January 2012
1 post
That Was The Year That Was →
Alternate title: I Beg Your Indulgence: Another Fucking End-of-the-Year Retrospective
The horrifying thing about the Internet is that it encases every single dumb mistake you’ve ever made in…
December 2011
3 posts
Havel to the Castle →
“Truth and love must prevail over lies and hate.” – Václav Havel
1936 – 2011
When Václav Havel was still a playwright and dissident in Communist Czechoslovakia — before the Velvet…
Shameless Self-Promotion →
I have a new blog post over at Ms., called H&M Whittles Down Acceptable Body Types To Exactly One. The subject matter is even creepier than the title lets on.
And while we’re on the subject of…
Mind and God →
For all you New Atheists out there, a little compare and contrast exercise. Tell me if you think this proof makes sense:
My mind is identical to certain neurochemical processes in the brain.
We…
November 2011
3 posts
On Godless Theology →
Guys, I dunno about this:
It’s important to understand that atheists scare religious people not because we’re different, in other words, but because our beliefs do literally threaten their own….
From an Occupation to a Movement →
The New York Times is reporting that, as of this morning, a handful of occupiers remain in Zucotti Park. That is both encouraging and unsurprising, but it doesn’t alter the fact that Liberty…
Who Cares About Student Debt? →
Over the past few weeks I’ve heard a lot of people denounce what they see as Occupy Wall Street’s parochial and self-interested advocacy for student debt forgiveness. Some of those folks might…
#OWS, Meet Mondragon →
Credit unions have been booming over the past few weeks, thanks in part, I believe, to the Occupy movement. Indeed, one of the more promising trends I’ve seen in Occupy teach-ins, discussions…
October 2011
5 posts
It’s About Control →
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One of the great myths of public employee union busting is that budget shortfalls made it necessary. States need to eliminate collective…
#OWS and Organized Labor →
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Having previously compared the New Left to Occupy Wall Street, Shawn Gude wonders aloud why the latter is so much more inclined to play nice…
#OccupyWallStreet is Not a Protest, Cont. →
In his interview with Ezra Klein, anthropologist and Occupy Wall Street co-organizer David Graeber said:
In a way, what we want is to create spaces where people can think about questions like…
#OccupyWallStreet Is Not a Protest. It’s Something... →
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(Despite this post’s intentionally provocative title, I’m not really 100% confident about any of this. But I figured it was worth raising the…
August 2011
6 posts
Hurricane Playlist →
Bob Dylan – A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
Jayhawks – Save It For A Rainy Day
The Hold Steady – Hurricane J
Thom Yorke – And It Rained All Night
Black Mountain –…
Demonizing Labor →
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Matt Yglesias has had his differences with teachers’ unions in the past, so I was especially pleased to see him push back on this notion that breaking the…
Globalizing Labor’s Struggle →
Those of you with so much as a casual interest in labor issues have no doubt heard about the recent unionization of IKEA factory workers in Danville, VA. It was a big victory for organized labor,…
The Best College Essay Money Can Buy →
You could base an entire blog around the demented class dynamics that play out in New York Times lifestyle features.* Take this past Friday’s “For a Standout College Essay, Applicants Fill Their…
Eat, Pray, Spend →
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Bookslut‘s Jessica Crispin, writing for The Smart Set, dismisses the popular narrative of travel as a guaranteed path to self-discovery:
People…
Unions, Today →
Replying to an earlier post, Erik Kain writes
In some sense, Ned is making the pity-charity liberalism case here. Using monetary policy and a wicked-good social safety net to ensure that…
July 2011
7 posts
Labor Scarcity and Social Democracy →
One thing I like about Erik Kain’s blogging is that he’s not afraid to change his mind, and he always has a compelling reason for doing so. That’s why I’ve liked watching his brief fling and…
Open Source Unionism →
Joel Rogers and Richard B. Freeman have a plan to restore the American labor movement:
Under open-source unionism … unions would welcome members even before they achieved majority status, and…
Dwarf Fortress As Art →
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It’s been some years since I’ve sat down and devoted some serious time to a computer game, and I doubt that Dwarf Fortress will be the game to break that…
The Tricameral Hail Mary →
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This “Super Congress” proposal is really a thing of beauty. It is, after all, one thing for the Senate’s majority leader and its minority leader to jointly…
Small-R Republicanism and the NeoL-word →
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Many, many blog-years ago Dylan Matthews and I had a back-and-forth over abstract philosophy’s role in concrete political debates. I argued that philosophy…
Worker-Wonk Synergy →
Earlier today I tweeted to Mac McClelland’s reporting on the abysmal working conditions at one Ohio warehouse and @MacMcClelland piece makes the case for why we need organized labor.”
Matt…
Shame and the Welfare State →
Cory Doctorow:
“Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenges of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era,” a paper by Cornell’s Clinton Rossiter Professor of American Institutions…
June 2011
9 posts
The Sum of Organized Labor’s Parts →
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Playing off what I was talking about yesterday, this sounds like a sensible way to rejigger traditional labor tactics for the modern economy:
But forget…
Taking Unions Out of the Workplace →
In These Times’ Joe Burns:
Like SEIU, an increasing number of union activists and theorists are looking to center union strategy far from the workplace. Rather than relying on the traditional…
Eschatology for Nerds →
I confess I haven’t read all of the relevant literature on the Singularity, and I feel presumptuous for sounding off on such an arcane topic when I understand it only in the broadest sense. But…
When Even Yoo Thinks You’ve Gone Too Far →
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Monday’s New York Times had the essential op-ed regarding the legality of our war/not-war with Libya. As Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman tells it, the…
#NN11 →
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Last year’s Netroots Nation took place only a few months before the 2010 midterm elections. Even then, everyone could tell that cycle would be devastating for…
Thucydides, 5.89: Athenian Nihilism →
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I haven’t done one of these in a while, but I couldn’t let what I found around the close of book five slide. Near the end of that book, Athens makes an…
Thinking About Nothing →
Over at Talking Philosophy Mike LaBossiere wonders if is possible to think nothing. His conclusion:
First, as Hume noted, the mind always seems to have something going on-some…
Fourth Time’s A Charm →
I see David Brooks, bored with our campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya (already!), is trying to gin up support for a shiny new intervention:
That’s why it’s necessary, especially at this…
Beck and Circuses →
Last night I finally got around to reading Tim Dickinson’s epic Rolling Stone profile of Fox News president Roger Ailes. It was fascinating, though I would have liked to see less of a straight…
May 2011
7 posts
Great Republican Spaces →
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Mike Konzcal’s latest led me to David Roberts’ ongoing series of posts envisioning a progressive movement dedicated to creating “great spaces.” Roberts…
The Root of Knowledge →
Check out the alt text on today’s XKCD comic:
For those who couldn’t be bothered to mouse over, the alt text reads: “Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in…
Polarization Theater →
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Last week I wrote that, regarding civil liberties and executive overreach, “we’ve got the worst kind of bipartisan consensus on our hands: one in favor of…
Tortured Euphemisms →
“I’m a strong believer that it’s important to look forward and not backwards.”
That was President Obama’s platitudinous defense of his administration’s decision to refrain from investigating the…
Breakdown of the Global Order: Thucydides, 1.50 –... →
Apologies for the length of my introductory post on Thucydides. This next one is a lot shorter and requires much less setup.
I
I’m too lazy to rifle through 800 pages for the relevant…
Thucydides, 1.24-1.49 →
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Hey guys, I’m back. Sorry for the extended radio silence.
For at least the next month or so, I’m going to be dropping the occasional post about passages from…
Roundup →
I had a couple small items in other venues this week:
For Ms.: Rep. Allen West’s Phallocentric Theory of Deficit Reduction
Allen West thinks that one of the reasons our national debt is so high…
April 2011
8 posts
Consensus Building for Escalation →
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The New York Times gives retired lieutenant general James Dubik a platform to do it.
Unlike the Bosnian Croats in 1995 and the Northern Alliance in…
Devout Christians: Not So Easy To Caricature →
Jamelle Bouie brings us the surprising news that a not insignificant plurality of Americans believe that capitalism and Christianity are in conflict. Here’s the graph:
What’s even more…
Not All Atheists Hear The Same Thing When People... →
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I’m an Amanda Marcotte fan, but I’m also one of those atheists like Robert Farley who doesn’t really get her hostility to theological debates. Nor do I…
Conditioned Freedom →
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I finished Republicanism last night, so now I feel fully qualified to sing its praises like I’ve been itching to. Liberty as non-domination (which I explain…
Self-Rule →
Pettit really only addresses it tangentially, but I like what he has to say about free will in Republicanism:
Whatever existentialists may have thought, individual autonomy or self-rule cannot…
Signaling Authenticity →
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A friend passes along this study (PDF) from The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography on how members of the Society for Creative Anachronism use what the…
Pity-Charity Liberalism and Non-Domination →
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Freddie DeBoer — whose blog is an absolutely indispensable critique of the left from the further left — is now blogging over at Balloon Juice. His first post over there summarizes a crucial component of that critique:
Class and Humanitarian Intervention →
I’ve been slacking off on the blogging lately, which is why it took me no less than six days for me to shamelessly hype my latest Salon column in this space. Turns out the topic is still relevant,…
March 2011
3 posts
The Backwards Logic of Intervention →
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I was just 11 years old when the United States declared war on Afghanistan and thirteen when we invaded Iraq. Those two wars played an instrumental role and…