Politics
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Mencken vs. Capra vs. Rockwell
And here, more than anywhere else I know of or have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, or private and communal folly–the unending procession of governmental extortions and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of theological buffooneries, of aesthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles and harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, grotesqueries, and
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My Two Cents on the Rick Warren Brouhaha
I understand why gays are upset about Obama's picking Warren to give one of the inaugural invocations, but I deeply believe that so long as "progressives" make culturally divisive values issues their rallying cry, it plays into the hands of the bad guys–at least until we resolve the constitutional crisis we're currently in the middle
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Quote of the Day: Michael Lind
In Salon in which he talks about the South's strategy to reduce the country to its primitive, neo-feudal level of doing things: I can hear the objections already: "We agree that the South's beggar-thy-neighbor and race-to-the-bottom strategies should be thwarted — but the methods that you suggest, a high national minimum wage, greater equalization of
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Continuity & Discontinuity
My concerns going forward have more to do with the larger trends than with individual policies. And the larger trends in the political sphere, when they move us forward, are almost always dependent on major discontinuities that force some kind of collective response that deflect a society from its normal course. Without a crisis or
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The Anti-Majoritarians
Jonathan Chait in TNR: In February 2006, the conservative journal Policy Review published an essay that was shockingly heretical, though perhaps unintentionally so. In it, Carles Boix of the University of Chicago argued that there is a link between democracy and economic equality: In an unequal society, the majority resents its diminished status. It harbors
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Scientistic Humanism vs. Personalist Humanism
Scientism is a world view that promotes natural science as the only legitimate authority over all other interpretations of life. If it can't be explained in naturalistic terms that make sense within the materialist frame within which science operates, there is no plausible or legitimate explanation. Personalism (see also here) affirms the absolute value, dignity
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Liberal Social Order
(Revised 11/21) One of the basic differences between Social Conservatives and Social Liberals lies in the former's belief that chaos will ensue once traditional values and mores are completely jettisoned. As conservatives often say, Liberalism, for all its contempt for traditional mores, still lives off of the tradition's capital. And conservataives warn that once it
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Transformational Presidencies
Robert Kuttner: One of the most instructive aspects of transformative leadership is the relationship between the president and social movements. Lincoln had the abolitionists, pushing him to move faster. FDR had the industrial labor movement. And of course LBJ had Dr. King and the civil rights movement. Sometimes these presidents actually encouraged these movements; sometimes
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Looking Ahead
We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards intothe future. The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving toward the grand fallacy. Mud sometimes gives the illusion of depth. –Marshall McLuhan For a McLuhanish essay I wrote some time ago, see here. The point is that we all
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It’s Not about Left or Right . . .
. . . It's about forward or backward. I think it was Newark mayor Cory Booker who said that on one of the news shows the other day. Of course what forward means to someone who leans left vs. someone who leans right is where lies the rub. But I agree with Booker, and I'd