Poverty Sucks. Let’s Get Rid of It.
Is the left more concerned with governing the poor than ending poverty?
Author: Shawn Gude
Shawn Gude is a writer, graduate student, activist, and assistant contributor at Jacobin. His intellectual influences include Chantal Mouffe, Michael Harrington, and Ella Baker. Contact him at shawn.gude@gmail.com or on Twitter @shawngude.
The Liberal-Radical Relationship
The radical and the liberal suffer from opposite afflictions.* The radical, taking her distance from the mainstream as a measure of her probity, hastens the isolating slide. Existing in a brutally unjust world, her...
The Quadrennial Conundrum
Last week, I did the dirty deed. I voted for Barack Obama. Begrudgingly wouldn’t begin to describe the manner in which I exercised the franchise. A recent Iowa transplant, I’d received my absentee ballot...
The Failures of Neoliberalism
When confronted with failure, there’s a familiar retort that emanates from both extremes of the political spectrum: their prescriptions simply “haven’t been tried.” There were some complicating factors which scuttled the whole thing, or...
A Partial Mea Culpa
[Note: Originally posted at The Safe Depository.] Over the past few months, as a result of Occupy, my lack of awareness of leftist thinkers, and my exposure to Corey Robin’s fantastic The Reactionary Mind,...
The destructiveness of “hard work”
Few things in American society are as universally revered as a good work ethic. It’s one of the core values we attempt to instill in our offspring. Commentators and politicians have been known to...
Why Public Education Is Different From Other Public Goods
At the risk of abusing the rule of thumb that we Leaguers don’t have to abide by the strictures of journalistic timeliness, I’m going to riff off of a Freddie deBoer post from last...
Ron Paul and American liberalism
If you were hoping for Ron Paul’s swift exit from the spotlight, you’re out of luck. With strong showings in the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, the libertarian-leaning congressman will linger for...
How the left can elevate the level of political discourse (and stop making a fool of itself)
I’m tired of liberals getting duped. Most conservative politicians don’t unswervingly support the free market, even if they profess as much. They’re pro-business capitalists more than free-market champions. The typical Republican will back bailing...
Democracy and the rhetoric of protests: A response to Will Wilkinson and Julian Sanchez
Manichean rhetoric is employed, nuance is jettisoned, and catchy sloganeering reigns supreme. To believers in the primacy of intellectual honesty, the cacophony of protest can be disconcerting, the participants obstreperous. Will Wilkinson and Julian...
Democracy, technocrats, and the EU
The European debt crisis is still threatening to engulf the world. But have no fear, the technocrats are here! From yesterday’s New York Times: The question now, in both Italy and Greece, is whether...
Unions and the Occupy Movement
I recently compared the Occupy Movement to the New Left, but it’s truly striking how different the former’s relationship is with organized labor. The New Left assailed societal bureaucratization and powerful elites, including potentates...
Democracy, pluralism, and Occupy Wall Street
The Occupy Wall Street movement is metastasizing, or salubriously spreading, depending on your perspective. Over the weekend protests occurred across the globe, with occupiers taking over Times Square, resisting removal in Chicago, and mobilizing...
Democracy and #OccupyWallStreet
It remains to be seen how effective the Occupy Wall Street folks will be. (We should see some more specific demands out of the occupiers in the coming weeks and months.) I tend to...
al-Awlaki assassination underscores urgency of left-libertarian coalitions
More capable legal minds have already written adroitly about the civil liberties nightmare that this due-process-less killing was. Consequently, I won’t delve too deeply into the legal (or moral) ramifications of granting the president...
Ralph Nader and left-libertarian convergence
Michael Tracy has an article up at The American Conservative on Ralph Nader’s quest to get progressives to align with libertarians like Ron Paul. For those with a longstanding interest in left-libertarian coalition-building, there’s...
Are white, anti-Obama liberals motivated by racism?
That’s Melissa Harris-Perry’s tendentious contention in her latest Nation column. The crux of her argument: The 2012 election may be a test of another form of electoral racism: the tendency of white liberals to...
Troy Davis and the American justice system
I feel someone at the League should at least acknowledge—and inveigh against—the horrendous tragedy that occurred tonight. We’re in a sad, sad state as a country when Dick Cheney, a war criminal, can publish...
Hi.
In the interest of brevity—and in an attempt to avoid undue solipsism—I’ll keep my introductory post short. I graduated from the University of Iowa in May and plan on enrolling in graduate school next...
