Virtual Reality Will Spark a Twenty-First Century Decadent Movement
On 20 February, 2019, Jak Wilmot put on a VR headset and didn’t take it off for an entire week. He ate, slept, worked and played in VR, and even…
Forgiving Charles Simic
I haven’t read Charles Simic in four years. Even though he’s one of my all-time favorite poets: born in Belgrade, an immigrant to the US at sixteen, a Pulitzer Prize…
Be Like Bernie: Give Them An Argument
In my forthcoming book Give Them An Argument: Logic for the Left, I make the case that we leftists should spend more time formulating explicit arguments for our positions. Too…
Why We Join Cults
At the start of April, we were shocked to discover the details of the NXIVM cult—an organisation which “brainwashed and blackmailed women into being sex slaves.” The female members of…
Britain’s Activist Royals
By some measures, the future of the British royal family has never looked so bright. Last month, Prince Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, amassed one million followers…
Whiteness Studies and the Theory of White Fragility Are Based on a Logical Fallacy
As I have argued elsewhere (see here, here, here and here), the theory of white fragility suffers from numerous flaws. First, it relies on the premise of implicit bias, despite…
Intersectionality is Wrong for the Right Reasons
Intersectionality is right for the wrong reasons. Or is wrong for the right reasons. Originally designed as an analytic framework to better understand the nature of human oppression, intersectional theory…
The Dangerous Myth of Nations
In 2019, we are living in the age of the nation, or so it seems. We can see a very particular breed of populist nationalism almost everywhere we look—think of…
Diversity Drop-Out
Austin, Texas prides itself on being a very progressive, liberal city. One of the mayor’s crowning achievements has been putting together a taskforce on Institutional Racism and Systemic Inequities. As…
What DARE and Diversity Training Programs Have in Common
If you were a high school student in the mid-1990s, as I was, your school may have been visited by representatives of DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), the educational program…
A Conservative Critique of the Liberal Arts: A Response to Matthew McManus
In a recent Areo article, Matt McManus provides a sketch of the history of conservative critiques of liberal arts education. My response to him is not as historically ambitious as…
Human Exceptionalism with a Human Face
I think humans are exceptional. To many, this may seem naïve or chauvinistic. Surely, studies in animal behavior (ethology) have conclusively shown that all the attributes previously thought to mark…
Reproductive Rights in the Transhuman Future
I was recently asked to film a talk by David Pearce, philosopher and co-founder of international transhumanist organization Humanity+. The presentation, entitled “Towards the Abolition of Suffering,” outlined a future…
Why Do Conservatives Dislike Immanuel Kant?
In his bestseller, The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great, Ben Shapiro recently became the latest in a string of conservative commentators to…
Why Donald Trump Will Be Re-Elected
In 2020, Donald Trump will be re-elected President of the United States. Why? Is it because Trump is a political savant? Well, no. Although the septuagenarian claims to be “like,…
Listening at the Great Awokening
Colleges and universities across the English-speaking world are caught up in the enthusiasm of a Great Awokening. Its dogmas are structural violence, systemic racism, racial stress, white privilege, white fragility,…
How Would Mill Have Responded to a Ban on Religious Modesty Dress?
Many self-described liberals of today believe that a ban on Muslim veiling would be inconsistent with liberalism. However, the chief architect of liberal political philosophy, John Stuart Mill, who was…
The Answer to Hateful Speech is Better Speech: An Invitation to a Debate
This essay anticipates a debate at the University of Leeds which will be live streamed on Inaya’s YouTube channel, on 7 May, from 5.30–7.30pm (BST). Two narratives have dominated discourse…