About this blog

This blog is a modest effort to redeem our political and cultural discourse from incivility, partisan caricature, and intentional impasse.

It began as an effort to address the increasingly gratuitous nastiness of our national policy debates. However, we also discuss other important elements of our shared culture and intellectual life. You will therefore find ruminations here about religion, poetry, books, movies, and pretty much anything else that engages our intellects in a public way.

The hope, however, is that anything discussed here will be discussed with civility and mutual respect. Opinions can be stated forcefully without being offensive, and if this seems to be a lost art, then that’s all the more reason for a blog like this. We all know there are a great many questions on which reasonable minds may differ, but we should not forget that reasonable minds can also do more than differ; that they can get past their differences and achieve consensus — sometimes, anyway.

Ideally, the posts and comments here should all stimulate further discussion.  If you like what you see here, please come back often and join the conversation (after reading our Comment Guidelines, of course).  And by all means, tell others about this blog and link to our posts on any other blogs you frequent.