Applewhite) ‘Second Amendment People’ and the Republic Late actor and former National Rifle Association President Charlton Heston held a rifle aloft at a 2002 get-out-the-vote rally. AP Photo/Jim Cole “All civil charms and priestly spells…., these like a dream dissolve, and man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.” — Herman Melville, 1863 Faith vs. Churches? Andrei Rublev, Apostle Paul, ca. 1410. Puritans, Hebrews, and All of Us Deacon Samuel Chapin, a founder of my hometown of Springfield MA in 1636, by sculptor August St. Gaudens, near the library I used, 1962-65 https://www.jimsleeper.com/?p=4368 |
