Happy new year from my side hustle over at the “Political Questions” Substack. It’s starting to pick up speed with new contributors, in particular novelist Max Cossack (the cognoscenti may know Max as “Mr. Ammo Grrrll”). His first entry is reflection on music “Reaction Videos” on YouTube, which I admit have long fascinated me, too. (I’m a fan especially of composer Doug Helvering.) Max’s second piece will appear on Friday.
We’ve also got Lucretia’s and John Yoo’s latest installments in our running debate on natural law versus positivism, and John’s latest is so bad that it may require a paragraph-by-paragraph or even line-by-line rebuttal and commentary. Stay tuned. . . multiple replies—including from a bona fide celebrity guest contributor—are in process!
But if you find this dispute is too Talmudic/Thomistic or just plain boring, do please skip it, and check out instead new cultural commentary from Lloyd Billingsley, and some new long-form commentary from me, such as this piece on the sensationally great David Samuels Tablet article.
The longest entry of the last few weeks is one that will interest some readers—the opening draft chapter of my memoir-in-progress, “And the Stars of Heaven Shall Fall.” Fair warning: it is 8,000 words, so a serious commitment of time to get through, but I received a lot of enthusiastic reaction from many readers after I posted the second draft chapter back in September, when I also explained with I wasn’t ready to share the first chapter yet. I changed my mind, and explain why in this new installment. (And yes, chapter 3 is under way, though I’m jammed up with class prep for my new semester in the classroom starting in two weeks.)
So wander over and sign up for a free subscription so you get regular emails when new material appears, though I hasten to add how grateful we are for readers who have expressed their support by taking out paid subscriptions. In the fullness of time we’ll figure out some special way to reward paid subscribers, but for the time being we want to keep all content on the site completely free. In the meantime, happy new year, and Go Oregon!
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