Technocracy
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Burke v. Paine = Right v. Left?
In a review of Yuval Levn's book The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Left and Right, Burke biographer Jesse Norman writes: But one might wonder if these categories can really be mapped onto the left and right of American politics today. After all, it was Ronald Reagan, icon of American
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The Deep State
I've said in a recent post that the Tea Party is right to be angry but wrong because it channels that anger in unconstructive ways. Last night on Moyers and Company, Moyers interviewed Mike Lofgren, a former Republican congressional staffer, who explains why. He's coined the term the "Deep State", and describes more precisely and
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Jerry Brown on the Common Core
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Gov. Jerry Brown blasted the notion of government-imposed standards for public schools, saying he opposed efforts from Washington and Sacramento to dictate education policy. Using "data on a national or state level I think misses the point — that learning is very individual, very personal," Brown said during an onstage interview with The
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Socialism v. Neoliberalism
Corey Robin recently in a post entitled " Socialism: Converting Hysterical Misery into Ordinary Unhappiness for a Hundred Years" In the neoliberal utopia, all of us are forced to spend an inordinate amount of time keeping track of each and every facet of our economic lives. That, in fact, is the openly declared goal: once
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Technocratic v. Humanistic Education 2
I wrote on this theme here, but this kid really gets it: See also Patrick Denneen's eloquent speech at Notre Dame against the Common Core. Key grafs: I began by suggesting that it was in the very absence of any national standard for education, and the strong tradition of local control of education, that we
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The ACA and the Technocratic Mentality (Updated)
I know that there are millions of Americans who are content with their health care coverage – they like their plan and they value their relationship with their doctor. And that means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to
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Liberal Christianity
Two pieces popped up today. One, "A Religious Legacy with a Leftward Tilt" in the NYT today, which talks about recent scholarship that is trying to show how liberal Protestant Christianity has shaped the mainstream American ethos. Key grafs: In “After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History,” published in April by Princeton University Press, Mr.
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Big Data and Learning
The New York Times has a "Bits" section this morning devoted to "Big Data". It's quite a lot to absorb, and I, at least, come away from it with my biases confirmed: In general, it's better to have more data than less, but data is only as good as your interpretation of it. And if you
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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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O’Hehir on American Dystopia
Are we there yet? O'Hehir has an interesting piece that complements the discussion in comments about my last post. He quotes Neil Postman echoing a comment made by Jonathan about how Huxley was perhaps a more accurate predictor of our future: What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that