Discourse Magazine

3 days ago | discoursemagazine.com | Jon Gabriel

Once upon a time, people venerated their ancestors as wise creators, mighty heroes and fonts of wisdom. That veneration slipped with the onset of the scientific revolution and has diminished ever since. Here in our technologically advanced 21st century, the average Joe considers himself superior to all who came before. After all, we moved past the dark ages of superstition and folk tales, and now we use pure reason backed by scientific fact.

3 weeks ago | discoursemagazine.com | James Lileks

“Where are you from and what do you do?” Some people think it’s gauche to ask, and it makes you sound like a quiz show host prompting a panelist to reduce themselves to a tidy bio. Well, what else are we supposed to talk about? “Hey there, stranger, how about that current political situation? Boy, that fellow we got in office is just gangbuster-keen, no? I’m loving all the legislation!” No. Are we supposed to talk about religion? “Say, I couldn’t help but notice you had an Orthodox cross.

1 month ago | discoursemagazine.com | Addison Del Mastro

I love figuring out what old buildings used to be. “Informal, hyperlocal history” is a phrase I used in a piece on a curious old building (an old secret military contractor office that later became a print shop), to describe how I think about these stories: What always surprises me a little bit when I go down the rabbit hole digging for information is the sheer number of memories and anecdotes people have about every place under the sun.

1 month ago | discoursemagazine.com | John Mueller

It has often been proposed that a ceasefire should take place in what Donald Trump has aptly labeled the “ridiculous” war in Ukraine. If a ceasefire takes hold and continues, extended negotiations can then be held in comparative quiet to deal with other outstanding issues, including, in particular, the country’s partition. Key to these negotiations would be to take Russia’s security concerns seriously. And connecting Russia to NATO in some way might be helpful in assuaging those concerns.

1 month ago | discoursemagazine.com | Jon Gabriel

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “[M]an everywhere appears as a worshiping creature.” This applies not only to the faithful, but to the unbeliever as well. A person who rejects the divine merely redirects his worship to something else: money, politics, ideology, romantic love, knowledge. The list goes on. In a peaceful, prosperous nation, it’s easy to live that way. But what happens when the West’s centuries-long experiment with secularism proves each of these replacement faiths to be tin gods?