Keen On America

That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare argues we're “accelerating” toward an age of “abundance” in which AI and automation will slash production costs to near-zero, freeing humans to pursue hobbies instead of jobs. I’m less optimistic. I don’t disagree with Keith’s premise that AI will profoundly change not just our economy but our society and politics. But abundance ? Who will own these AI facto...

Revenge has become Donald Trump’s brand. That, at least, is the view of James Kimmel Jr , author of The Science of Revenge , who argues that revenge has become America’s “deadliest addiction”. When we feel wronged, he says, our pain centers activate, triggering dopamine-releasing reward circuits that create pleasure from fantasizing about retaliation. This neurological pattern mirrors classic form...

It’s not just the MAGA or the Woke crowd. According to Greg Lukianoff , CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ( FIRE ), free speech in America is under existential threat from all political sides. While he's long criticized campus cancel culture from the left, he now opposes Trump's coercive targeting of big law firms, media companies, and universities. The Stanford Law traine...

As one of the most illustrious rock stars of the sustainability movement, Tim Jackson suggests that we must “f**k the patriarchy” to get beyond capitalism. In his new book, The Care Economy , Jackson argues that our growth-obsessed capitalist economic system is fundamentally dysfunctional, prioritizing wealth accumulation over health and wellbeing. He advocates replacing GDP-focused metrics with c...

We Must Save the Books. That’s Michael Kimmage’s SOS message from Trumpian Washington in this issue of Liberties Quarterly . Kimmage , former director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, describes the surreal experience of being hired in January 2025 only to see his institution shuttered by Trump's administration three months later. He reflects on the "American ruin" created as a consequ...

How religious was the 80s creative scene? Very. At least according to Paul Elie , whose intriguing new cultural history, The Last Supper, charts the art, faith, sex and controversy of the 1980s. Elie argues that this was the age of what calls “crytpo-religious” art - a intensely creative decade in which religious imagery and motifs were often detached from conventional belief. Beginning in 1979 wi...

Who is the most unsung hero of the American Civil War and Reconstruction? According to Zaakir Tameez , it’s the abolitionist statesmen Charles Sumner. In his eponymous new biography of Sumner, Tameez portrays Sumner as a model of "moral ambition" who sacrificed a promising corporate law career to fight for racial justice. As slavery's fiercest opponent, Tameez describes Sumner as the “conscience”...

It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. According to the Pulitzer finalist Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling , the majority of Americans no longer trust standard scientific proof. As he notes in his new book, The Ghost Labs , this faith in evidence based science has been replaced by the growth of bigfoot hunters, mediums, and alien enthusiasts. Hongoltz-Hetling traces this trend from his previous work on...

According to the legal scholar Marcus Alexander Gadson , violence is central to the constitutional history of the United States. As American, in fact, as apple pie. In his new book Sedition , Gadson argues that America's revolutionary foundations established a precedent for political violence. Examining six 19th-century constitutional crises including the Buckshot War, Brooks-Baxter War, and Bleed...

Who was America’s great power prophet during the Cold War? Perhaps not Henry Kissinger. In Zbig , Financial Times’ U.S. editor, Edward Luce, makes the case that the Polish-American strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski was at least equal to Kissinger in his prophetic grasp of America’s role in the Cold War world. Luce explores Brzezinski's role as Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, his combination...

Yesterday, the self-styled San Francisco “progressive” Joan Williams was on the show arguing that Democrats need to relearn the language of the American working class. But, as some of you have noted, Williams seems oblivious to the fact that politics is about more than simply aping other people’s language. What you say matters, and the language of American working class, like all industrial workin...

Why are the Democrats losing the American working class? According to Joan Williams , it’s because they are failing to prioritize economic concerns of working-class Americans. In her new book Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back , Williams argues that Democrats lost the 2024 election because of their over-preoccupation with the interests of college educated Amer...

In Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From Us , best selling writer Anna Malaika Tubbs reveals the secret history of American patriarchal values. Tubbs argues this patriarchy is the central narrative thread of American history. She emphasizes that patriarchy affects everyone differently according to their race, class, and gender - thereby creating a "gendered hierarchy" that excludes many...

History, Marshall Poe wrote in December 2023, shows that Israel will never win a “war of occupation”. Eighteen months later, with Israel on the brink of a full scale occupation of Gaza, Poe’s argument is even more relevant. the Gaza war, the historian warns, is turning into Israel’s Vietnam - an unwinnable occupation that will only bring shame on the invaders. Trust Poe on the Vietnam analogy. His...

So why did Harris lose in 2024? For one very big reason , according to the progressive essayist Bill Deresiewicz : “because she represented the exhausted Democratic establishment”. This rotting establishment, Deresiewicz believes, is symbolized by both the collective denial of Biden’s mental decline and by Harris’ pathetically rudderless Presidential campaign. But there’s a much more troubling pro...

“That he not busy being born is busy dying”, Dylan noted in “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” , his grim 1965 masterpiece about reinvention. Sixty years later, at a time when “ everything is technology ”, these words have particular resonance in Silicon Valley. As That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare and I discuss in our weekly roundup of tech news, every Big Tech firm - from OpenAI and Ai...

Is spying an un-American activity? Not according to Jeffrey Rogg , whose new book, The Spy and the State, tells the story of American intelligence from the Revolutionary War to the present day. Rogg explores America's ambivalent relationship with espionage, arguing that spying is often viewed as "un-American" and yet necessary. he discusses key figures in American intelligence history such as OSS...

Walmart just announced it would be raising prices because of tariffs. So is that a good argument against Trump’s autarkic trade policies? Perhaps. But, as the Professor of Innovation at the University of Cambridge, Tim Minshall, points out, the global system of manufacturing is a complex thing. He argues that while countries shouldn't attempt complete manufacturing self-sufficiency, maintaining so...

Something doesn’t smell right about generative AI. Earlier this week, we had a featuring a former Google researcher who described large language models (LLMs) as a “con”. Then, of course, there’s OpenAI CEO Sam Altman who critics both inside and outside OpenAI, see as a little more than a persuasive conman. Scam or not, the biggest technical problem with LLMs, according to Peter Vos, who invented...

It’s probably not news that today’s Supreme Court runs on crazy conservative grudges and even crazier patrimonial fringe theories. But according to Leah Litman , Crooked Media podcaster and author of Lawless, the Supreme Court in Trump’s America is most defined by what she memorably identifies as “bad vibes” (ie: feelings and anxieties). Litman argues these vibes r eflect Republican anxieties abou...

Rather than apple pie, addiction might be defining quality of 21st century American life. That, at least, is the view of Mattea Kramer , author of Untended , a contemporary novel about addiction in small town America. She argues that individualistic American capitalism has caused an plague of addiction - in everything from drugs and alcohol to technology and egoism. Kramer sees community as the on...

Is AI a big scam? In their co-authored new book, The AI Con , Emily Bender and Alex Hanna take aim at what they call big tech “hype”. They argue that large language models from OpenAI or Anthropic are merely what Bender dubs "stochastic parrots" that produce text without the human understanding nor the revolutionary technology that these companies claim. Both Bender, a professor of linguistics, an...

The traditional notion of western civilization is premised on the legacy of ancient Greece and Rome. Other less Eurocentric historians, like the Silk Road author Peter Frankopan, point to the role of China in shaping classical Europe. But, in The Golden Road , the Scottish-Indian historian William Dalrymple , challenges this "Silk Road" narrative, arguing India was Rome's primary trading partner a...

“Who’s Cheating?” asks Keith Teare in his weekly summary of tech news. Keith is defending a Columbia University student who was punished for openly used AI in his classes. As Arthur C. Clark famously noted, advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and so its use is often viewed as cheating by the old regime. But, as Keith and I agree, the $80,000 annual fees that universities are now c...

Not everyone will like this argument. Jason Riley , the Wall Street Journal columnist and author of The Affirmative Action Myth, argues that affirmative action policies have been counterproductive for Black Americans. He contends that Black Americans were making faster economic and educational progress before affirmative action policies began in the late 1960s. Riley claims these policies primaril...