Proud to be American

I just watched USA win hockey gold and want to reflect on patriotism.

The Academy vs Courthouse Steps

When I was a graduate student at UF, I didn’t set out to become a “politics and religion” guy. I set out to restart a student group that had gone dormant, because it felt unhealthy—intellectually and civically—to let “religion” be treated as the default, unquestioned atmosphere.

Inscrutable AI, Deep Math, & A Legitimacy Problem

This morning I ran into a Rousseau quote that felt like it had been smuggled out of a sci-fi novel.

Theonomy Goes Mainstream

The phrase Christian nationalism is having one of those weeks where it stops being an abstract grad-seminar category and becomes a live description of power.

Tariff Man Faces Reality Check

Today’s Supreme Court ruling is the kind of event that forces a blunt question: do we believe in the Constitution as a real governing framework, or as a ceremonial prop we invoke when it flatters our side?

Memo to the DNC

If Democrats want to exploit the openings Republicans have left, they can’t do it with a vibes-only pitch about “normalcy.” I say that as someone who voted for George W. Bush twice and, then as now, found the old conservative catechism genuinely persuasive: local control, constitutional restraint, civil liberties, sober budgets, personal moral leadership. Whatever else “conservative” meant in the 1980s and 1990s, it was at least marketed as a philosophy of limits—an argument that power should be hemmed in by law, custom, and conscience.

Dark Apex Politics

This is not a campaign argument or a psychological critique. It’s a systems diagnosis: what happens to politics when friction is removed. The moral failure at issue here isn’t ideological; it’s geometric. Individuals matter less than the curvature they impose on the moral field.