{"id":330,"date":"2010-03-12T16:07:54","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T21:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/18.217.136.120\/?p=330"},"modified":"2026-04-17T18:26:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T23:26:26","slug":"about-this-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/?p=330","title":{"rendered":"About This Site"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
This website is a buffet or smorgasbord of civic republican \u201cdishes\u201d \u2014 columns, essays, podcasts, interviews, and videos that you can sample and, when you’re tempted, dig into. <\/div>
Each “meal,” or thematic section \u2014 \u201cWhat is Civic Republicanism?\u201d, \u201cWhy Foreign Policy Isn\u2019t so \u2018Foreign\u2019 Anymore,\u201d \u201cWhy a Skin Color Isn\u2019t a Culture,\u201d and eleven others here below \u2014 opens with an appetizer, followed by a menu of recent and not-so-recent entrees on that theme. <\/div>
The column to the right has a long essay, <\/span>\u201cLooking for America<\/a><\/strong>,\u201d that explains how I came to all this politically and personally and why I look beyond the left-vs-right binary that narrows so many of our choices, even as new global riptides are sweeping old, familiar options away.<\/span> <\/span><\/div>
Some things haven\u2019t<\/em> been swept away and probably won’t be: Greed, power lust, and yearnings to belong to tribes, faith communities, or herds antedated capitalism and post-modernism by millennia, and they’ll outlast them: Tyrants, fanatics, and rogues will rush into abysses opening at our feet and in our hearts. Stressed, dispossessed people will follow them, believing — craving<\/em> — lies about who to blame and who to trust. <\/div>
But others of us will walk forward on both a “left” foot of public provision and<\/em> a “right” one of individual autonomy and responsibility, and some of us will keep “looking for America” with urgency and depth, as I do in some of these sections. Sample here what I\u2019ve looked for and found. The chef is at <\/div>jimsleeper12@gmail.com .<\/td><\/tr>

What is Civic-Republicanism? Who Needs It?<\/a><\/h3>\"\"<\/a>
Plato<\/a> (left) and Aristotle<\/a> (right), from a detail of The School of Athens<\/a><\/em>, a fresco by Raphael<\/a>. Plato’s Republic<\/a><\/em> and Aristotle’s Politics<\/a><\/em> secured the two Greek philosophers as two of the most influential political philosophers.<\/sub>

Liberal Education and Leadership Training<\/a><\/h3>\"\"
Yale President Kingman Brewster, Jr, 1967.
<\/em><\/sub>

Leaders and Misleaders<\/a><\/h3>(Public leaders I\u2019ve known or watched closely<\/strong>)

\"This


Why Trumpism is Still in Us<\/a><\/h3>\"\"
White House\/Flickr<\/sup><\/em><\/a>

Why Foreign Policy Isn’t So ‘Foreign’ Anymore<\/a><\/h3>\"\"<\/a>
A visit to the U.S.S. Stennis: Yale-National University of Singapore College Facebook page.<\/em><\/sub>

<\/sub>

News Media, Chattering Classes, and a Phantom Public<\/a><\/h3>\"The

Scoops and Revelations: Getting stories right.<\/a><\/h3>(You never know where you’ll find them:)<\/strong>

\"\"

How Business-Corporate Speech is Killing Us<\/a><\/h3><\/div>
<\/a>
<\/a>

Why Skin Color Isn\u2019t Culture or Politics<\/a><\/h3>\"\"
(CNS photo\/Andrew Kelly, Reuters).<\/em><\/sub>

Folly on the Left<\/a><\/h3>\"\"
\"There
<\/a><\/strong>Katrina vanden Heuvel<\/em><\/sub>
 <\/a>\"From
<\/a><\/strong> Daniel Ortega<\/em><\/sub>

Conservative Convolutions<\/a><\/h3>\"William
William F. Buckley, Jr., George Will (Wikimedia\/AP\/J. Scott Applewhite)<\/em>
<\/sub>

‘Second Amendment People’ and the Republic<\/a><\/h3>
Late actor and former National Rifle Association President Charlton Heston held a rifle aloft at a 2002 get-out-the-vote rally. AP Photo\/Jim Cole<\/a><\/em><\/sub>

\u201cAll civil charms and priestly spells\u2026., these like a dream dissolve, and man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.\u201d \u2014 Herman Melville, 1863<\/sub>

Faith vs. Churches?<\/a><\/h3><\/div>\"Andrei
Andrei Rublev, Apostle Paul, ca. 1410.<\/em><\/sub>

Puritans, Hebrews, and All of Us<\/a><\/h3>\"File:The<\/a>
Deacon Samuel Chapin, a founder of my hometown of Springfield MA in 1636, by sculptor August St. Gaudens, near the library I used, 1962-65<\/em><\/sub><\/div>What Is it about ‘the Jews,’, American Protestants, and Israel\/Palestine?<\/a> Summer 2024<\/strong>
https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/?p=4368<\/a>


Jim Sleeper’s Obama Chronicles, 2008-2009<\/a><\/h3> <\/a><\/div><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This website is a buffet or smorgasbord of civic republican \u201cdishes\u201d \u2014 columns, essays, podcasts, interviews, and videos that you can sample and, when you’re tempted, dig into. Each “meal,” or thematic section \u2014 \u201cWhat is Civic Republicanism?\u201d, \u201cWhy Foreign Policy Isn\u2019t so \u2018Foreign\u2019 Anymore,\u201d \u201cWhy a Skin Color Isn\u2019t a Culture,\u201d and eleven others […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":244,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5584,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/5584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}