Politics
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The Political Stakes of Authenticity
Quebec sovereignty in the 1990s drew much of its force from language, culture, historical memory, and the desire for collective recognition. Even at the point of possible rupture, the language still carried the question of relationship. Alberta separatism, by contrast, often speaks in the register of release. Continue reading
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Consumerism, or Consumption, of Self
I still think about an encounter I once had with Rosie, a young woman who appeared at my door in the middle of the night. What stayed with me was not merely the strangeness of the situation, but the unmediated quality of it. There was no audience, no profile, no performance, no curated identity. There… 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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Freedom Under Constraint: Middle Age, Wartime Imaginaries, and the Meaning of Easter
I had a plan for my retirement. Once the kids moved out, I thought my spouse and I were going to teach in the Middle East for a few years before we put our feet up on the beach in Thailand. The Middle East is the gateway to the rest of the world. Wars have… Continue reading
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A Letter to Western Canadian Readers: On Power, Separation, and the Cost of Exit
When separatism is framed as leverage (“do this or we leave”) it signals a shift away from persuasion and toward coercion. It treats political relationships not as shared projects to be renewed, but as transactional arrangements to be threatened. Continue reading
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Beyond Mastery: Grounded Human Power
The choice between domination and cooperation is therefore not merely political or organizational. It is existential. How we exercise power shapes who we become. Leverage secures obedience but hollows identity. Cooperation demands patience and humility, but it produces belonging. Continue reading
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A Letter to David Brooks
My brother and I have had recent dialogues about the necessity of the death of self. I feel like in much of the conversations surrounding the death of self, many people have meant the complete submission of the individual. But some mystics have understood the death of self to mean the destruction of the false… Continue reading
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Understanding Sovereignty in Modern Political Discourse
Sovereignty renewed appeal cannot be explained solely by shifts in global power or the breakdown of international institutions. Rather, sovereignty has become inspirational because it mirrors a deeper concern of our age: the struggle for authenticity, i.e. the desire to act from within one’s own values rather than as an instrument of external systems. In… Continue reading
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Sovereignty: The Power Beyond Ownership
” Sovereignty and ownership overlap in everyday speech, but philosophically, linguistically, and practically they point to very different kinds of authority and relation.” Continue reading
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Anabaptism and the Post Secular Condition: Witness, Pluralism, and the Limits of Secular Reason
I had gone out into the world as if it was completely unknown; I came back with the world in tow. Continue reading