Am. History & Culture
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Elitism and the American Equality Ideal
People in Red America are in pain, and it's deeper than just economic. I'd argue that a good deal of the pain comes from the disjunction between its mindset and the real world in which Red America lives. The world no longer makes sense for a mindset that was developed in the early 19th century.
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Quote of the Day: John Taylor of Caroline
"Wealth, like suffrage, must be considerably distributed to sustain a democratick republic; and hence, whatever draws a considerable proportion of either into a few hands, will destroy it. As power follows wealth, the majority must have wealth or lose power." . . . Taylor named two threats to the natural economic order, "two modes of
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Lessig on Neoprogressives
But if this Neo-Progressive Movement is to have any chance of success, it needs to be disciplined enough not to insist that all members also be members of Moveon.org. We need, to borrow and remix the insight of Cass Sunstein, an "incompletely theorized movement." We need Republicans who stand in the tradition of Reagan and
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Tea Party at the Mall
Liberal and rationalist Steve Benen asks what do these people want? He can't figure it out, but I don't think it's that difficult. They want the United States to be what it was before the Civil War. I don't think it's primarily driven by racism; racism is a part of it because that's the way
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The Ground Zero Mosque
I wasn't going to say anything about this because it just seems like another ridiculous scuffle in our endless culture war, and it has provoked little more than knee-jerk reactions on either side of the issue. I certainly don't dispute that in America you have a right to build a place of worship wherever you
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Worst-Case; Best Case
I've started several posts in the last couple of weeks, but I've not finished them. They didn't really seem to add much, or they seem to be my repeating things I've written about so often. In any event, I'm swearing off getting frustrated with Obama or the Democrats. They are what they are, and regardless
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Eric Alterman & the Progressive Future
The American political system is nothing if not complicated and so too are the reasons for its myriad points of democratic dysfunction. Some are endemic to our constitutional regime and all but impossible to address save by the extremely cumbersome (and profoundly unlikely) prospect of amending the Constitution. Others are the result of a corrupt
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Reverting to the Oligarchical Historical Norm
The collapse of the economy in the Great Recession gave us the starkest, most painful evidence imaginable of the failure of laissez-faire economics and the destructive force of the alliance of big business and government against the interests of ordinary Americans. Radical change was called for. (One thinks of Franklin Roosevelt raging against the "economic