George Will’s Post column today is an exercise in loose logic: Today’s primary political and cultural conflict is…between people, mislabeled “progressives,” who crave social stasis, and those, paradoxically called conservatives, who welcome the perpetual churning of society by dynamism. Theodore Roosevelt, America’s first progressive president, thought it was government’s duty to “look ahead and plan out … Continue reading
The Financial Times‘ Robin Harding, quoted in Mike Allen’s Playbook: Romney, speaking after he won the Nevada caucus on Saturday, said that even though the official unemployment rate fell to 8.3 per cent, … ‘the real unemployment rate is over 15 per cent. … [H]e’s been trying to take a bow for 8.3 per cent … Continue reading
Great speech. Obama always gives great speeches. Hooray! But it’s not without its problems—one big one in particular. President Obama’s most powerful theme was his invocation of military solidarity as a contrast with the messiness of democratic governance. He repeatedly argued that governing Democrats and Republicans ought to be able to emulate the common sense … Continue reading
One of the most frustrating things about being a modern leftist political theorist is dealing with the legacy of John Rawls. [[Hobby horse alert! Sorry! Hear those chairs scraping the floor? I’ll just wait while 95% of my readership heads back to Facebook.]] Ok. For those of you still here—let’s get to it. Rawls is … Continue reading
The dissertation is about 50% done at this point. The following is one in a series of posts which you can find here. It’s a good chunk of the closing section of my chapter on John Dewey and Michael Oakeshott’s assessment of history’s place in modern politics. Pretty dull, right? Well, perhaps, but it’s also … Continue reading
Ron Paul makes no secret of his admiration for the “Austrian School” of political and economic thought—especially F.A. Hayek’s work. To most Americans, though, he might as well keep it a secret. Who is this Austrian guy Paul likes so well? What about him do conservatives find so sexy? As an academic familiar with Hayek’s work, I … Continue reading
American pragmatic philosopher Richard Rorty, in sight of his death, wrote [h/t WKJ]: I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about … Continue reading
More thoughts from the dissertation (working along similar lines to this earlier post): – While this is not a knockout argument proving the objective worth of democratic institutions, it suggests that they are appropriate matches for the times in which we live, an apt constellation of political ideals to match the state of modern material … Continue reading
I’ve been surprised by how many page views these dissertation excerpts get, so here’s another one, for all the dorks out there. This is part of the continuing argument I’m building between Dewey’s and Oakeshott’s views on science and politics… Here’s another way of putting this: Dewey admits that inquiry is “only” a response to … Continue reading
Follow-up on my earlier post on “Politics and Perception:” “Many persons seem to suppose that facts carry their meaning along with themselves on their face. Accumulate enough of them and their interpretation stares out at you. … But … no one is ever forced by just the collection of facts to accept a particular theory … Continue reading
