Reading room
Reviews, interviews, and cultural criticism engaging questions of beauty, liberty, philosophy, public life, and the foundations of Western society.
A recent discussion I had with Aryeh Tepper has just appeared in The Omni-American Review. It is titled: “Deep Listening in a Chaotic Soundscape: Thinking about Music with Dan Asia.” I sometimes speak on the relationship between Judaism and Classical Music. I often start with the following comment: I only have three small goals. The …
Polyhymnia Senior Fellow Thomas L. Krannawitter gives his thoughts on Clarence Thomas’s recent speech on progressivism and the Declaration of Independence, and the sad, predictable response by the mainstream media. You can find it right here: https://tkrannawitter.substack.com/p/irreconcilable-differences
April 12 marks the 250th anniversary of a largely forgotten but significant date in American history. On this date in 1776, the Fourth Provincial Congress of North Carolina met in Halifax and unanimously passed a measure instructing its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote to declare independence from Great Britain. With the Halifax Resolves, …
On this episode of Words & Numbers, Polyhymnia’s James R. Harrigan and Senior Fellow Antony Davies take a hard look at partisanship and what people believe. They conclude that it is not a matter of left v. right, nor is it Democrat v. Republican. It’s the ruling class v. all of the rest of us. …
Polyhymnia Senior Fellow Jay Nordlinger interviews Gregg Nunziata, the executive director of SRL—the Society for the Rule of Law. Nunziata worked in the Justice Department. And for the Senate Judiciary Committee. And for the Senate Republican Policy Committee. And for Senator Marco Rubio. And so on. He was in the heart of the Republican legal …
After a four-week hiatus, Polymnia’s @JamesRHarrigan and Senior Fellow @antonydavies are back with episode 501 of Words & Numbers, wherein they think about four weeks’ worth of backed-up nonsense, President Trump’s leaning all over the Supreme Court during oral arguments of the birthright citizenship case, Congress’s abdication of its constitutional duties, the newly created “Guindex,” …
Polyhymnia’s @JamesRHarrigan recently joined Josh Martens on Good Morning Liberty to discuss what, if anything, we owe one another as members of society. Anarchists love to answer this question with “Nothing!” before moving on. Marxists, on the other hand, are more inclined to answer “Everything!” So what is the right answer? Finding it is trickier …
Over the last few weeks, there has been a simmering ruckus about opera and ballet, the state of affairs with the Washington National Opera, and some musings on contemporary operas. Timothée Chalamet put opera and ballet down. He said he wouldn’t want to work in ballet or opera, because these fields are ones where people …
What George Washington’s promise to the Jews in Newport still means for America. I am not Jewish. Many of the people dearest to me are. Two of my most important intellectual mentors were Jewish; their teacher was Jewish. I have close friends and trusted business partners who are Jewish. So I do not regard the …
For New Yorkers, one hard thing about moving to Washington, D.C. is that there aren’t world-class concerts every day. Both the nation’s capital and what is sometimes called the capital of the world have outstanding museums: a great boon for my wife and me as well as for our young daughter, not least because so …
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