The Magic President

Joe Biden is in Surfside, Fla. But why? The fact that this question will be received in most quarters as facetious if not outrageous is one more little data point illustrating the metamorphosis of the American president from chief magistrate to chief priest. There was a time — and it wasn’t even all that long … Read more

Prehistoric Superstition

We shouldn’t live by prehistoric superstition when we have better alternatives, but we shouldn’t sneer at our forebears as primitive — they would recognize us, and we should recognize them and recognize ourselves in them. As James George Frazer argued in The Golden Bough, magic is the embarrassing ancestor of science, the fruit of mankind’s … Read more