A Thinking Reed

  • If only I could get that Theoretical Ideal Candidate guy to run

    My candidate prefrences per this quiz (via Noli Irritare Leones): 1. Theoretical Ideal Candidate (100%) 2. Alan Augustson (70%) 3. Dennis Kucinich (68%) 4. Ron Paul (63%) 5. Mike Gravel (62%) 6. Barack Obama (61%) 7. Kent McManigal (60%) 8. Christopher Dodd (59%) 9. Joseph Biden (51%) 10. Wesley Clark (48%) 11. Al Gore (47%)…

  • Hopeful Christocentric universalism

    I’ve been re-reading Carl Braaten’s Principles of Lutheran Theology – it’s really a good read and a great encapsulation of some classic Lutheran themes. One of the best chapters is the one on The Christocentric Principle. Here Braaten discusses the work of Christ and its implications. He recognizes that soteriology has fallen on hard times,…

  • SVR in their own words

    If you’re interested in the issues of secession and localism raised by the Bill Kauffman article I linked to the other day you might want to check out Vermont Commons, the online home of the Second Vermont Republic folks. They have a lot of interesting-looking articles by people like Thomas Naylor, Kirkpatrick Sale, Bill McKibben,…

  • Home in DC and Back to Wittenberg?

    We’ve successfully made the move from Boston to Washington DC! Actually, we’ve been here since last Saturday. Our place is a scant seven blocks or so from the Capitol and in a very cool neighborhood. My wife is starting a new job next week, hence the move. Yours truly has now joined the ranks of…

  • Localism versus/and nationalism?

    I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little bit sympathetically disposed to Bill Kauffman’s paean to neo-secessionists in Vermont, but I’m not so sure that ultra-localism is the solution to the problems that the secessionists identify. For one thing, to the extent that they deplore the effects of the global marketplace,…

  • Fowl play

    Speaking of chickens, this review of a new book about the treatment of chickens under the conditions of industrial farming utterly fails to engage with the moral issue at hand. The author, Mick Hume, seems to think that factory farming is a mark of progress and anyone who questions whether the end (cheap meat) justifies…

  • A veggie Fourth

    Grist has a good article offering suggestions for meat-free twists on summer classics. Parenthetically, it’s interesting how people who curtail their meat consumption for environmental reasons differ in their approach from those who are primarily concerned about animal welfare. Not that the two positions are mutually exclusive, mind you. But enviros, I’ve noticed, tend to…

  • Peak oil and the end of liberalism

    Patrick Deneen writes that modern liberalism – “the philosophy premised upon a belief in individual autonomy, one that rejected the centrality of culture and tradition, that eschewed the goal or aim of cultivation toward the good established by dint of (human) nature itself, that regarded all groups and communities as arbitrarily formed and therefore alterable…

  • Globalization from above

    This interesting piece by NYU economist William Easterly calls bs on the “Ideology of Development” – the notion that all nations can become “developed” by instituting reforms orchestrated by elite technicians and experts from the IMF-World Bank-UN axis. Easterly points out that 1) the countries that have most closely followed the advice of the experts…

  • Friday metal – belated Sabbath-esque edition

    The Sword – “Winter’s Wolves” (this one’s for bs)