What Pete Hegseth’s Kettlebell Swings Tell Us About MAGA Ideology

MAGA is built on a fundamental lack of the internal protective quality that warns us when we are debasing ourselves.

My Favorite Movie of 2025

It's not the year's best movie, but Spinal Tap 2 brought me the most joy.

ReImagining Liberty 096: The Irrationality of Rationalists (w/ Samantha Hancox-Li)

A podcast conversation.

You Can't Escape the Algorithm

Chronological feeds won't fix social media

ReImagining Liberty Podcast

The emancipatory and cosmopolitan case for radical social, political, and economic liberalism. Hosted by Aaron Ross Powell.

Spending Time with Spinal Tap (Again)

ReImagining Liberty 095: Adam Gurri on Opposition Meda versus Complicit Media

A podcast conversation.

MAGA is an Auto-Humiliation Movement

Trump is shameless, yes. But he also has a fetish for humiliating himself.

The End of the Showman Presidency

In Trump 1.0, he'd back down when he was unpopular. Now he doesn't.

The Answer to Student AI Writing Slop is Authorial Voice

LLMs are bad at sounding unique. So we should help young writers to develop their own unique prose style.

ReImagining Liberty 094: A New American Reconstruction

A conversation with Andy Craig and Shikha Dalmia

David Boaz: Liberty's North Star

The legacy of my boss, mentor, and friend.

Why Elites Believe in Racial IQ Differences and Evolutionary Psych

Both help deflect critiques of elite status being less earned than elites want to think.

The “Likable”/“Unlikable” Political Realignment

American conservatism is a home for unlikeable people who’ve turned their unlinkability into a political project.

Most Americans Aren’t Fascists, and That’s a Big Problem for the GOP

When you let rot into your coalition, your entire coalition eventually turns rotten.

The Anti-Anti-Trans Election

Running against trans people failed and America proved itself a better place than the worst among us want it to be.

Leaflet, Blogging, and How to Fix Social Media

Decentralization, network overlap, and why we should all blog, too.

No Kings and Letting Ourselves Hope

There are more of us than there are of them. And we have decency on our side.

Trumpism and the Status Anxiety of Abusers

Why It Works to Call Them Weird Why It Works to Call Them Weird

Shifting political talk from policy to values

Roy Cooper, Prayer, and the Folly of Anti-Religious Collectivism

Roy Cooper's Senate campaign announcement, which included a mention of prayer, sparked backlash on social media from people who'd rather be bigots than understand another's faith.

Boys Are Falling Behind Girls Because Girls Aren't Being Held Back

Let’s not blame boys’ underperformance on women teachers.

Silicon Valley’s “996” Is About Power, not Productivity

The "996" work schedule reflects a troubling belief in sacrificing personal well-being for perceived productivity, driven more by power dynamics than actual efficiency.

AI and the Threat of Nostalgia Culture

The rise of AI-generated content risks overshadowing original creative works, potentially leading to a market collapse for writers and artists if consumers prefer nostalgia-driven remixes over new expressions, but the enduring human desire for innovation suggests that original art and writing will always have value.

An Inconsistent Approach to Viewpoint Diversity

If school choice is the answer to fights over curriculum in K-12 schools, it also needs to be the answer at universities. But culture war supporting libertarians don't tend to apply the argument that consistently.

If You Want to Win Political Arguments, Stop Being an Asshole

Political persuasion versus the urge to political domination.

Trump Promised Disaster. His Supporters Didn’t Believe Him.

Many Trump supporters underestimated his intentions during his first term, believing he wouldn't follow through on his campaign promises, but his second term has revealed the dangers of their misjudgment.

Reign of the Competency Cosplayers

American politics suffers from a lack of genuine expertise, as leaders prioritize performative competence and tribal loyalty over actual knowledge and skill.

The GOP is now just grifters grifting each other

Selling Out vs. Just Selling: The Weirdness of "Content" Monetization

What it means that we stopped caring so much about what we create and started caring only about whether we can sell it.

The Politics of "Unbiased" Conservative Search Engines

The Shaky Future of Trump's Personality Cult

Why, Despite the Numbers, Bluesky Feels Bigger than Threads

It's Okay if Your Social Media Platform is a Bubble

The Quillette Effect

Learning about ideologies exclusively from their opponents is a recipe for epistemic failure.

The GOP's Competence Gap

The Verge’s “Failure” is a Win for Everyone: Talent Networks as Networks

Twitter/X as a Bubble for Bad Ethics

The Misuse of Meritocracy

Why the Right Lies About Cities

The Necessary Virtue of Not Being an Asshole

The False Equivalence Trap

Why Tech Bros Overestimate AI's Creative Abilities

Substack Doesn't Want You to Leave

How to Talk Yourself into Defending Nonsense

Liberalism and Sympathetic Joy

The Challenge of Committing to Liberty—and Meaning It

Three Kinds of Conservatives

Surround Yourself With Those Who Are Admirable, and Distance Yourself From Those Who Aren’t.

How Social Media Tricks our Brains — and Destroys our Politics

Speaking Ill of the Dead

A Twitter Eulogy

You Haven’t Been Canceled. You’re Just Unlikable.

People don't like jerks. But jerks think people instead can't handle their ideas.

If Trump is So Unpopular, Why are Institutions Capitulating?

The American people can't stand Trump. His polling is abysmal. And yet private and public institutions capitulate. Why?

A Crash Course in Cultivating Liberal Virtues

Perfect virtue is impossible, and moral growth is challenging. But we can improve ourselves in practical ways, even if we can't achieve the ideal.

Social Conservatism is Suffering

We cannot make permanent what is inevitably impermanent, and insisting otherwise brings distress. Better to embrace dynamism and social diversity.

No, Midjourney (and other AI) Is Not Stealing Your Work

The argument that AI image generators steal from artists would mean that all artists are thieves.

Hate Can Be Mainstream

Bigotry is bigotry, even if the bigots are in the majority.

How the Right Distorted Libertarianism

Once rooted in liberalism, libertarianism's detour through the conservative movement has blunted its radical edge and commitment to principle.

Liberty Upsets Patterns—and Conservatism

Liberty is dynamic. Conservatism is static. They cannot coexist.

The American Right Never Really Loved Freedom

Conservative ideology fundamentally contradicts individual liberty and self-determination.

Two Kinds of Libertarians

Some libertarians oppose the state because it reinforces social hierarchies. Others because it threatens them. Only the former is worthy of the name.

Silicon Valley’s Very Online Ideologues are in Model Collapse

The combination of exceptional wealth and a closed and uniform ideological and intellectual community wreaks havoc on one's epistemic psychology.

Elite Complicity in the Rise of Fascism

America's elites downplay Trump's authoritarian fascism out of a corrupt sense of class consciousness and solidarity.

How to Be in a World on Fire

The values and perspectives our political moment demands of us.