For those interested in alternative political thinking, the “Red Tory” writer Philip Blond will be speaking at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service on Friday at 4:00. To register for his talk on “The Broken Society vs. the Big Society,” click here. A few articles on Blond and Red Toryism:
The Problem With Phillip Blond: He’s Wrong About Markets from the Wall Street Journal.
Rise of the Red Tories from the English magazine Prospect.
The NS Profile from the English magazine The New Statesman.
Philip Blond’s Red Toryism from adamsmith.org.
David Brooks on Philip Blond from the New York Times.
Patrick Deneen on Philip Blond from a Cato Institute symposium.
October 10th, 2011 | 9:22 pm
Blond is generally understood to be probably the single most effective public figure today at implementing the ideas expressed in the encyclical Caritas in Veritate. As a long-time FT subscriber, I’m hopeful that somehow this publication will overcome its indifference to questions of political economy in order to participate in the debate Blond is sparking, almost single-handed, about the relevance of Catholic ideas. This corner of the public square has gotten extremely interesting lately for Catholics.
October 10th, 2011 | 11:20 pm
Great Society, Big Society, Big Thoughts, Big Ideas in their infinite variety… It smacks of a reductionism dressed up in ideological complexity and dressed down in hobby horses and personal obsessions. And seems to have given permission to Catholics and their clergy and religious to support the insupportable. If we learn nothing from the Obama presidency, I hope it is that. Perhaps it is my ancestral roots in Appalachia and family roots in the working class and working poor, but the intellectual and professional elites seem only to embrace The Struggle (of any era) and its ideological flying buttresses rather that the lifelong struggles of being human with its radical insecurity. The former abstraction repels us from the Church, the latter’s endurance leads us to Her. As an Anglican convert to Catholicism I like to think I’ve wandered from the grandeur of the Cathedral of St. John the Devine to Fr. Neuhaus’s St. John the Mundane. (And, yes, I know he was referring to his Lutheran parish.) Or to put it briefly, I don’t need another guru.
October 11th, 2011 | 1:22 am
Since articles on Blond are being promoted, how about Jonathan Raban’s review of Blond’s _Red Tory_:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n08/jonathan-raban/camerons-crank
It’s worth a look: the dreaded Chesterbelloc is mentioned, and the letter to the LRB which accompanies it is in ways more valuable than Raban’s review.
October 11th, 2011 | 2:17 am
I’d like to wholeheartedly concur with Elias and remind Graham that it the social doctrine of the Church that Blond is advancing not corrosive liberal abstractions. http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2011/07/community-and-liberty-or-individualism-and-statism/ .Catholics are duty bound to promote action to re-vitalise civil society.
Blond is the antithesis of a guru he “has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven [and] is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.” Matt 13:52
October 11th, 2011 | 9:02 am
I too would enjoy hearing some discussion of Blond, in the print pages of FT. I’d not heard of him until now, and while my own tendency is to skepticism regarding arguments that pose society as any but a collection of individuals, I’ve long been troubled by many of the same things that appear to trouble Blond. (WalMartization of small business, etc…). Perhaps the artist formerly known as Spengler might be an interesting choice of commentator on Blond?
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