This week’s essay of the week aggravates me and inspires me at the same time. It aggravates me because it takes a promising idea and does not do it justice. But it inspires me because it has gotten me thinking about why I don’t think this essay handles the subject properly and how I would do it differently.

And what is the subject of this aggregating and inspiring essay? Properly speaking it is death and the foundation of society. But in one the first ways in which the essay goes wrong the author of the essay (Joseph Bottum) elects to call the essay Death & Politics. He thus gives a rather mundane gloss to a serious issue.

Flaws aside, the inspiring aspects of this essay make it worth putting up with the aggravation that it contains.