A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Liberalism

  • Friday links

    –Do extraterrestrials have original sin? –Brandon on Sam Harris’s argument for a science of morality –How to build a progressive tea party –Fox News thinks there’s only one English translation of the Bible –This critique of Mad Men from the New York Review of Books scores some points –A video (in two parts) featuring the Read more

  • Some links for the weekend

    – Peter Singer on balancing concern for the environment with efforts to lift people out of poverty. – Kevin Drum on the difference between liberals and libertarians. – Bob Herbert on Sargent Shriver: “one of America’s great good men.” – Peter Berger’s blog at The American Interest. (Here’s a piece on recent developments in American Read more

  • Where’s the Left? (continued)

    Here’s a much better-informed and thorough take on the “Where’s the left?” question I posted about here from a labor lawyer and blogger for the site Cogitamus. Read more

  • Where’s the Left?

    Apparently there’s been a dust-up recently about the supposed lack of genuinely left-wing bloggers in the professional blogosphere. (See here for the run-down.) The charge, in a nutshell, is that many of the most prominent bloggers are so-called neoliberals: people with liberal policy goals but who embrace the deregulation/free-trade/globalization model that has been in vogue Read more

  • On becoming politically predictable

    I haven’t done much political blogging lately, which in part has to do with the fact that (1) my core interests generally lie elsewhere and (2) I think you, dear reader, can probably get better-quality political blogging elsewhere. Another reason, though, has to do with the fact that, over the last few years, my political Read more

  • John Birch redivivus

    In the New Yorker, historian Sean Wilentz notes the parallels between the ideology and tactics of the Glenn Beck-inspired tea party movement and the Cold War-era John Birch Society. The similarities extend even to drawing on some of the same crackpot conspiracy-mongering “scholarship.” What I didn’t realize before reading this is that Woodrow Wilson has Read more

  • Small government for thee, not for me

    Smart take from Matt Yglesias on the GOP’s “Pledge to America”: Perhaps the most telling thing about where the modern conservative movement is now, however, is their pledge on spending which says that “with common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans, and our troops we will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels.” Of course once Read more

  • Balance!

    Today’s WaPo offers a review of a spate of new political books under the headline “Flame-throwing political books from the Right and the Left.” In judicious Post fashion, it finds the Left and the Right about equally guilty of partisan extremism. “If you believe the liberals,” we’re told “we have Republicans going insane after their Read more

  • “Spiritual Progressives” converge on DC

    I won’t be attending, but I thought I’d flag the conference of the “Network of Spiritual Progressives” taking place this weekend in D.C. since it’s being hosted by my church. Presenters include Congressmen Keith Ellison and Dennis Kucinich, Brian McLaren, Joan Chittister, Bill McKibben, and Michael Lerner, among many others. The agenda is crafting “an Read more

  • Varieties of liberalism

    This post (via Crooked Timber) is about British politics, but it nicely lays out the distinction between “economic liberalism” and “social liberalism,” or what we in the U.S. would call “market liberalism” (or libertarianism) and egalitarian or left-liberalism. For economic (or market) liberals, there is at times a clear sense that the free market produces Read more