A Thinking Reed

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

Messianic delusions

  • Left-wing American exceptionalism

    Christopher makes an important point. To anyone who’s tempted to believe that the Bush years were a complete departure from an otherwise unbroken American tradition of “moral leadership” I’d recommend–for starters–getting acquainted with Andrew Bacevich’s The Limits of Power, which I blogged about here. Then we can move on to the collected works of Reinhold Read more

  • 2008: The year in book blogging

    I’m not going to provide a best books of the year list, but here’s a sampling of those that got their hooks into me enough to generate some more or less in-depth blogging (needless to say, most of these weren’t published in 2008): Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Power “Empire of dysfunction” Evelyn Pluhar, Beyond Read more

  • Bacevich on “Democracy Now!”

    Starts at about 33 minutes into this stream (thanks, Elliot!). To the extent that I still think of myself as a conservative, it’s in the Bacevich-Reinhold Niebuhr mold. Bacevich gets at what I take to be the heart of this conservatism in the interview: it’s the recognition that world exists prior to us and doesn’t Read more

  • Who’s got the messiah complex now?

    Good analysis from Chris (of Lutheran Zephyr) on McCain and Obama’s answers to Rick Warren’s “Does evil exist?” question at the Saddleback Church forum. Obama’s response–noting that only God can ultimately defeat evil and that the potential for evil lurks in our own hearts and in our best intentions–was very Niebuhrian. Read more

  • The menace of Rudy

    Speaking of executive power-grabbing, The American Conservative has put out a special anti-Rudy issue. Glenn Greenwald writes about Rudy’s authoritarian tendencies, while Michael Desch looks at his ultra-hawkish foreign policy. Read more

  • Freedom by cluster bomb

    Michael Gerson scolds critics of “President Bush’s democracy agenda” (he doesn’t mean Bush’s commitment to transparency and accountability here at home, by the way) and manages to write an entire column without mentioning the means supported by proponents of the “democracy agenda,” namely maiming and killing large numbers of people in foreign countries. See here Read more

  • Holy immanentizing the eschaton, Batman!

    Did Barack Obama really say this? – “I am confident we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth.” Don’t go there, dude. (via Eunomia) Read more