James Kalb

My excellent American adventure continues with George M. Marsden’s The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief—not the whole book, but enough to get the picture.

In Marsden’s telling, American colleges were originally designed to serve both a public and a religious purpose. That worked well enough: the social order … More ...

I just finished (more or less) another book on my Americana reading list, Bill Kauffman’s Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism. It’s a straightforward book that uses lots of examples to make the obvious points that conservative locally-minded people mostly don’t like foreign adventures, and that war … More ...

I’ve left something out of the first two pieces. When people speak of love, loyalty or hatred for America they don’t just mean America as land and people, together with whatever human connections happen to join them. They mean America as a substantive moral unity, as a sort of personality. Otherwise they wouldn’t talk so … More ...

I’ve said what I like about America. But what do I dislike?

Here again it’s hard to avoid cliche and attitudinizing. People have been hating America for a long time. It hasn’t done them much good or shown them to advantage.

On the whole, my dislikes are the flip side of my likes.

I don’t … More ...

What do I like and dislike about America?

It’s hard to comment. It’s like asking what I think about life, or the world. What do I like and dislike about 300,000,000 people from every conceivable background spread out over the better part of a continent?

And compared to what? Most of what’s good and bad … More ...