Social Democracy
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Herder Office Hours
Q: I think I kind of get it, but could you clarify why you’re spending so much time talking about two ancient Germans that hardly anybody has heard of? A: There are several reasons. First, I thought that all my talk about Aristotle and Neoplatonism needed to be balanced by something more down to earth
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Liberalism + Whatever
There are moments of transition and turmoil when liberalism appears to stand alone, and liberals sometimes confuse these moments for an aspirational norm. But nobody except Hugh Hefner, Gordon Gekko and a few devotees of the old A.C.L.U. can bear to live for very long under conditions of pure liberalism. Instead, the norm for successful
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Progressive Fever Dreams
Every reconstructive president must confront vestiges of the old regime. The slavocracy evaded Lincoln’s grasp by seceding; the Supreme Court repeatedly thwarted F.D.R. Yet they persisted. How? What each of these presidents had at their back was an independent social movement. Behind Lincoln marched the largest democratic mass movement for abolition in modern history. Alongside
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Young Socialist Intellectuals
Freddie deBoer in today's NYT talking about the mayoral election in Buffalo– What too many young socialists and progressive Democrats don’t seem to realize is that it’s perfectly possible that the Democratic Party is biased against our beliefs and that our beliefs simply aren’t very popular. … Socialist victory will require taking a long, hard
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Bin Laden Toppled More than the Twin Towers
“We anticipate a black future for America,” bin Laden told ABC News more than three years before the 9/11 attacks. “Instead of remaining United States, it shall end up separated states and shall have to carry the bodies of its sons back to America.” Bin Laden did not win the war of ideas. But neither
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Cixin Liu: Democracy and Culture
In a 2018 New Yorker profile of the Chinese science fiction writer Cixin Liu, Jiayang Fan writes– I looked at him, studying his face. He blinked, and continued, “If you were to loosen up the country [China] a bit, the consequences would be terrifying.” I remembered a moment near the end of the trilogy, when
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The Return of the Bobos
A few thoughts on David Brook's Atlantic piece, "How the Bobos Broke America". It's interesting but not particularly helpful. For the most part, I think it accurately correlates with my own perception about how class works in the U.S., but it doesn't get to the underlying problem that I have been writing about in the
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Filibuster Bust
“I predict to you your children or grandchildren are going to be doing their doctoral thesis on the issue of who succeeded, autocracy or democracy, because that is what is at stake.” —Joe Biden If this seems hyperbolic, then you really haven't a clue about the significance of the moment. It's understandable–we all tend to
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From Edsall’s Column This Morning:
Bernard Grofman, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, put it this way in an email: We would not have Trump as president if the Democrats had remained the party of the working class. The decline of labor unions proceeded at the same rate when Democrats were president as when Republicans were president;
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Obamanation
Many Americans who had welcomed Obama concluded that the game was rigged for the rich and well connected. While he sat through agonizing meetings in his first 100 days, outside the White House the Tea Party rose up like a vicious storm. Democratic Party suffered a massive defeat in the 2010 midterm elections, resulting in