Am. History & Culture
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Why Liberalism Can’t Get It Done IV
Digby revealed herself last week. She came out of pseudonymity to receive an award on behalf of the progressive netroots at the Take Back America Conference. I think that people like Digby and Greenwald represent what’s best about Liberalism, and I admire their intelligence, eloquence, and moral passion. The speech Digby gave, which is worth
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Why Liberalism Can’t Get It Done III
In the gospels it says that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. This is not the platitudinous condemnation of economic injustice, but rather a shrewd observation about human psychology. The point is that those who have
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Why Liberalism Can’t Get It Done II
Admittedly, most of what I have written since I began this blog has focused on the threat that we are now facing from the right. And I think that threat is real and its looming in the American future is oppressive. But Liberalism has prepared the ground, and it’s important to understand Liberal culpability in
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Why Liberalism Can’t Get It Done I
I have some important differences with Christopher Lasch, but I'm 95% in agreement with his basic understanding about what's happening to us as a society. I know of no one else who is more eloquent or insightful. The following passage from The True and Only Heaven (1991) summarizes very effectively the basic premise upon which
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The Two Primal Fears
Fearlessness and courage are not the same thing. If you don’t have fear, you have no need of courage. For courage is the virtue by which we master our fears and do what needs to be done. Courage is action rather than reaction, and the measure of one’s courage is in his ability to master
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Filling the Bourgeois Spiritual Vacuum
Because we live in an age that is dominated by bourgeois values and the bourgeois worldview, we assume that this is the way it will always be because what else could be better? All the world strives to become what the democracies of the West have become, right? They’re not perfect, but is
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Second Naivete
As those who have been reading this blog for some time know, for me the most important cultural divide is not between east and west or north and south, but between premodern and modern. And the essential thing that distinguishes the one from the other lies in that in premodern cultures people live for the
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Why We Embrace the Corporate State
A report from the Taming the Corporation conference by Alec Dubro tells us why the left has the correct analysis but not the power to do anything about it. Only 40% of Americans believe that corporations contribute the public good, so why do they submit to their rule? Because ordinary Americans don’t have the power
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Sophomoric Conservatism II
Greenwald posted yesterday on a theme similar to what I wrote about Saturday. My post was prompted by a column by George Will, but segued into a criticism of Andrew Sullivan. The thrust of Greenwald’s post is to take a look at the growing trend within conservatism to repudiate Bush as unconservative. There are some
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Sophomoric Conservatism
Is there anyone in punditry who exemplifies the word "bloviation" more than George Will? His recent column on why Americans should choose conservatism over liberalism is, as usual, detached from reality. But it's a detachment I've observed as fairly typical of people who call themselves "principled conservatives"–Andrew Sullivan comes to mind. They seem to have