Francis Fukuyama has the cover story in the current issue of Prospect.

Modern liberal societies have weak collective identities. Postmodern elites, especially in Europe, feel that they have evolved beyond identities defined by religion and nation. But if our societies cannot assert positive liberal values, they may be challenged by migrants who are more sure of who they are

If you haven't read Fukuyama's book, Trust, you should.

Identity and Migration

Some say that one of the main differences between science and philosophy is that science makes progress while philosophers go round in circles endlessly discussing the same questions.

Is Philosophy Progressive?

Dawkins treats Islam as just another deplorable religion, but there is a difference. The difference lies in the extent to which religious certitude lingers in the Islamic world, and in the harm it does. Richard Dawkins’s even-handedness is well-intentioned, but it is misplaced. I share his lack of respect for all religions, but in our times it is folly to disrespect them all equally.

I am not a fan of the latest Dawkins book. This is an interesting take on things.

A deadly certitude

Christopher Hitchens writes in the latest issue of City Journal:

The most alarming sentences that I have read in a long time came from the pen of my fellow atheist Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, at the end of a September Los Angeles Times column upbraiding American liberals for their masochistic attitude toward Islamist totalitarianism. Harris concluded:

The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists. To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.

As Martin Amis said in the essay [part 2, part 3] that prompted Steyn’s contempt: “What is one to do with thoughts like these?” How does one respond, in other words, when an enemy challenges not just your cherished values but additionally forces you to examine the very assumptions that have heretofore seemed to underpin those values?

See also this interview with Amis:

The novel I'm working on is blindingly autobiographical, but with an Islamic theme. It's called A Pregnant Widow, because at the end of a revolution you don't have a newborn child, you have a pregnant widow.

Facing the Islamist Menace

We keep trying to explain away American fundamentalism.

Through a Glass, Darkly | Harper's

Five years ago, Steven Pinker ignited an academic firestorm with the best-selling book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, which argued that innate behavioural differences exist among individuals and between men and women.

The 52-year-old cognitive scientist is again challenging conventional wisdom with The Stuff of Thought, a book about language due out in September. He'll deliver a lecture in Toronto on the topic Wednesday, as part of 15th anniversary celebrations for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

You know it's big when the book tour starts nine months in advance. He'll be at UCSB on February 2. He was in Toronto last night.

See also:

10 questions for Steven Pinker
How Steven Pinker Works

Of thought and metaphor

Books are overrated, says one librarian.

Literacy today is defined less by how English departments or a librarian might teach Wordsworth or Faulkner than by how we find our way through the digital forest of information overload.

A Librarian's Lament: Books Are a Hard Sell

US officials say that multiple inter-agency meetings on Iran are going on every day under the auspices of the Iran-Syria Policy and Operations Group, and that the pace of activity has quickened. "There are so many meetings; we're doing stuff, writing papers; actions are being taken," said one person involved with the group. "It's very intense."

Speaking of intense, have you seen Breaking The Waves?

The Nonwar War Against Iran

There is some truth here.

The larger problem with blogs, it seems to me, is quality. Most of them are pretty awful. Many, even some with large followings, are downright appalling.

Presumably MemeStreams can help with this.

This element -- "here's my opinion" -- is necessarily modified and partly determined by the "right now." Instant response, with not even a day of delay, impairs rigor. It is also a coagulant for orthodoxies. We rarely encounter sustained or systematic blog thought -- instead, panics and manias; endless rehearsings of arguments put forward elsewhere; and a tendency to substitute ideology for cognition. The participatory Internet, in combination with the hyperlink, which allows sites to interrelate, appears to encourage mobs and mob behavior.

The memetics model within MemeStreams needs to enable all of the genetic operators -- namely, replication of entire genomes via cross-over and with mutation.

Because political blogs are predictable, they are excruciatingly boring. More acutely, they promote intellectual disingenuousness, with every constituency hostage to its assumptions and the party line.

Grieving over the lost establishment is pointless, and kind of sad. But in acceding so easily to the imperatives of the Internet, we've allowed decay to pass for progress.

Why Blogs Suck | WSJ

This is a breezy little piece about the tough competition to get into the New Yorker.

It's Wednesday afternoon and David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, is picking cartoons. A few minutes ago, Bob Mankoff, the magazine's cartoon editor, entered Remnick's office carrying three wire baskets and 81 cartoons. The baskets are labeled Yes, No and Maybe. The cartoons are the ones Mankoff chose from the nearly 1,000 he received since the previous Wednesday's meeting. Now, with the help of Managing Editor Jacob Lewis, Remnick will decide which ones the magazine will buy.

Very Fine Lines | Picking Cartoons for the New Yorker