Author: Shawn Gude

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...

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...

[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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...