Tribal Thinking
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The Archetypal American Divide: Andrew Jackson v. John Quincy Adams
Although Andrew Jackson defended his own authority with resolute determination, he did not manifest a general respect for the authority of the law when it got in the way of the policies he chose to pursue. This character trait, already apparent in his military career, continued to manifest itself during his years in the White
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Quote of the Day: Christopher Browning
If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell. He stoked the hyperpolarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could. As with parliamentary gridlock in Weimar, congressional gridlock in the US has diminished respect
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Thoughts on the Kavanagh Affair
When he was first nominated, I saw Kavanagh much as I saw Gorsuch: an establishment figure who leans conservative, and thought that's what you're going to get because clueless establishment Democrats allowed Donald Trump to win the election. But better someone like him than someone like Harriet Myers or Clarence Thomas, or someone else who's
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Artists, Saints, Prophets, and Philosophers
This election of Donald Trump was driven by irrational factors, and overt racism is too simplistic a way to characterize them. The problem is broader in that it embraces fundamental issues of identity and acculturation in Red and Blue America. So it's important to understand what's going on rather than moralistically to dismiss his election as driven mainly
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Jim Webb for President
There are things that Jim Webb has said and done over the years that have rubbed me the wrong way, but better him than Hillary. He's an economic populist who is to the left of Hillary's foreign policy and someone who resides in Glenn Greenwald's Hall of Fame for integrity. That alone makes him preferrable
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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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Conservative Anti-Capitalism
The contemporary GOP has been able until recently to unite both traditional, family-values, 2nd Amendment conservatives with laissez-faire capitalists because the former don't seem to realize that the latter are the main cause of undermining everything they hold dear. The latter of course don't agree with the former on issues like abortion and gay rights,
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Taking Offense
This is the week when the news is filled with Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, Paula Deen's cluelessness, and the end of DOMA, and so I've had a few things on my mind about setting and crossing lines in a pluralistic society. Where is it that we come together, where we feel a sense of
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Garry Wills on the South
After the Crimson Tide’s big win over Notre Dame on January 7th, a Web site called Real Southern Men explained the significance in terms of regional defiance: “Football matters here, because it is symbolic of the fight we all fight. Winning matters here, because it is symbolic of the victories we all seek. Trophies matter
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Of Groupthinks & Cognitive Moments (repost)
All of us to a certain extent have slid into groupthink at one time or another. We all had to go through middle school, didn't we? We've all felt the pressure to conform our thinking to whatever were the group norms then or at other times in our life. So what is doing the thinking