If you’re as impressed as I am that so many non-insane people are not only willing to identify themselves publicly as Pomocons but cogently explain how and why, you may enjoy a trip to your local library or Vastly Anonymous But Clean and Convenient Megachain Bookstore. If so, add these to the list of Pomocon-inspiring titles:
1. Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic
2. Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins
3. Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy
4. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
5. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
Of course, this is not a list of ideological checkboxes. There is much to disagree with here and not even a greatest hits list is self-sufficient. These are conversation-starters, not closers. But a self-styled bourgeois liberal ironist like Rorty, for example, helps pomocons sharpen their stances on all three of liberalism, irony, and the incredible bourgeoisity of being — and get more rigorous about how all these things cash out (if at all) in politics.
