About

I write about politics, history, philosophy, and religion. I live in Washington State.

Publications

Journalism

• Originalism is Dead. Long Live Catholic Natural Law (The New Republic, February 3, 2021)
• Why The Democrats Failed Again: On The Cosmological Emptiness Of Liberalism (Salon, December 13, 2020)
• Farshad Farahat, Iranian American Actor, Has Advice On Reducing Nuclear Risks (The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June 19, 2020)
• Conscience and the Scientific Community: A Profile of Kennette Benedict (Ploughshares Fund, October 28, 2019)
• Facing Nuclear Threats: A Profile of Gael Tarleton (Ploughshares Fund, August 19, 2019)
• Book Review / American Revolution: Elite Endeavour? (San Francisco Examiner, October 21, 1990)
• Book Review / Dramatic Voice, Dramatic Times (San Francisco Examiner, March 18, 1990)
• Third World Oil: The Unexplored Alternative (The Nation, June 6, 1981)

Literary

• Polyhedral Cathedral (Portland Review, 2019)
• Bartoleme and the Meme Spelling Machine (May 30, 2018)
• The Liquid Dream of Governor Moonbeam (June 23, 2015)

Academic

• Book Review / The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (Political Theory, August 1993)
• "His Majesty the Baby:" Rejoinder to Springborg (Political Theory, November 1990)
• “His Majesty the Baby:” Narcissism and Royal Authority (Political Theory, May 1989)
• Imagining Socialism: Karl Kautsky and Thomas More (International Journal of Comparative Sociology, January, 1989)
• Equestrian Imagery in European and American Political Thought: Toward an Understanding of Symbols as Political Texts (Western Political Quarterly, December 1988)
• The Maternal Christ As Redeemer: Speech and Gender in the Thought of Martin Luther (The Journal of Psychohistory, Spring 1985)
• Kings on Horseback: On the Meaning of the Trial and Execution of Charles I (Dissertation) (University of California, Berkeley, 1984)

Essays

Recent

• Writing Darwin (April 29, 2021)
• The Red Sky on 9/11 (September 14, 2020)

Politics

• Wussy Democrats (April 13, 2020)
• Know Your Enemy: A Podcast About Conservative Ideas (December 6, 2019)
• Alien vs. Predator: The Metastasis of Steve Bannon (September 23, 2019)
• Steve Bannon's Pennywise Moment (September 19, 2019)
• Steve Bannon's Second Coming (September 11, 2019)
• Amy Wax is Whack (August 24, 2019)
• Language and the Apocalypse: Trump's Barking Summons to the Hounds of Hell (August 10, 2019)
• Aaron's Rod: The Righteous Religious Rage of Robby George (August 8, 2019)
• God and Religion at Princeton (August 2, 2019)
• Amy Wax’s Recent Inflammatory Statements on Cultural Nationalism and Immigration (July 26, 2019)
• 'The Left Ruins Everything It Touches:”'A Peek Inside the Weird, Sputtering Brain of Dennis Prager (July 18, 2019)
• Serving God and Mammon: The Rise and Influence of the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society (July 14, 2019)
• Culture War Catholicism and American Conservative Politics (July 12, 2019)
• Welcome to Bizarro World: Ayn Rand, Donald Trump, and the Assault on Public Institutions (November 19, 2017)
• Roy Moore and the Horse He Rode In On: Revealed Religion and Natural Law in the Alabama Senate Race (November 19, 2017)
• The Banality of Campus Speech Controversies (April 30, 2017)
• From Steve Bannon to Robby George: The Catholic Foundations of American Conservative Thought (April 24, 2017)
• The Dog That Didn't Bark: 2016 Presidential Election Mystery Unfolds in Wisconsin's Juneau County (March 8, 2017)
• War on Children: The Deeper Meaning of Trumpism (January 23, 2017)
• Return to Oz: Peter Thiel’s Retro Futurism and the Perils of Limitless Self-Love (January 12, 2017)
• Trump Likes to Watch: The Visual Foundations of Modern Politics (January 1, 2017)
• "His Majesty the (Angry) Baby:" Trump, Narcissism, and the American People (December 4, 2016)
• Blowing Things Up: Observations on the Post-Election Landscape (November 21, 2016)
• Let the Great Undoing Commence: The End of American Exceptionalism (November 16, 2016)
• Clinton's Collapse: Or How a Rabid Dog Hijacked the Election (November 13, 2016)
• Thirteen Ways to Think About the Election of Donald Trump (November 12, 2016)
• Trumpet of the Black Swan (Or the Devil and the Donald) (July 28, 2016)

Law

• The Law as Society's Operating System (November 21, 2019)
• How the Federalist Society Stole the Federal Judiciary, Conquered Washington, DC, and Imperiled the Nation (November 20, 2019)
• Neil Gorsuch and the Frozen Future of the Federal Courts (November 20, 2017)
• Wolf at the Door: Antonin Scalia and the Death of American Law (January 4, 2017)

Religion

• What is "New" About the New Atheists? (January 8, 2020)
• Conversion Moments and the New Atheists (December 20, 2019)

History

• Illness as a Metaphor: Susan Sontag Reads the Constitution (April 16, 2020)
• Mike Lee: Please Stop Writing Terrible History and Go Back Just To Being a Terrible Senator (November 26, 2017)
• Alexander Hamilton, Superstar (June 27, 2016)
• Hip Hop Historiography (June 27, 2016)
• A Mind at Work (June 27, 2016)
• Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Donnie Darko, and the Meaning of History (September 17, 2013)
• Jeremiad: The Puritan Metaphysics of Ass-Kicking (September 17, 2013)

Philosophy

• William Barr and the Tropes of Natural Law (April 27, 2020)
• Toward a New Cosmology: The Grand Pivot from Natural Law to Complexity Science (January 13, 2020)
• Virtue and Power: The Political Dysphoria of Natural Law Moral Philosophy (September 27, 2019)
• From Aquinas to Abortion: Self-Consuming Sexual Sagas of the New Natural Law (August 30, 2019)
• Human Reason and Its Discontent: A Natural Law Sampler (August 22, 2019)
• Unalienable Rights, Alien Populations and Natural Law (August 2, 2019)
• The Creation Project: Revealed Religion, Natural Law, Western Civilization, and the Ends of the Earth (November 22, 2017)
• Robby George's Primer on Natural Law: Let's Break It Down (June 22, 2017)
• The Salvaging: American Academic Philosophy Implodes (May 20, 2017)
• Messages in a Bottle (November 11, 2016)
• From Working Class to White Trash: Risk, Responsibility, Causation, and Brokenness in America (September 15, 2016)
• The Secret Mission: Reflections on Our Time (July 15, 2016)
• Nassim Nicholas Taleb and the Fallacy of Truth (September 17, 2013)
• Scaling Risk and Political Decline: Or the Triumph of the Dark Lord Sauron (September 17, 2013)

Technology

• Move Fast and Break Things: Authoritarian Politics, Digital Technology, and Trump's Disruptive Heart of Darkness (November 2, 2019)
• The Divinity of Data: Artificial Intelligence, the Death of God, and the End of Individuality (July 24, 2019)
• Climate Reformation: The Solar Technology Vision of Zoltan Kiss (April 15 2015)

Race

• Thinking Hard About Racism in America (July 21, 2019)
• Agent of Misdirection: John Calipari and the Theatrics of Race, Basketball, and Money (May 30, 2018)
• Faust on the Hardwood: John Calipari’s Transactional Wager with African-American Athletes (March 25, 2017)
• The Dindu: Towards a White Nationalist Taxonomy of the Saved and the Damned (February 2, 2017)
• The Howl: Richard Sherman, Race, Celebrity, and Social Change (May 23, 2014)
• Better at Life: Richard Sherman Takes the Selfie Test (May 10, 2014)
• The Mugging of Richard Sherman: Fox News, Free Speech, and the New Racism (April 25, 2014)
• Straight Out of Compton: The Education of Richard Sherman (April 3, 2014)

Guns

• Eight Thoughts on Guns and Freedom (December 16, 2016)
• Going Back to Indiana: With Two Cheers for Its Gun-Toting Gals! (April 23, 2015)
• Women and Guns (March 17, 2015)

Finance & Investing

• The Dark Side of the Sun: Solar Power and Global Electronic Waste (Seeking Alpha, April 21, 2015)
• First Solar's Inconvenient Truth (Seeking Alpha, December 17, 2014)
• McDonald's and the End of Beef (Seeking Alpha, November 25, 20214)
• SolarCity's Sales Conundrum (Seeking Alpha, September 9, 2014)
• SolarCity: Profile of a Financially Engineered Post-Modern Corporation (Seeking Alpha, September 5, 2014)
• General Electric's Capital Conundrum (Seeking Alpha, August 21, 2014)

Miscellaneous

• Robby George and Me (September 6, 2019)
• Losing: The Soul of a Writer (March 4, 2015)
• Email Like a Cat (March 2, 2015)