Perhaps I was raised in an overly-Confucian manner, but Conor Friedersdorf’s latest sets my head a-buzzing with questions and my stomach a-churning with unease. Of course, insofar as an administration must work as a team toward common ends, its employees should be loyal so long as they are . . . . Continue Reading »
Rod tells me that Nate Silver, who gained fame as the best, most readable electoral statistician around, has made a mistake . And so he has: Beck is a PoMoCon — a post-modern conservative. And his philosophy is not all that difficult to articulate. It borrows a couple of things from . . . . Continue Reading »
Here’s Steven Menashi in Forbes on IK as moral critic. Here’s David Brooks giving IK three full cheers. Here’s me locating IK mostly in the American mainstream — today, even! — with Mark Schmitt in the opposite corner at Bloggingheads. I say a little more about . . . . Continue Reading »
So the fall semester is finally in sufficient order that I can return to blogging. I don’t imagine that I was particularly missed. But I’ll proceed on the assumption that at least some readers liked to alternate their reflections on the very serious matters we usually discuss with one . . . . Continue Reading »
My name has appeared on the masthead now for almost two months, but i have hesitated to pen an inaugural entry, especially since, unlike some of the others in the group, i have no full-fledged manifesto to announce. And as these things go the longer one waits, the more difficult it . . . . Continue Reading »
Freddie : I gotta tell you, I’m such a fan of sweeping ideas and idiosyncratic solutions to social problems that I’m naturally kind of attracted to Newt Gingrich’s new grand scheme , even if it is from one of the more odious people in American politics. Certainly, I think . . . . Continue Reading »
In trundling along on my path toward understanding how theological, cultural, social, and political conservatism are interrelated yet distinct things, I revisited a fine Heritage lecture by one James Ceaser called "Creed Versus Culture." There is no way to do justice to the whole lecture . . . . Continue Reading »
A possibility Helen doesn’t explore explicitly is that Obama’s broad but thin and vague popularity is in some significant measure the consequence of stale ideas on the right — or at least of the inability of the right to translate their ideas into practice. We should wonder more . . . . Continue Reading »
Quick takes on the sparks flying off Helen’s latest: 1. Definitely Alex Massie is right as far as it goes when he heaps criticism on this notion that there is a "Red" America and a "Blue" America. True, this is fostered by all the sweet and pretty maps, but it’s . . . . Continue Reading »
The uncanny and unsettling distance between what seems and what is pops up again in David Brooks’s latest column . These are my bolds below: If you wanted to pick words to capture Patio Man’s political ideals, they would be responsibility, respectability and order. Patio Man moved to . . . . Continue Reading »