Before I read Arthur Brooks’s The Conservative Heart, I wondered if he chose that title because Andrew Sullivan’s The Conservative Soul (HarperCollins, 2006) was already taken. After reading this odd work, I wondered if he chose that title because American Hustle was too accurate a description. Brooks, the head of the right-wing American Enterprise […]

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  He has called President Obama a “socialist” and a “village idiot,” threatened to “unmask” him and suggested he “go back to Kenya.” In a rich and distinctly Cuban accent, he preaches the prosperity Gospel: tithe and accept God’s anointment and wealth will be bestowed upon you. He is a Dominionist, devoted to a movement […]

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  James Earl Carter is nearing the end. In an extraordinary press conference last week, the 39th president discussed his impending death from metastasizing liver cancer, with a grace, humor, and wisdom the rest of us can only hope to emulate when our own time comes. Soon will come the eulogies: then, the assessments. Forgive […]

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  Gregory Pardlo is a poet of joyous variety and wonder. It’s clear from the lively and anthem-like opening poem, “Written By Himself,” in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Digest, that he’s as wide-ranging, humane, irrepressible, and inclusive in his snappy 21st-century fashion as fellow urbanite and trailblazing singer Walt Whitman: I was born in minutes in […]

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  In Citizens United, the 5-4 conservative minority on the John Roberts Court ruled that free speech is essential to a democracy and political contributions are a form of free speech, including contributions from corporations and unions. Since 2010, corporations and unions are much more free to spend money in primary and general elections. Writing […]

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