Joseph Bottum

Joseph Bottum, Ph.D., is director of the Classics Institute at Dakota State University. His most recent book is “The Decline of the Novel.”

The Masks of Piety

Commentary I drove across the dusty prairie the other day for a funeral in a midwestern town. Three ...

Viewpoints October 8, 2021
Measuring Resistance and Outlasting Progressivism

Commentary The swarm of busybodies and prissy reformers has been with us a long time. And in the ...

Viewpoints October 7, 2021
Our High-Tech Overlords

Commentary Last week, Twitter blocked an account that threatened to tear our social fabric asunder. And who wouldn’t? ...

Viewpoints November 17, 2020
A Pro-Life Vote for Donald Trump

Commentary I’m the mythical one-issue voter. I would vote for a communist dogcatcher if he were more pro-life ...

Viewpoints October 28, 2020
Our Anxious Age Seeks Religion in Its Politics

Commentary The reason politics is so envenomed right now—so anxious, so cruel, so all-consuming—is that it’s not really ...

Viewpoints October 26, 2020
Our Thin Institutions and the Possibility of Civil War

Commentary More than 8,000 members of the Kappa Delta organization have signed a statement denouncing their sorority sister, ...

Viewpoints October 16, 2020
Teaching Our Students to ‘Cancel’

Commentary You’ll hear that "cancel culture" isn’t real. You’ll hear that the phrase is just a way for ...

Viewpoints October 9, 2020
The Age of the Ad Hominem

Commentary Judge Amy Coney Barrett is wrong in her legal opinions because she prays with a charismatic Catholic ...

Viewpoints October 2, 2020
A Münster of Our Own Making: Religiosity in Portland

Commentary A violent gang of radical Anabaptists—now that’s a phrase one doesn’t get to use often, but there ...

Viewpoints September 25, 2020
With Hypocrisy and Self-Dealing, Our Elites Have Squandered Our Trust

Commentary On Aug. 24, Jerry Falwell Jr. resigned as president of Liberty University, the Baptist school founded by ...

Viewpoints August 25, 2020
Outside the Big Cities, Ordinary America Goes On With Life

Commentary This morning, I woke to a dove moaning on my windowsill, a woodpecker pounding on a nearby ...

Viewpoints August 18, 2020