quit talking about talking heads
Guess what? Talk radio hosts and cable tv stars like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck say crazy, paranoid, flame-baiting, stupid, awful things. Surprise! They do it for the ratings. It’s a ploy that is...
Monthly Archive: September 2009
“Among the many parallels being offered between Afghanistan and the Vietnam War, one of the most disturbing concerns inadequate examination of core assumptions.”
A sharp op-ed on why safe havens for terrorists in Afghanistan don’t matter.
on serfs, stocks, and inequality
Chris writes: We live in an era where stockholders are aristocrats and the rest of us serfs. This is why incidentally redistributing their aristocratic wealth is not an avenue for liberation in my mind...
Race and the Right
For years, the American Right has been claiming that it is “color-blind” and that the Left is race-obsessed. Frankly, when it came to certain issues, they even had a point – there really was...
Theological (Glenn) Beckism
Not that I/you should expect much in the way of logical rigor from Glenn Beck, but is anyone else a little confused by Principles 2 & 4 in the 9/12 Project:
(Economic) Selfhood not Serfhood
Jon Chait’s article on Ayn Rand is getting some play here at the League. Will’s response here, Freddie’s here. As usual here at the League I’m in a slantwise position relative to this discussion. ...
ahem.
A student on a Belleville West High School bus was beaten for his choice of seat, not because he was white, according to a witness and police.
war games
Scott writes: Certainly part of the promise of Obama’s presidency was to get away from the vicious partisanship of Rovian politics as Andrew points out. But I can’t help wondering whether Obama isn’t overplaying...
Quote of the Day
At one key moment in “The Breaking Point,” Dos Passos tells Hemingway, “The question I keep putting to myself is what’s the use of fighting a war for civil liberties, if you destroy civil...
racially motivated according to whom?
OK, so someone please tell me what evidence Rod Dreher, or Drudge, is offering that this was a racially motivated beating, in the incident he refers to. Rod takes it as an article of...
community and exit
One fundamental flaw in the idealized concept of small town America is the lack of freedom to exit. In small towns the freedom to exit is greatly reduced – especially in rural areas where...
Threat Level Midnight
Daniel Drezner sounds the alarm over Obama’s dangerous protectionist tendencies.
Professional conservatives search tea party movement for recruits
David Weigel’s article on the cultural and political gap between Washington conservatives and their tea party counterparts makes for an interesting read.
demographic change as political fuel
Rod Dreher links to and quotes Arnold Kling, who says something very useful for our conversation about the Glen Beck movement– and, incidentally, something that our media insists I am not allowed to say...
In case I haven’t made my position clear…
Too big to fail = too big = break them up. I guess that makes me a socialist 
Jackass
President Obama has scored points, at least with me, for his off-color description of gay fish, Kanye West. I found some of my favorite G.W. Bush moments were when he was caught off the...
It usually begins with Ayn Rand
Jonathan Chait’s essay on Ayn Rand is worth a read. Given the rise of the tea party movement, his basic point – that Rand’s influence has led to an over-emphasis on a morally absolutist...
Chait on Rand
This essay from Jon Chait, on Ayn Rand and the continuing domination of the politics of taxation grievance on conservatism, is important and true. The essential takeaway, besides a thoroughly fair but damning discussion...
The “Beatles or Stones?” of Russian literature.
I hate to all the time be talking about David B. Hart, the theologian, but his writing is too good to go unremarked. Today, at First Things, he’s taken on that perennial question: Dostoevsky...
