•Unlike various other things touched upon in this blog’s “Month of Utopia,” there’s nothing utopian about Halloween. It’s an anarchic core surrounded by a framework of traditionalist rituals, too crazy for planners, too diabolical for hardcore religious folk. As if dinner with former Ron Paul campaign people last night weren’t scary enough, today [...]
I suppose I deserve my ironic fate, trying to scrounge up a leftist for next week’s debate, since I’ve spent this “Month of Utopia” (a) being skeptical of mostly-left idealism, (b) arguing against left-leaning libertarians, and (c) saying nice things about Ayn Rand in GQ.
However, I should note, lest I seem too narrow-minded, that I [...]
Well, I STILL NEED A DEBATER-VOLUNTEER willing to defend the Latin American left (or some aspect of it) on Wednesday night (Nov. 1, at 8pm, at Lolita Bar) and will e-mail the world to announce who that is by Monday at the latest (just e-mail me, the host, at ToddSeavey[at]earthlink.net).
For now, let us think of [...]
Are there leftists who defend the Latin American left anymore? If so, I only need one of you — to be a debater against a libertarian at Lolita Bar (266 Broome St. at Allen St.) on Wed., Nov. 4 (8pm), but you (or the colleagues you nudge to volunteer) need to TELL ME TODAY (I’ll [...]
Our protagonist wakes up, his memory having been erased, on a prison planet on which the prisoners are allowed to do anything they want — and, being rotten people, what they want to do is construct a rigidly hierarchical society based on murder, slavery, and comically heartless opportunism. Indeed, he eventually learns from a [...]
While all libertarians — all human beings — are well aware that voluntary interactions can prove more painful than the impositions of law (I’d rather get a parking ticket than a broken heart, for example), libertarian Kerry Howley thinks libertarians need to do more, as a matter of basic principle, to combat some of those [...]
Speaking of the quixotic “Democratic Wish” (as in yesterday’s entry), my two favorite variations on the cartoonish “HOPE” poster of Obama are probably the one all over NYC lately showing Mr. Burns from The Simpsons above the slogan “NO THIRD TERMS — VOTE FOR BURNS” and, nerdier still, one simply showing beloved Admiral [...]
In 1990, just after European Communism collapsed (about which, more next month), I was at Brown amid socialists, many of them calling themselves “liberals.” Brown professor James Morone’s book The Democratic Wish came out that year and must have caused at least some Brown students to worry that their utopian dreams were not likely [...]
This book is sufficiently obscure that it is not even mentioned as a used book on Amazon, but it exists — and I’m lucky Helen spotted it on a shelf at the Strand used books store. In it, William B. Scott (not, as far as I know, the same one who writes about aviation [...]
The father of both the drummer and the bass player from David Bowie’s band Tin Machine has passed away.
I read of both Newt “Real Change” Gingrich and Mitt “insurance mandates” Romney recently saying we need to “get beyond” idolizing Reagan and thinking he holds the answers for today’s problems. David “Comeback!” Frum has written much the same thing, with unforgivably greater length and detail that shows more forethought (and even greater deference to [...]
Off to jury duty this morning, reminded again that much of the staying power of majoritarian democracy comes from the hollow pretense that when we do things (like jury duty) collectively, we are doing them with a common will, like one multi-part organism acting in unison — when in truth most of us are simply [...]
As I promised author Jeff Madrick, I read his book The Case for Big Government, and the case is very weak. A mostly-unrepentant FDR-admiring liberal who fears Obama won’t go far enough (as well as a New School economist and former New York Times economics columnist), Madrick does not so much present an argument [...]
My boss was recently traveling in China — seeing firsthand the explosion of economic activity that can occur in a place like Shanghai when a totalitarian government even partially gets out of the way and allows commercial activity to occur.
Alas, at the very same time she was over there, it was being revealed over here [...]
•I very rarely plug a book I haven’t actually read, but there is one that I was planning to read as a counterpoint to the “Month of Utopia” entries I’ve been doing that I didn’t get around to: Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony by Robert B. Edgerton.
•My understanding, though, is that it [...]