Politics and Society
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Fragmented Identity
Looking back, I realize continuity rarely survived through dramatic moments of self-discovery. More often, it persisted through ordinary practices repeated quietly across time. Continue reading
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The Immediate Life and the Formation of Authenticity
A child is suffering. A relationship fractures. A conversation suddenly turns tense. Fear, anger, exhaustion, embarrassment, or grief emerges before thought has time to organize itself. We speak quickly. We defend ourselves instinctively. We search for relief before we search for meaning. Continue reading
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Secular and Sacred Social Imaginaries
Most of us live between these two imaginaries. We have inherited a secular way of thinking, but we have not lost the sense that meaning might be given rather than made. Continue reading
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Value Beyond Money: 5 Places to Find It
The question is not whether we believe in value beyond money. It is whether we are willing to take it seriously. Continue reading
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A Changing Feminist Question
“How are you living with your partner that empowers the freedom of the woman in your relationship?” This was the question of the boomer age, and my boomer siblings had put this question to my parents. But now, I feel no need to address this question. What I have come to realize is that this… Continue reading
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The Innocence That Kills: American Exceptionalism as Spiritual Pathology
The pattern is not incidental. It is structural. Each act of civilizational harm is metabolized by the myth of exceptionalism and converted into evidence of American seriousness, American resolve, American willingness to bear the weight of world-historical responsibility. The victims become, at best, unfortunate costs. The perpetrators remain, in their own self-understanding, the good guys. Continue reading
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The Nuclear Option: Who needs Bombs?
“Closing the Strait of Hormuz would be Iran’s ‘nuclear option.’ The phrase is meant metaphorically. And yet, like many metaphors, it reveals more than it intends. Continue reading
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The QuestionS of Wars: Why Every War Asks the World Different Moral Questions
When a war begins, people often hear the same moral demand. You cannot remain neutral. You must choose a side. The statement sounds principled and urgent, and in moments of violence it can feel persuasive. Yet it is also misleading. Having lived in Saudi Arabia, and being exposed to both their value for increased wealth… Continue reading
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Arendt Reconsidered Zionism
Arendt believed she had identified a governing logic: the pursuit of security through domination, reliance on imperial sponsorship, and the presumption that conflict is eternal and unsolvable. In her view, this logic would entrench rather than resolve hostility. Continue reading
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Love and Christian Nationalism
I am not a Christian nationalist. But neither am I comfortable with the reflex to sneer at those who are. That reflex reveals something troubling about our age: we no longer know how to disagree without attempting to destroy. The word “debate” increasingly feels like a ritual of denunciation. The goal is not persuasion, but… Continue reading