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Articles by Elayne Allen
Raging Against the Experience Machine Original
The 20th-century American philosopher Robert Nozick once coined a thought experiment that has since become a classic in “Introduction to Ethics” classes: the “experience machine.” Imagine, he proposed, that a machine could grant you any experience you wanted. You could travel the world, taste the finest foods, experience intense love—the machine would know no bounds but those of your imagination.
For a Better Fertility Debate, Consider the Possibilities Original
The Monday Essay Caring about the falling birth rate can be both pro-natalist and pro-woman. Published September 30, 2024 In early August, economist Michael A. Clemens published a paper highlighting the consequences of and potential policy responses to South Korea’s birth dearth.
The Unbearable Lightness of Choosing Children Original
Happy Sunday, happy September, and happy Labor Day weekend.Pronatalist arguments—that in order to be a well functioning society we need to be having more babies—are nothing new. But the resurfacing of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance’s 2021 “childless cat lady” remarks has added a new, overtly partisan dynamic to the conversation.
Walz Attacks Are About All Trump Campaign Has Going For It Original
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Polls show voters prefer Harris over Trump on the economy, and the former president is flailing. Published August 13, 2024 Let us start with a truth unfortunate to both Republicans and those in my vocation: Persuadable voters couldn’t care less when, within reason, Vice President Kamala Harris sits down for a “serious” interview or holds a full-dress press conference.
By Chris Stirewalt Verified, John Gustavsson, Christian Gonzalez, Christian González Verified, Elayne Allen
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The Dispatch
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Our Best Stuff From the Week Harris Picked Her Veep
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Plus: Thoughts on Project 2025, the evangelical movement, and how Democrats abandoned rural America. Published August 10, 2024 Hello and happy Saturday. Barring anything crazy happening (well, anything else crazy), the major party presidential tickets are set. Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris introduced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday. In the days leading up to the announcement, much of the speculation about whom Harris would pick centered on Pennsylvania Gov.
By Rachael Larimore Verified, Christian Gonzalez, Christian González Verified, Elayne Allen, Alex Demas
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The Dispatch
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Yes, You Are a Bad Person
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Is this an R.E.M. song? Published August 10, 2024 • Updated August 9, 2024 There’s a lot on Jonah’s mind this morning. He’s gaslighting himself about being gaslit, lamenting the diminishing standards of acceptable presidential candidate behavior, and waltzing back some of his initial reactions to VP candidate Tim Walz. Critiques of Wednesday’s G-File are addressed (shame on you, Willem Dafoe), noting the death of true cultural criticism in the age of identity politics.
By Jonah Goldberg Verified, Christian Gonzalez Verified, Christian González Verified, Elayne Allen, Alex Demas
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The Dispatch
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‘What Are Children For?’ Can’t Remain a Question Forever Original
Culture Natalism debates are about far more than finances and climate change. Published August 10, 2024 • Updated August 9, 2024 A resurfaced comment made by Sen. J.D. Vance about the “childless cat ladies” who supposedly run the Democratic Party could be understood as just the latest entry in an increasingly tense culture war over parenthood and natalism.
Barbie's quiet rebuke of transhumanism
Not often does a movie earn fascination from the entire country and leave viewers with such conflicting interpretations. But Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has done exactly this: some see the movie as a celebration of millennial motherhood, while others see it as an outlet for female angst, and still others think it’s an anti-man rallying cry. Yet even amid these wildly conflicting interpretations, what’s clear is that the movie is far more than a kitschy story about a plastic doll.
The Bookshelf: Audiobooks and the Recovery of Leisure Reading
Elayne Allen, Public Discourse’s outgoing managing editor, is filling in for Matthew J. Franck’s August Bookshelf. The column will return to its rightful author in September. Last month in The Atlantic, Sam Apple wrote an essay, “Tolstoy and Chill,” about audiobooks’ recent uptick in popularity. He considers how listening to a book changes the way we experience it: audiobooks are more passive and relaxed than reading a physical book.
Barbie’s Quiet Rebuke of Transhumanism
Not often does a movie earn fascination from the entire country and leave viewers with such conflicting interpretations. But Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has done exactly this: some see the movie as a celebration of millennial motherhood, while others see it as an outlet for female angst, and still others think it’s an anti-man rallying cry. Yet even amid these wildly conflicting interpretations, what’s clear is that the movie is far more than a kitschy story about a plastic doll.
Thinking for yourself is overrated
Over the past couple of years, many scholars and journalists have been trying to make sense of the United States’ unprecedented decline in religious affiliation. About 25% of Americans are “nones,” meaning they claim no religion. And most nones — about 41 million Americans — are what sociologist Stephen Bullivant calls “nonverts,” those who once identified with religion but ceased to.
From the Editor’s Desk: Public Discourse’s Monthly Roundup, May 2023
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AI in a Humane Culture? – Elayne Allen
It’s become very difficult for non-experts to keep up with the latest developments in artificial intelligence. Chatbots are improving at a dizzying pace, and it’s hard to predict how the world as we know it will change. Will AI replace executive assistants and writers? Will every child have a personalized AI friend and assistant? None of us know how exactly AI will change things—not even the engineers who create it. But most agree that it will be transformative.
Sensible Politics Can’t Ignore Religion
Editor’s Note: Today’s essay is Managing Editor Elayne Allen’s reply to David Corey’s “A Coalition of the Sensible: What’s Wrong with ‘The New Right.’” These essays explore what a principled and sober approach to politics might look like in our current climate of escalating discord.
From the Editor’s Desk: Public Discourse’s Monthly Roundup
Greetings! This is our inaugural newsletter, “From the Editor’s Desk.” It will open with brief reflections on what we see as Public Discourse’s role in today’s debates. We’ll also highlight relevant essays from our archives and link to essays we’re reading around the web (which are not necessarily endorsements). At the bottom, we will announce events, news, and other miscellaneous information. A lot of readers might wonder: what makes Public Discourse different from other journals?
Sex Work Is Scaling
When the economy went virtual during the coronavirus pandemic during 2020, so did sex. The combination of loneliness and financial anxiety created a boom for OnlyFans, the online platform where anyone can join to sell unique content (almost always sexual) to their “fans.” The Guardian reported that the number of OnlyFans users grew from 7.5 million users in November 2019 to a staggering 85 million in December 2020—which is an increase of more than 1000 percent.
Classic, Contemporary, and Controversy: The 2022 Public Discourse Book List
Editors’ note: At the close of every year, we ask the Public Discourse editorial team and Witherspoon staff to write about the best book or books they read that year. We’ve listed the 2022 recommendations below. Happy reading! Nathaniel Peters, Contributing editor A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell Earlier this year I finished A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell’s twelve-volume series that gently satirizes British life from before World War I through the 1960s.
Cyborg Feminism
In today’s interview, Unherd contributing editor Mary Harrington joins managing editor Elayne Allen to discuss the ways feminism has changed alongside economic shifts, and its dependence on technology—especially reproductive technology—to achieve its goals. Her book, Feminism Against Progress, will come out in March 2023. Elayne Allen: Mary, thank you so much for joining me. I’ve long admired your writings and find your work refreshingly independent.
Toward a New Vision of Wealth
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Effective Altruism's Utilitarian Problem
By now, you’ve probably seen a lot of coverage of Sam Bankman-Fried, the collapse of his cryptocurrency FTX, and his potentially fraudulent behavior along the way.
Let’s Stigmatize Smartphones
In the New York Times yesterday, a writer named Stephanie Eisler Vance discussed her harrowing mental breakdown in 2008. She wrote: “I was speaking in tongues. I was lying on my side on a plastic-covered couch, my neck craned over its arm, my mother beside me consulting with a doctor, and I was speaking in tongues. Some spirit was moving through me. … This spirit was not the Lord or any other celestial being.
Why You Should Enjoy Being Perplexed
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Does Dobbs v. Jackson Threaten The Supreme Court's Legitimacy?
In Public Discourse’s latest interview, Adam White, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and co-director of George Mason University’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State, joined Managing Editor Elayne Allen to discuss how the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision has shaped public perception of the court. They consider claims that the Supreme Court’s legitimacy has eroded and consider ways to strengthen the court’s institutional well-being.
The Inorganic Conservative – - Elayne Allen
Stalemate, partisanship, and resentment seem to occupy more of our social spaces with each passing day. Beneath these divisions are more fundamental questions about evidence, and what kind of knowledge counts as legitimate in public debate. Conservatives typically see experience as the best source of political knowledge. We should generally defer to things that have been tried and tested.
A Promising New Electoral Count Act Reform Proposal
A couple of weeks ago, I noted around here that time was short for the effort to reform the Electoral Count Act, and that getting that effort moving would require a concrete proposal from the bipartisan group of senators that has been working on the issue for months. On Wednesday, that group produced just such a proposal, and it strikes me as constructive, balanced, and very promising. The proposal takes the form of two bills.
Millions of Women Will Be Free from Abortion’s Hidden Costs
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The Problem with New York City's Closed Primary System | American Enterprise Institute - AEI
Op-Ed The Empire State’s closed-primary system robs independent voters of a political voice and rewards the parties’ most ideological candidates. Politics and Public OpinionElectionsSociety and Culture We may see an outbreak of democracy in New York, thanks to the Court of Appeals’ decision to throw out state Democrats’ gerrymandered congressional district map.
Higher Education Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: A Conversation with Baylor University’s Thomas Hibbs
In this latest installment of Public Discourse‘s interview series, Managing Editor Elayne Allen interviews Thomas Hibbs, the J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Professor of Philosophy and Dean Emeritus at Baylor University. They discuss Hibbs’s career in higher education—teaching, administration, programming, researching—and his views on trends and challenges that face the university today.
Higher Education Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
The continuity between administration and teaching for me has always had to do with the question of the moral, intellectual, and spiritual development of young people. Finding creative ways to meet students where they are and draw them into the most important questions is a source of endless fascination for me.
The Philosophical Nowhere Place of the Contemporary Novel
The novel seems to be in dire straits. The best novels are almost exclusively the old ones, which leaves literary connoisseurs wondering where to find fresh highbrow literature. Declining book reading, a preference for film, and digital distractions all contribute to this unfortunate state of affairs. Joseph Bottum’s 2019 The Decline of the Novel proclaimed that the novel has failed because, for the modern mind, nature’s sense of purpose has been vacated.
A Young and Restless Conservatism – Elayne Allen
The latest crop of young entrants to conservative discourse is drawing a lot of media fascination. And understandably: there are vanishingly few young people, especially with college degrees, who identify as conservative. Many, especially older conservatives, want to know what the young right thinks, says, reads, and looks like. For more established generations invested in the conservative movement, the young are viewed with a sense of urgency.
New, Old, and Obscure: Public Discourse’s 2021 Book List
Note from the Editors: Every year, we ask the Public Discourse editorial team and Witherspoon staff to write about their favorite reads of the year, which we’ve listed below. Happy reading! Micah Watson Contributing Editor You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World by Alan Noble, Intervarsity Press: I read this book this fall and have been recommending it ever since. Noble borrows the wording from the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism for his title and ultimate theme.
Maintaining Faith Amid Modern Malaise: A Conversation with Public Discourse Contributing Editor Devorah Goldman
Elayne Allen: Devorah, welcome to Public Discourse’s editorial team! We’re so grateful to have you aboard. Could you tell us about your professional and intellectual background? What political, cultural, religious, or philosophical topics interest you? What are some themes of your work and writing? Are there any new topics you plan to explore in the near future? Devorah Goldman: Thank you, Elayne, I’m truly thrilled to be joining. I’m actually a social worker by training, though I never practiced.
How Social Media Shapes Human Nature
Fake Accounts, by Lauren Oyler (Catapult, 272 pp., $26) Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment, by Benjamin Storey and Jenna Silber Storey (Princeton University Press, 264 pp., $27.95) We’ve all heard how the Internet age is destroying attention spans, lowering IQs, anti-socializing everyone, accelerating polarization, and exploiting privacy for profit. These trends prompt a troubling question: what is the Internet doing to our humanity?
Charting Public Discourse’s Past and Future: A Conversation between Serena Sigillito and Elayne Allen
Serena Sigillito: Elayne, I’m so happy to welcome you to the Public Discourse team as our new managing editor! I know that when I step down from my post as editor at the end of October, the journal’s operations will be in good hands. Could you tell our readers what drew you to apply for the job at Public Discourse? Elayne Allen: When I learned about the opening, I immediately knew I wanted to apply.
The Feminist Antidote to Workaholism – - Elayne Allen
Editor’s Note: This review is part of a symposium on Erika Bachiochi’s The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision. Like many American social movements, the women’s movement in the United States has been a mixed blessing. Tectonic shifts in economics and culture throughout its history greatly influenced the movement’s direction. These external forces sometimes enhanced women’s social conditions, but other times degraded them.
Review of "The Constitution of Knowledge," by Jonathan Rauch
The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, by Jonathan Rauch (Brookings Institution Press, 280 pp., $27.99) As the digital revolution dawned a few decades ago, commentators peddled optimism about its potential to expand humanity’s collective knowledge. Needless to say, that optimism has hit a few snags. The Internet has become a bazaar of information hawkers, where expertise is looked on with suspicion, traffic in hooey is high, and truth is harder and harder to discern.
New York's Mayoral Race Shows that Ranked Choice Voting Works—Even With Snafus
After an embarrassing administrative gaff, a few zany candidates, and nationwide anticipation, New York City’s final vote tally for the mayoral primaries is in. Eric Adams won the Democratic contest and will face off with long-shot Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa for Gracie Mansion. Both candidates were selected by ranked choice voting—the city’s first mayoral election that used this unconventional but promising voting system.
The biggest problem with ranked-choice voting in New York
Op-Ed Politics and Public OpinionElectionsSociety and Culture July 8, 2021 As results from the 900,000-plus people who voted in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary are finally tabulated, Eric Adams has been declared the winner. The bungling by the city’s Board of Elections obscures one big thing: more than 1.5 million New Yorkers weren’t able to vote at all in the only mayoral election that counted.
The Small Magazine Project
When one surveys the landscape of public discourse, exasperation is often the most appropriate response. Political rivals seem more interested in hurling philippics at each other than debating society’s most urgent questions. Imperious sneering at adversaries’ weakest arguments is the defining posture of the day.
Remaking the Mayoral Race
The 2021 mayoral race is the most intriguing in recent memory. There is no incumbent candidate, nor anyone who could—or would want to—take up Mayor Bill de Blasio’s torch. The city is in a bad way after suffering pandemic lockdowns, more than 50,000 Covid-19-related deaths, riots, mass unemployment, outmigration, and budget woes. The sheer scale and scope of these problems make it difficult for voters to figure out which candidate is best suited to take the reins of leadership.
Why Analog is Better than Digital I: The Vinyl Revival
I first became aware of the existence of high-end audio back in the early 1980s Marty Peretz days of The New Republic, when the magazine published an article asking their readers what they thought was the most one could pay for a turntable to play records (this was just before the advent of the Compact Disc).
The Precarious State of War Powers
by Elayne Allen and Kevin Kosar It has been long established by analysts across the political spectrum that Congress has ceded vast constitutional authority to the presidency. On a variety of issues—spending, immigration, diplomacy —the Oval Office enjoys ever-growing autonomy. Meanwhile, the legislative branch displays public outrage at its leakage of power but is quietly relieved it doesn’t have to make the tough choices.
This Mistrustful Moment
Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them by Ethan Zuckerman (W.W. Norton & Co., 304 pp., $26.95) Ethan Zuckerman begins his new book, Mistrust, with a brief reflection on Shays’ Rebellion. A marker commemorating the event stands not far from his Massachusetts home, and Zuckerman thinks we ought to have a little appreciation for the angry soldiers who, in late 1786 and early 1787, took up arms to insist on receiving the pay they were owed.
The Chastened Power
As President Joe Biden and his team seek to revitalize U.S. support for democracy globally, they face an ugly reality: the image of U.S. democracy has been profoundly tarnished in the eyes of the world.
American Purpose
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Simplicity and Peace
Originally published January 8, 2021 In 1939 Loren Pope, then a twenty-eight-year-old copy editor for Washington, D.C.,’s Evening Star,wrote a letter to famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright asking for a house that Pope, at the time, could not afford. “There are certain things a man wants during life, and, of life,” Pope wrote, “material things and things of the spirit. The writer has one fervent wish that includes both.
On How to Live | City Journal
Ars Vitae: The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Arts of Living, by Elizabeth Lasch-Quinn (University of Notre Dame Press, 482 pp., $39) Public spaces are cluttered with sloganeering from political causes; ads for luxurious products attempt to seduce us; self-help and soft spiritualties like neo-astrology and therapeutic versions of Christianity supply superficial comfort.
Reading in the Age of Distraction – - Elayne Allen
There’s something cheeky about the budding genre of books about books. Isn’t it a little ironic, even self-congratulatory, to read a book about why reading books is so wonderful? Maybe, but many of these books are responses to troubling trends: people are not only losing interest in books, but even the ability to read books is declining thanks to dismal attention spans.
Angels, Demons, and Unbundled Religion
For most Americans, the idea of demonic possession makes their skin crawl. But certain subcultures might welcome news of such spiritual provocation. These groups have begun to embrace supernaturalism, at least as a lifestyle. Tara Isabella Burton’s new book Strange Rites artfully documents these “new religions.” In their search for meaning, many—often young—religious seekers find mythical expression for their deep moral convictions and political grievances.
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