James C. Scott at Cato Unbound
James C. Scott is one of the great thinkers of our time. This month at Cato Unbound, we’re doing a retrospective on his book Seeing Like a State. It’s a monograph whose influence has...
Monthly Archive: September 2010
‘Housing prices must fall, yet…housing prices must not fall’
Tyler Cowen sums up the central problem with our economy, asking “Should we let housing prices fall?” Many smart people say we should. It seems increasingly clear that we must. For how long can...
Magic Bus
Public Service Announcement: The League of Ordinary Gentlemen officially endorses letting your kid walk to school. Also: I hope there’s a special circle of hell reserved for busy-body elementary school administrators.
Defiling Our Beloved G.K. Chesterton
I’ve just never liked G.K. Chesterton — which, among the conservative Christians with whom I sometimes (though, as an Episcopalian, not often) travel, is almost enough to make me a Bad Person. Yet by the time...
Movie Notes: Harlan County, USA
I rented Harlan County USA for Labor Day and found it, not surprisingly, to be an extremely absorbing documentary. Chronicling a 1973 strike at the coal mines of Duke Power, Barbara Kopple draws us...
The Old Testament: Exodus and Leviticus
Genesis contains some of the best-remembered stories of the Old Testament. But Exodus has narrative advantages over Genesis, particularly its straightforward and compelling central narrative: how Moses led the Jews out of Egyptian bondage...
Rule of Three
This poll analysis confirms a lot of things that have been fairly obvious for quite some time: 1) young voters are liberal on social issues and lack a go-to ideology on economic issues; 2)...
I’m doing this for the Centaurs
This is very nice of Conor to say, and his larger point is something a lot of commenters here have been saying for quite a while – labels are unimportant, they simply can’t define...
The Organized Labor-Neoconservative Nexus
There’s a lot of interesting stuff in this Nation article on the Progressive split over China policy, but Labor’s belligerent tone is pretty striking: AAM’s Paul expressed grave concern about China’s efforts to enhance...
“Nuclear chivalry.”
As many have said before, it’s no coincidence that in the world of Hollywood blockbusters the last decade has been the decade of the superhero film. In the nineties our blockbusters brought us fantasy...
On conservatism and such
There have been a number of reactions lately to my decision to no longer consider myself a ‘conservative’. Few have been exactly favorable. Perhaps that is because I have not been clear enough or...
Russell Moore on Glenn Beck
One of the best responses to Glenn Beck’s bizarre rally last week was an eloquent warning from Southern Baptist Russell Moore about the proper place of politics in the lives of Christians: Satan did...
Fun campaign lists
Complete change of topic… Like many people, summers blunt my level of attention to day to day political news. But now it’s September – just a few days from Labor Day – and the...
Liberaltarian Envy
I’m fascinated by the liberaltarian conversations here and elsewhere and, as an outsider, more than a little bit jealous. Whether or not the potential movement will be realized in the short term is still...
Intervention and Moral Hazards
Michael Brendan Dougherty highlights an article suggesting that humanitarian interventions actually increase the likelihood of genocide and ethnic cleansing:
Shoup Himself Responds to O’Toole
Donald Shoup has made a career out of studying the effects of government parking mandates on the way we drive and live. After a bit of a blogospheric kerfluffle about free parking, Shoup responds...
