Adverse Possession
I’m of two minds on this story: Kenneth Robinson lives on Waterford Drive in Flower Mound, Texas, but he doesn’t own or rent the home he claims he has a right to live in....
Monthly Archive: July 2011
Culture Wars, Word Play, Summer Movies, and Weekend Open Threads
Sometimes I wonder if the culture warriors didn’t have a point about rock and roll… In any case, Captain America comes out this weekend. Friends with Benefits is sure to be a second place...
Euripides: Rhesus and overenthusaistic coyotes
Rhesus is a play about connections missed and badly met that has seldom quite connected with audiences, which is probably why a few nineteenth century critics attempted to disconnect it from Euripides’s body of work. My own...
Even more on neoliberalism
While there are some minor things sprinkled throughout the post with which I disagree, I think E.D.’s latest entry into the burgeoning (not-for-profit) blogging cottage industry that is the ongoing leftist/left-neoliberal debate is a...
Mascots, justice, and the role of Harry Potter and Katniss Everdeen
Warning: Spoilers Abound…. Alyssa Rosenberg has a really terrific post on Harry Potter and Katniss Everdeen (the heroine of The Hunger Games trilogy) and how they both function as mascots rather than movement leaders...
On Neoliberalism
First things first: I absolutely loathe the term ‘neoliberal’ and its derivatives. For one thing, neoliberals are much more akin to classical liberals than traditional leftists, and there’s an obvious dissonance between ‘classical’ and...
Breaking: ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ Reboots Coming in 2012, 2013
Even though the Chronicles of Narnia is only three films in, filmmakers have decided to reboot the series starting with a new The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe coming to theatres in 2012....
Not the Murray Rothbard Book Club
I’ve been turning over something RTod wrote in his mostly excellent post below: [I]f libertarianism ever comes to power in this country it is not going to be because 400 million Americans started reading...
Rumors of the Democratic Party’s Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated
Richard Miniter thinks the Democrats are doomed. I think he’s wrong, but before we get into that let me just say one thing: whenever anyone predicts the downfall of a major political party in...
“The Harrow and the Harvest”: Dylan in the Doorway Cryin’
(I’m going to take a page out of William Brafford’s book and write about Gillian Welch’s The Harrow and the Harvest until I feel like stopping. But really, you should listen to the music...
Is what we have here a failure to communicate?
Is it wrong to say that the subtext of this entire genre of intra-leftist debate is support for unions?
It’s Only a Positive Externality if the Government Does It
A positive externality happens when the “good” of a product or service can’t be contained to the people who paid for it. Others benefit too, even if they don’t pay. As a result, goods...
Bad prices, public spending, and poverty
Matt Yglesias points to this Heritage report that suggests the living standards of the poor have gotten better over the years so poverty isn’t really a big deal anymore. He writes: A serious person...
Liberaltarianism and mutual improvement
In my last post I made something of a throwaway comment that liberal and libertarians had a lot to learn from each other. Herb asked, quite reasonably, for details. I gave him a quick...
Conservatism: Defender of the Modern Welfare State?
I am grateful for the incentive Jason’s rebuttal provides to study conservative thinker Michael Oakeshott. However, I respectfully disagree with Jason’s conclusion that “esteem[ of] the present … on account of its familiarity” suffices...
“The Kids Are All Right” and the Obligation of “Third-Party Parents”
Because I’m at least a year behind when it comes to movies, I did not watch Harry Potter this weekend. I’ll probably wait until this time next year, when the crowds have died down...
Oakeshott’s Conservatism
Downblog, Tim Kowal writes: [T]here is an impression—mistaken, in my view—that people who advocate to maintain existing policies are “conservatives,” and people who advocate to change them are “liberals.” […] This approach, however, renders...
A Defense of Pragmatism
~by RTod When I was in high school I briefly embraced Communism. I did so for all the reasons white suburban 16 years olds often do: Communism was defiant and rebellious, seemed at...
Harry Potter and the Art of the Epilogue
I still haven’t seen Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Deux yet, but I hear the epilogue is poorly handled. I was sort of agnostic about it in the book. Epilogues are hard....
