recommended reading

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Recommendations from the Claremont Institute

4:41 PM, Dec 14, 2011 • By MATTHEW CONTINETTI

Our friends at the Claremont Institute have published their annual list of recommended reading. Contributors include familiar names such as Hadley Arkes, Cheryl Miller, and Mark Blitz, along with Christopher Caldwell and yours truly. Here's Chris:

At the turn of this century, there was a vogue for asking who the greatest man of the last one was. Had I read more Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn back then, I would have been less inclined to answer, lazily, with the name of some mere politician. The 20th century was often about trials not exploits, about undergoing rather than daring. One of the least surprising things in the world is that intelligent people should make their way back to religion as they reflect on this. Solzhenitsyn was the bravest and the most brilliant of the undergoers, not just a novelist but also an independent-minded religious thinker, a formidable historian, and a poet by temperament. Often he writes as if he hasn't a political bone in his body. Communism is to Solzhenitsyn what Johnson is to Boswell and melancholy is to Robert Burton—the occasion for writing about life in all its variety.

You can read the rest, as well as my recommendations, here.

Jumping to conclusions at the 'Times.'

8:36 AM, Jan 10, 2011 • By MATTHEW CONTINETTI

Philip Klein at the American Spectator has a great catch, the kind that encapsulates the inanity of blaming Sarah Palin and the Tea Party for the deranged acts of a psychotic. It's so good that I'll just post the whole thing:

Wisdom from the editor of 'National Affairs.'

12:13 PM, Jan 4, 2011 • By MATTHEW CONTINETTI

Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs, recently corresponded with Ryan Streeter of the website Conservative Home. You'll want to read the whole interview. Here's a taste:

Two articles worth reading.

8:12 AM, Sep 29, 2010 • By MATTHEW CONTINETTI

The new issue of National Affairs is out, which means it's time to read CCNY professor Daniel DiSalvo's piece on public sector unionism. DiSalvo explains the history of public sector unions, and the damage they've done to state finances. My favorite part:

Gary Schmitt responds to Hirsi Ali.

1:44 PM, Aug 19, 2010 • By MATTHEW CONTINETTI

The controversy over the Ground Zero mosque has breathed new life into Samuel P. Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis. In the early 1990s, Huntington argued that:

The essential building block of the post-Cold War world ... are seven or eight historical civilizations of which the Western, the Muslim and the Confucian are the most important.

An alternative theory of the Great Recession.

2:12 PM, Aug 9, 2010 • By MATTHEW CONTINETTI

Whatever Arnold Kling writes, I read. So I made sure to read his essay in AEI's American, "When Labor is Capital." So should you!

A blogger has another view.

1:56 PM, Aug 4, 2010 • By MATTHEW CONTINETTI

Recently the FT's Ed Luce spent some time with families in Minnesota and Virginia and concluded that we're pretty much done for. The American Dream, Luce says, has become "America's Fitful Reverie." His article is worth reading in full; in fact, it's the best summary of the decline argument that I've read.

Of course, whether or not Luce is right is another question entirely.

One of the best political bloggers around.

1:22 PM, Aug 3, 2010 • By MATTHEW CONTINETTI

If you haven't already done so, make sure to stop by the new group blog / discussion forum Ricochet, founded by the estimable Rob Long and Peter Robinson.

One of the best political bloggers around.

1:22 PM, Aug 3, 2010 • By MATTHEW CONTINETTI

If you haven't already done so, make sure to stop by the new group blog / discussion forum Ricochet, founded by the estimable Rob Long and Peter Robinson.

Christopher Hitchens on Hugo Chávez.

12:00 PM, Aug 2, 2010 • By MATTHEW CONTINETTI

Classic Hitchens:

Chávez, in other words, is very close to the climactic moment when he will announce that he is a poached egg and that he requires a very large piece of buttered toast so that he can lie down and take a soothing nap.

Read the whole thing.

Christopher Hitchens on Hugo Chávez.

12:00 PM, Aug 2, 2010 • By MATTHEW CONTINETTI

Classic Hitchens:

Chávez, in other words, is very close to the climactic moment when he will announce that he is a poached egg and that he requires a very large piece of buttered toast so that he can lie down and take a soothing nap.

Read the whole thing.

Mark Shields on the Marines.

12:59 PM, Jul 23, 2010 • By MATTHEW CONTINETTI

Columnist Mark Shields expounds the martial virtues:

I was not a great Marine. I never saw combat. I got a lot more from the Marines than the Marines got from me. But I believe fervently that this nation today needs the values of the Marine Corps as much as the nation needs the Marine Corps.