Monthly Archive: December 2009
The Anti-Broder Center
Mark: Something I’ve been noticing lately is that the perjorative “centrist” has been getting applied with increasing regularity to an entirely new group of people by both left and right. Historically, it’s been a...
Trajectory and the Manhattan Declaration.
Esteemed Ordinary Gentleman E.D. reads the Manhattan Declaration and remarks: “Well, this is the trajectory of the modern Christian right.” Actually, not quite. The trajectory of the modern Christian right isn’t totally clear right...
TV Blogging: The Office
Meghan Keane really, really doesn’t like the direction The Office is headed. I’m a little confused by some of her points, though. Like this: Jim and Pam getting married did more than give Michael...
Liveblogging the World Cup Draw
So it looks like the US’ recent history of bad fortune in the World Cup draw is going to continue, as they draw England as the seeded team in their group, while hated rival...
No philosophical underpinning
Here’s Helen Rittelmeyer on Charles Johnson’s grand departure from “the right”: Apostasy pieces are never about delivering your former comrades from the grip of dreadful error. They’re about showing off how much more enlightened...
I knew there was a reason I liked this movie so much
Disney’s Robin Hood: Harmless children’s story or covert rightwing parable?
QFTD: (Sports) Celebrity on Celebrity Edition
Best option for a man who thinks he will cheat is an open relationship, I’m talking wide open like I am on sundays, yes that open! Be great —Bengals WR Chad Ochocinco on Tigers...
The Manhattan Declaration
Well, this is the trajectory of the modern Christian right. Its leaders have signed this declaration, further entwining religion and politics, and further entrenching the culture wars in the useless “us against them” language...
Huckabee defends his decision to commute Clemmons’ sentence
Here. It may be the most persuasive Human Events article I’ve ever read (via).
Speaking of dirty hands
Stephen Walt tallies the human cost of US interventionism in the Middle East. Some people will inevitably misinterpret this as a strained argument for moral equivalence, but read the whole, caveat-laden post before you...
Dirty Hands Revisited
A while back, William Brafford wrote about Michael Walzer, author of “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” and the issue of torture. Walzer revisits his article in an interview here.
Late Night Question
Arises via Ta-Nehisi Coates. When discussing Dragon Age, he refers to a potential for (human) man on (male) elf action in the game as gay/homosexual which I guess is right. Or at least half-right. ...
Everyone knows that Presbyterians, not Lutherans, are the hard-working Protestants
Via Will Wilson and MR, here’s an interesting paper on the Protestant work ethic: Many theories, most famously Max Weber’s essay on the ‘Protestant ethic,’ have hypothesized that Protestantism should have favored economic development....
Meanwhile, at True/Slant
I defend consumerism, talk about California and the filibuster, grumble a bit about climate change, and explain why I think it makes more sense to give back the $1 million dollars it costs to...
Quote for the Day
From Huffpo: Zbigniew Brzezinski also cautioned that it would be hypocritical and counterproductive for America to stress that Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government be purged of corruption.
U.S.A. Trilogy update.
The American Scene announced this season as Fall of the USA, and I had high hopes that we’d be treated to cornucopia upon cornucopia of reflections on John Dos Passos’s USA Trilogy. Alas, it’s...
Scrambled
I was going to write a longer post on this, but one interesting consequence of Obama’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan (a decision I support, however tentatively) is the ad hoc redrawing...
