Progressives vs. Libertarians
I really think the two sides in this argument – the libertarians on the one hand and progressives on the other – simply have a very hard time understanding truly where the other is...
Author: Erik Kain
No True Leftist
Freddie has a very long post up lamenting the lack of a truly leftist presence in the blogosphere. The vast majority of liberal voices online, he asserts, are part of the broader neoliberal movement,...
Think Tank Wars
Over at Balloon Juice, I have a long post up about money in politics, pointing out that the much-dreaded Koch brothers are but two among many political donors, and that think tanks and political...
Happy Meal Conservatism
This is an appropriate time to turn back, once again, to one of my favorite John Derbyshire pieces published waybackwhen in The American Conservative: How Radio Wrecks the Right. A long excerpt: Taking the...
Rightwing Duck
Bob Cheeks wants an example of Glenn Beck being inflammatory. Well that’s Beck’s whole schtick, and while I think the left overblows both his influence and the level of his inflammatory language he is nonetheless...
Crazy people doing crazy things
A lot of conspiracy theorists are considered right-wing because they have a deep mistrust of the government. But I think that conservative or limited government beliefs in most conspiracy theorists or lone-gunmen nuts is...
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shot at Tucson rally
Andrew Sullivan is live-blogging the shooting today so that’s a very good resource. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Tucson this morning, allegedly by 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner. Laughner appears to be pretty delusional...
Quote of the Day – Daley Kos Edition
“Is there anyone out there who thinks Obama is going to come to the podium on Monday and say ‘I was pretty confident about my pick of Daley as my Chief of Staff, but...
The Problem with Public Sector Unions
[updated] North sums up the differences between public and private sector unions quite nicely in the comments: -Private sector unions negotiate with business managers who are selected indirectly by shareholders/business owners. Public sector unions...
Blonde on the Tracks*
I got into a bit of a Twitter debate today with silentbeep over the symbolism of Rapunzel’s hair turning from blond and magical to brown and un-magical in Disney’s Tangled. While I think there...
Tory Anarchism in America: An Interview with Daniel McCarthy
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of The American Conservative, a magazine which “features much Toryism, anarchism, paleolibertarianism, and left conservatism, as well as many other mold-breaking ideas” as well as a number of very...
Tangled up in Blonde
I took my three-year-old to see Disney’s Tangled over the holidays and was surprised by how good the movie was, and especially by the quality of the music. The only other Disney movie I’ve...
Superbowl XLII half-time show
Tom Petty’s half-time show at Superbowl 42 is probably the best I’ve ever seen – maybe the only one I’ve ever liked at all. This is in part because Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers...
Aggrieved libertarians
One of my biggest quibbles with a lot of the libertarian writing I encounter is that it tends to focus so much on how terrible government is without really framing it in a larger,...
Caricatures of libertarianism again
There have been a surprising number of reactions across the bloggy-sphere to Chris Beam’s long New York Magazine piece on libertarianism. I say surprising because Beam’s piece wasn’t a particularly compelling critique of libertarian political...
O Come, O Come Emmanuel
I’m hard pressed to pick a favorite Christmas song, but O Come, O Come, Emmanuel is way up there. A close second is Silent Night, which my three-year-old calls Silent Goodnight and sings along...
…and to all a good night
First of all, thanks so much to everyone who has made another year at The League possible. I have a tremendous amount of fun blogging here with all the fantastic writers and commenters who...
The death of custom ctd.
Much of the pushback to my earlier post comes down to essentially this comment from Chris: Nationalism is less a product of the loss of custom, I think, than it is the product of...
The death of custom and the rise of nationalism in the post-colonial state
An observation: whenever some outside force – the colonial powers of the 19th and early 20th century; the Soviets in Eastern Europe – disrupts the traditions and customs of an occupied or dominated region,...
