Essays by

Justin Evans

Socialism or Democracy?

For a few weeks, while I was writing the first draft of this review, the leading candidate in the Democratic presidential primary was an avowed […]

Why Is It So Hard to Be Anti-Fascist?

Her grandfather, when she asks him about punching neo-Nazis, responds, “Who could have a problem with that?” For these men and women, the question was easy. What makes it so much harder for us?

The Crisis of Language Project

alt right: i) right-wing racists who use leftist rhetoric. ii) establishment.

System Reboot

A little over two weeks ago, Daniel Allington, Sarah Brouillette and David Golumbia published a long, fascinating indictment of the digital humanities (DH) as a […]

Unvulgar Economics

Adam Smith’s invisible hand has always been the take-away from ECON 101. Smith used the phrase once, when arguing that states should not give a […]

The Lonely Intellectual

What kind of a person, I wonder, responds to Kundera’s revealing statement by immediately wondering how oppressed he is, or compares “wall-to-wall media” to the Cambodian genocide?

Worth Dreaming About

My first understanding—I’m foreign, you see—of Martin Luther King Day came from Public Enemy’s “By the Time I Get to Arizona,” off Apocalypse 91. The […]

The Libertarian Sublime

On a “this is your brain, this is your brain on government” scale, you can’t deny the appeal of libertarianism. We all know that having no rules can be fun.

Coming Apart

Either man is American, or he is Soviet. This rhetoric has dominated the last fifty years; the great victory of conservative politicians and pundits has been their ability to identify the idea of America with themselves.

Problems with Authority

In his essay, “What is a Classic?” T.S. Eliot answers his own question. A classic, he says, is an ideal literary work, mature in literary […]

The (Updated) Dictionary of Received Ideas

Classics, the: force of oppression. Know enough to despise ~: “Plato was an authoritarian.” “Aristotle condoned slavery.”