This is my personal "quasi-academic" blog - meaning that here I discuss (with a lesser degree of academic rigor) a much wider variety of topics than on my two strictly classical education blogs (Locus Classicus (general audience) and Res Cogitandae (formal academic posts and papers).

In the header you'll find certain sub-topics that I've begun indexing in order to make this site more user-friendly.

Latest Posts

• Where is True Political Virtue in Our Extreme Times, Pt. 2
  As noted previously, virtue is never on the extremes, but in the middle. Surveying our current political malaise from the standpoint of more than two millennia of rich development of the art of politics in the West, I don't think it's incorrect to say that both […]
• Where is True Political Virtue in Our Extreme Times, Pt. 1
  There's no two ways about it - we live in a time of intense political upheaval. Extremes everywhere dominate words and deeds, and yet are too frequently taken as just the heart and soul of the reasonable and moderate.1 The political professionals (as our distorted system […]
• Toxic Equality
  Of late as a teacher of the classics of Western culture, I have begun to encounter students of varying ages who love to talk about the purported difference between "equality" and "equity." The former concept, which has served our iteration of Western Culture for centuries now […]
• On “Poverty”
  I started thinking seriously about poverty ten years ago when I was in graduate school.  Not for the reason that I was in school, but because of many things I was reading there and the fact that I had a wife and two children to support.  […]
• Christians and the Goal of the Common Good
  [The following may by its end seem somewhat cynical.  This is not how I intend it.  My goal in the post is simply to try to clarify some things about the roiling, ranting, rapacious mess that is Christian political discourse online, especially on social media platforms.  […]
• A Plea for “Politics As Unusual”
  As we are rapidly nearing the opening phase of our next quadrennial verbal civil war (a.k.a., “the most important election of our lifetime - again”), I want to preempt the fighting with a few general considerations: 1) As image-bearers of a speaking God, we are speakers […]
• Ascent to God (III): The Theme of Ascent in Greek Philosophy
  The "ascent of the soul" has had a colorful and venerable history in the Christian tradition, reaching back as far as the apostle Paul, who was "caught up to the third heaven." Although the terminology can be traced as far back as Pythagoras (sixth century B […]
• Ascent to God (II): The Theme of Ascent in the Old Testament
  Though as I noted in the first post, I will not be able to proceed systematically through this huge topic, at least for the first few installments I am aiming for some small-scale sequence of ideas to lay the groundwork.  This second post will lay out […]
• Ascent to God (I): Introduction
  The "ascent of the soul" has had a colorful and venerable history in the Christian tradition, reaching back as far as the apostle Paul, who was "caught up to the third heaven." Although the terminology can be traced as far back as Pythagoras (sixth century B […]