Reading Time: 10 minutes American conservativism was on alarming display in two U.S. Supreme Court rulings announced last week on abortion and guns. With these new decisions the strongly conservative Court majority, in effect, insisted that the text of the U.S. Constitution and the reactionary justi
Reading Time: 7 minutes On a TV news show the other day, I listened to a Republican congressman opine that it was nonsensical and unfair to consider raising the legal age to buy firearms to over 18. In his opinion, 18-year-olds in this country can already legally vote and can also choose to put thei
Reading Time: 4 minutes You think the Afghan Taliban are bad? They’re relative sweethearts compared to their domestic arch-nemesis, the ruthless Islamic State affiliate known as Islamic State in Korasan Province, or IS-K for short. But make no mistake, ISIS and their ilk are both truly evil. As thes
Reading Time: 4 minutes American conservatives have a problem with documents, specifically the Bible and the U.S. Constitution. It’s an interpretive problem because conservatives believe those docs are sacred or sacrosanct, which neither is (due to the fact that a god doesn’t appear to exist to sanc
Reading Time: 4 minutes Long before I experienced the beguilingly and sometimes joltingly offbeat South Korean drama Parasite, which so deservedly won the Academy Award for best picture in 2020—the first-ever Korean winner—I’ve been a huge fan of that country’s ever-enthralling movies and TV series.
Reading Time: 6 minutes First Amendment-loving conservatives have long blamed isolated mental-health issues in very angry individuals but never the availability of guns as the proximate cause of America’s decades-long epidemic of horrific mass shootings in America. Or they claim mass shootings are h
Reading Time: 6 minutes When American university and college students try to deny “free speech” platforms to arch-conservative opinion leaders they consider dangerous purveyors of bigotry, or just shout them down, right-wing complaints of suppression are swift and virulent. The constant trope is tha
Reading Time: 5 minutes I grew up Catholic, so I know something about the ancient faith’s hammerlock absolutism, especially regarding anything even remotely sexual. That’s why I immediately thought of sexuality when I learned along with everyone else this week about the “leaked draft opinion” of U.S
Reading Time: 4 minutes Norwegian godlessness today just might resemble American religion tomorrow. I was thinking this as I read an essay in TheHumanist.com decrying America’s nouveau-traditional National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 3 featuring President Joe Biden’s keynote call for unity. The United
Reading Time: 4 minutes One recent glorious morning in tranquil South Dakota, as Russia rained more death and destruction on Ukrainian cities and hamlets, I awoke to a perfect day, my wife peacefully checking her email beside me and turning to smile, and our cat trying to tunnel under the covers to
Reading Time: 4 minutes A disturbing New York Times article about the increasing fusion of U.S. evangelical Christianity and right-wing politics reveals a growing aspirational narrative thrusting Jesus front and center in American government. It is the opposite of what America’s founding fathers env
Allen Tager has spent the new millennium thus far trying to find out why the color violet is so difficult to find through thousands of years of human history—until suddenly it was everywhere.