Justin Katz

Re: War Is Peace

By Justin Katz | November 20, 2005 | Comments Off on Re: War Is Peace

This sentence in Andrew’s previous post captures something that has been eating away at my confidence that September 11, 2001, seared a new clarity into the thinking of the American people: … toothless is not how our enemies see us today; toothless is how they saw us leading up to September 11. A series of…

Chafee as Weather Vane for the Conservative Rebellion

By Justin Katz | November 11, 2005 |

Something in a Corner post by Larry Kudlow might help to tie local Rhode Island concerns to the broader political landscape: Why Republicans don’t say more about the tax-cut related economic expansion is beyond me. And whether Tuesday’s disappointing election results provide a wake up call for the GOP remains to be seen. But they…

Frog-Marching Liberal Democracy Around the Globe… Successfully?

By Justin Katz | November 2, 2005 | Comments Off on Frog-Marching Liberal Democracy Around the Globe… Successfully?

Rod Dreher’s latest addition to the conservative-ire-at-Bush line of commentaries has made an appearance on Anchor Rising, so I thought I’d mention that I’ve contemplated part of it further in a post over on Dust in the Light: Dreher, it seemed to me, began to drift not long after he made the leap from displaced…

Fashioning a New Elite, a Truer Sky

By Justin Katz | October 29, 2005 |

Blogs are a marker of a new elite. More accurately, they represent one area in which the ways society works around elite structures must be reconceived. That’s the central theme with which I approached the annual professional development seminar of the Legislative Information and Communications Staff Section (LINCS) of the National Conference of State Legislatures…

Pacing Around a Disturbing Theme

By Justin Katz | October 25, 2005 | Comments Off on Pacing Around a Disturbing Theme

My latest FactIs column, “The Premises of the Culture of Death,” ponders a theme upon which I can’t quite land my finger. Something about things not meaning what they mean in pulsing cultural conversation that lacks substance. This, by the way, is my final FactIs column. I’m very grateful to the folks who produce the…

Offering the “Conservative Opinion” on the Evening News

By Justin Katz | October 18, 2005 |

This announcement comes after the fact, but I wanted to mention that Andrew was interviewed for the 6:00 news on WJAR NBC 10 regarding the latest anti-Laffey attack ad. The report was replete with a screen shot of this very page, and stands as evidence that Anchor Rising is beginning to have exactly the effect…

On Being “Well Informed”

By Justin Katz | October 12, 2005 | Comments Off on On Being “Well Informed”

My latest column, “Speaking Past an Oppressive Template,” remarks on the difficulty — in motivation and in practice — of being “well informed,” and the accompanying difficulty of communicating.

A Familiar Plot

By Justin Katz | September 30, 2005 |

Somehow this bit of biography of the man who recently performed a “75-minute one-act, written by Howard Zinn, [that] engaged the audience by shedding light on the theories of philosopher Karl Marx” at the University of Rhode Island is almost too predictable to notice: Jones is a high school teacher in New York and is…

Out Beyond Expectations

By Justin Katz | September 28, 2005 | Comments Off on Out Beyond Expectations

David Wilcox and Nance Pettit’s new CD, Out Beyond Ideas, puts to music mystic poetry from multiple religious traditions. My review, of sorts, suggests that they’ve uncovered and enhanced commonalities that underlie human societies, and that conservatives should look past the too-obvious backstory of the project to commonalities that ought to underlie our own.

Re: Chafee Wants Democrats to Select Republican Candidates

By Justin Katz | September 21, 2005 |

That’s an interesting circle the “Chafee forces” are hoping to square, Andrew. On one hand, they don’t want anybody to believe that Laffey is electable. On the other hand, they want Democrats to cross over for the primaries in order to ensure the nomination of the Republican candidate who can (the Chafee folks believe) beat…