Curb Your Dogma
~by RTod Two weeks ago I wrote a guest post for the League; it essentially had two central thrusts at its core: The first was trying to define a kind of principle-centered pragmatism. But...
Monthly Archive: July 2011
NAACP Resolution on the Drug War
Good: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) passed a resolution Tuesday calling for an end to the “War on Drugs” during their 102tn NAACP Annual Convention in Los Angeles, CA....
The Tragedy of War is the Tragedy of Men
Ta-Nehisi Coates continues to wonder about the relationships between and among war, tragedy, and justice: There’s a hazy line between my posts arguing that the Civil War wasn’t tragic, and my posts on the 30 Years War. The key dilemma I’m...
Debt Limit Grab Bag
~by Koz A Debt Limit Deal Is Not Inevitable We all know the pressures the various actors will be under to find a deal, and we fear the consequences if they don’t. But that’s...
Compromise
Okay now look. I don’t like raising taxes. I don’t even like taxes in the first place. But I also know when it’s time to compromise. When “not raising taxes” also means “wrecking the...
Breivik’s Cold Logic
In the comments to one of the several posts around here on the appalling terrorist attacks in Norway, a number of people have expressed a difficulty in understanding the logic behind what Breivik sought...
Department of Meaningless Historical Analogies: Civil War Edition (or, Racists Galore!)
Because I find less wrong with supporting John McCain in 2008 than seceding in order to protect the peculiar institution, I think that Andrew Sullivan’s statement Recall that the map of the 2008 presidential...
Why Leftists Should Embrace (Some) Charter Schools
~by Shawn Gude One of the joys of intellectual development is having one’s views challenged and, if not fundamentally altered, at least measurably modified. When beneficial, this transformation is actuated not by perfunctory acceptance,...
Meanwhile at Forbes…
1) I ask whether a faster SWAT response would have saved lives, and suggest that better trained and more effectively deployed SWAT teams is a better response to this tragedy than more invasive government....
Dueling Conundrums: Existential, Institutional
“An ‘unemployed’ existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.” – Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, 1930 1 The unemployment rate is 9.2 percent and flat. A few jobs...
A Song of Ice and Fire doesn’t need to be more than that
I’m a little late to this but I want to add a few words about a post Henry Farrell wrote in which he disagrees with Alyssa Rosenberg’s claim that the A Song of Ice...
Islam, Norway, and the backlash
Thoreau sums up essentially what I’ve been thinking the past couple of days. When the attacks first occurred, I realize I joined many conservative bloggers (as well as just a lot of people who...
Neoliberalism and the Left
I don’t know about you guys, but I’d like to talk about something other than the Norway incident (aside from a little spleen-venting earlier, all I can say about that is killing innocent people...
A song for our times and an open thread
I don’t know about y’all, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had to exert myself so fully towards fighting off my natural inclinations towards pessimism and dread. And on that note: yay!...
Nationalism
However its boundaries may be constituted, a nation [is] a presumptive locus of sovereignty, and it has functioned in this way for much of world history, particularly during the modern era. Nations are said...
Terror
So it turns out the Oslo killings were carried out by a white Norwegian guy who is apparently a white nationalist. I’m quite relieved this wasn’t the work of Islamic terrorists since it would...
The Triumph of Music and the Downfall of Books in the Digital Age
~by RTod Borders has announced that it is closing it’s doors and beginning liquidation; this of course is already old news in this digital world that killed it. If you are in your...
“The Harrow and the Harvest”: Weep No More My Lady
(I’m writing about Gillian Welch’s The Harrow and the Harvest until I feel like stopping. But really, you should listen to the music more than you should pay attention to me.) Bob Dylan isn’t the only thematic influence...
Explosions, shootings in Norway
Live coverage of the explosions and shootings going on in Norway. These appear to be jihadist attacks. It looks really, really bad. Post updates if you have them. You can see how nationalist parties...
