Founded 1983: Liberal Mindset; Conservative Morality

March 10, 2026

The First Thing They Burn: Why War Always Comes for Beauty

When the Mongol army sacked Baghdad in 1258, they did not stop at killing the Caliph. They threw the contents of the House of Wisdom into the Tigris. Manuscripts on astronomy, medicine, mathematics, philosophy, and poetry turned the river black with ink for days. Killing people was not enough. What those people had made, what they had thought and dreamed and rendered into form, that had to be annihilated too. Kill a generation and you end a bloodline. Destroy what a generation built and you erase the proof that the bloodline mattered. This is strategy, not collateral damage. Invading armies have always understood something about beauty that peacetime democracies pretend not to know: beauty is power. A public display of beauty is a sovereignty claim, and no occupying force has ever been able to tolerate one.

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March 21, 2011January 21, 2013

Do Republicans Want to Create Jobs or Destroy Workers?

In the months leading up to the elections last November, many Republicans ran on Tea Party based platforms, their campaigns centering on the theme that they, unlike their Democrat opponents, were seeking to create jobs — something that would surely be good for the people electing them. The nation went pretty wild for this campaigning as many Republicans were swept into office. One would have to assume that since they campaigned on the promise of creating jobs, their first plans upon entry into office would have something to do with creating jobs.

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January 6, 2010

The Role of the Critic

The role of the critic in the modern theatre is one of heartache and the temptation of hatred. Only in the theatre can a single review kill a show.

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September 23, 2009

Big Feral Houses for You and Me

John Mellencamp sardonically made us fall in love with “Little Pink Houses”
as a sing along national anthem for the perceived perfection of the 1950’s American Dream of home ownership. Today, we turn our naked ears and wanting eyes to Detroit to see “Big Feral Houses” pocking neighborhoods and caterwauling the impending death of the urban core.