A post by Matt Taibbi prompts me to think about why I and so many others call themselves liberals. The post deals with Wall Street oligarchs (in this case, Lloyd Blankfein), who are prominent advocates of gay rights, or others who, say, via Emily’s List, etc. are adamantly opposed to even the smallest changes to [...]
Archive for the ‘politics’ Category
What is Liberalism for?
Posted in Free Market Apologists, ideas, politics, Uncategorized, tagged Glenn Greenwald, liberalism, Matt Taibbi, Occupy movement, postmodernism on February 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
O tempora, O mores: Drug legalization
Posted in culture, politics, tagged drug legalization, Mitterand on February 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
There is a lot being said these days about American having a more “mature” policy on recreational drugs, and thus vastly reducing the legal penalties associated with using them or legalizing them altogether. I’d dispute the term– I don’t think an advance in maturity is on the horizon so much as a kind of resignation, [...]
Spelt from Homais’ leaves: Bobo edition
Posted in culture, faith, ideas, politics on January 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Many wonderful days in New York with friends and family concluded the old and began the new year with happiness. A happy new year to you! If any cloud darkened the horizon in my days here, it has been the realization that at least among educated professionals, the culture wars have not died with the [...]
Truth, Torture, and America’s Responsibility
Posted in culture, ideas, politics, tagged America, Christianity, France, George Bush, History, politics, Sexuality, Spain, Torture on December 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Given the release of the torture report by the Senate Armed Services Committee this week,as well as the recent comments by Ross Douthat, and today’s New York Times’ editorial, the following is worth some thought: In his unflinching Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Bartolomé de las Casas described how the Spanish punished [...]
The Party of Life
Posted in culture, faith, politics, tagged American politics, Christianity, Left and Right, pro-life on July 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The following argues, in as non-partisan a fashion as I can, for Christians to leave behind the designations of Christian ‘Right” and Christian “Left.” Why? Read on… As we approach the next national election, Christians will encounter throngs of pundits on page and screen urging them to support a political party. With those appeals, we [...]
Branding Life
Posted in culture, ideas, politics, tagged art, brand and branding, politics on June 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Much has been made recently of the “GOP brand” in the 2008 election– and the American “brand” in international public opinion, and the Red Sox “brand” in Boston, and the Chicago Symphony “brand” and its attendant difficulties, and the Sundance Film Festival “brand,” and no doubt the Eastern Pequot High School croquet club “brand” in [...]
Robert Kagan and the Myth of a Neo-Con Nation
Posted in ideas, politics, tagged foreign policy, Iraq, Kagan, neoconservatism, war on April 11, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Robert Kagan’s article in World Affairs is instructive here and there, but ultimately it is an extremely misleading, even irresponsible account of American history and the history of American foreign policy in particular. Kagan argues that a bold, interventionist, often messianic tradition in American politics has manifested itself in our foreign policy from the founding [...]
Prosperity and Optimism
Posted in Free Market Apologists, politics, tagged economy, income, inequality on April 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Two headlines are worth a look for readers of this blog. First, one article reports that income inequality in America is accelerating: average incomes for people in the bottom fifth of the American income distribution have dropped 2.5% in the last eight years, whereas incomes in the top fifth have risen over 9%. Middle class [...]
Fish on French Theory
Posted in culture, Europe, ideas, politics, tagged Derrida, Fish, Foucault, political correctness, postmodernism, theory on April 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Stanley’s Fish’s New York Times post on the history of French theory is well worth reading, and in very nearly equal parts right and wrong. He’s perfectly right that by forsaking all foundations or teleological destinations for language in relation to truth or to “the world as it really is,” French postmodernism neither offered nor [...]
Martin Luther King, Liberalism and Life.
Posted in politics, tagged liberalism, life, Martin Luther King on April 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
E.J. Dionne hopes to see a new start for American liberalism, a liberalism that will finish the unfinished legacy of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. I have my doubts about that reemergence for reasons I’ve written about here, but I would be delighted to be proved wrong on any number of issues. [...]
