Subsidiarity
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How Neoliberalism Captured the Cultural Left I
A version of this essay first appeared in July 2014. It was inspired by Crispin Sartwell's Atlantic article "The Left-Right Political Spectrum is Bogus". This post expands on it and supplements recent posts about how the postmodern cultural left, whether it realizes it or not, is a form of cultural Neoliberalism. It argues that Neoliberalism is
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Douthat on Democracy
To be clear, the present Democratic Party is absolutely in favor of letting as many people vote as possible. There are no doubts about the mass franchise among liberals, no fears of voter fraud and fewer anxieties than on the right about the pernicious influence of low-information voters. But when it comes to the work
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David French’s America
In the end, the souls animating both the red hats and the honking cars want a restoration—they want things to go back to normal. In the end, they will all be disappointed. There’s no saving America’s soul. There's no restoring the soul. There's no fighting for the soul of America. There’s no uniting the souls
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Whither Scotland?
People have compared the U.K.-Scotland relationship, in the event of a split, to the United States and Canada, which of course is inexact and even absurd in all kinds of ways. But I will say this: whenever I’ve visited Ottawa and dipped a toe into the Canadian political experience, I’ve always come away impressed with
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The Left-Right Spectrum: Time for a Realignment?
Reader Mike McG sent me Crispin Sartwell's Atlantic article "The Left-Right Political Spectrum is Bogus" I agree with much of what Sartwell says, and I like his point that we should stop thinking from the Left or the Right, and start thinking about the Left and the Right. If we understand Left-Right in its most basic
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Local vs. Central
Interesting discussion on Corey Robin's blog about the problems related to both, especially in the comments. There is always the problem of the particulars of any time and any place. That's why my bias toward the local is quite clear that often those tyrannized by local mafias need to have some way of appealing for
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Little Fish Fighting Big Ones
There is something admirable about the local autonomy enjoyed, for instance, by the patchwork of city states that composed the northern Italian Peninsula during the Renaissance. Not so desirable was their continuous, pointless fighting among themselves, and in the end their weakness in defending their autonomy against the centralized powers France, Spain, and Austria who moved in
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Finding the Balance between Centralization and Localism II
The euro zone faces the same choice as the Holy Roman Empire and American patriots of old: how to overcome discredited forms of confederation. Rather than digging themselves into a deeper recession and democratic deficit through austerity measures, the states in the common currency need to form a full and mighty union on Anglo-American lines.
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Quote of the Day: David Brooks
Since the New Deal, we have become accustomed to seeing American politics as an ever-concentrated national enterprise. But the sclerosis of the federal system will inevitably produce a reversal, as regions fill the void. The happiest people these days are those who leave Washington and get elected mayor or governor. The most frustrated people are
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Quote of the Day: William James
“I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of mans pride, if you give