A Defense of Humanity’s Greatest Gift I’ve been thinking about Montaigne lately, the way he wrote about cruelty—how he could feel so deeply into another being’s suffering that he couldn’t bear to watch even animals in distress. Five hundred years ago, this French philosopher understood something we’re in danger of forgetting: that our capacity to…

The killing of Charlie Kirk troubles me greatly, and so I find myself wrestling with scattered thoughts on paper—trying to make sense of senseless acts in a bloody and broken America. What exactly does the phrase “thoughts and prayers” mean? It has become a reflexive utterance of the right, a hollow ritual performed after each…