Ideas
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Glenn Beck: Man of the Seventies
. . . the 1870s, that is. From Robert H. Wiebe's The Search for Order 1877-1920: America in the late nineteenth century was a society without a core. It lacked those national centers of authority and information which might have given order to such swift changes. American institutions were still oriented toward a community life
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More on Jacksonians and Whigs
If Jefferson and Jackson saw political life as a dark struggle of "haves" and "have-nots", Lincoln and the Whigs saw the Democrats–Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, and Douglasite alike–as an irrational and power-hungry elite, as the real "haves" trying to play the "have-nots" off against the bourgeois "have-somes" in order to lock American politics into a static system
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The Contemporary Crisis in Whiggery
Let's talk about Whigs. When I use the term, I'm concerned more about a mentality or a kind of values constellation than I am about the specific historical Whig Party in Britain and in America. My goal here is to trace the changing party affiliation of the Whig mentality in America to the present day.
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Mythological Thinking
In a debate for the hearts and minds of the American people, Ron Paul will defeat Peter Orszag every time. Michale Lind Lind has an interesting post today at Salon if you're interested in a very ATF explanation for the mindset of the Teapartyers. We are dealing with a mythological mentality, based on simple and
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The Reasons for my Concern (repost)
[Ed. I'm re-posting this piece from October 2006, which went up a week after the passing of the Military Commissions Act. I think it's worth reading again as a way to provide some historical context concerning the prospect of losing the house and the senate in November, and why that should give us all a
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Quote(s) of the Day: Junot Diaz (Update: & Frank Rich)
I’ve been an Obama man all the way. I voted for him in 2008 and I’ll vote for him again in 2012, with far less enthusiasm. But it would help me out so much if he could give me some kind of story to hang onto. At this stage, a scrap would suffice. A President
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Quote of the Day: Patrick Deneen
Without the advantage of a crystal ball, I suspect we will be looking at a New World Order within a decade. Writing at the eve of 2020, we will look back on the first score of the 21st century and see more clearly than we do now that "regime change" was afoot – albeit not