Politics & Power 484

Those who believe themselves above primitive nativist loyalty should take care, lest they be discovered worse than infidels for falling short of it.

Devon, PA.  In my previous essay, a sort of preface, I mentioned a two-part essay I published in the wake of the 2008 presidential election, called "Sarah Palin, Spectacular Politics, and the…

Dumbing down of the concept of rights is not simply incoherent. It is pernicious.

Last Friday in Louisville, Kentucky, the city's Department of Health and Wellness issued a cease-and-desist order to the Whole Life Buying Club, and then placed the organization's milk cache under…

Devon, PA. Everyone seems to be in on, and to understand, the debate between FPR and Peter Lawler's "postmodern conservatism" except me.  I have made a few jokes and gestures…

This week I have been lecturing at the Ignatianum Academy in Krakow, Poland. It has been a marvelous experience thus far, including time spent in the classroom with bright students,…

Am I, someone hostile to large-scale corporate enterprises, really permitted to complain about a localist glitch in Comcast’s global footprint?

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS Dahlia Lithwick and Ezra Klein are a couple of my favorite pundits in the whole blogosphere. Lithwick is snarky, and Klein is wonky,…

Devon, PA.  Two years ago this week, President Obama delivered the commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame.  Great numbers of students, faculty, alumni, and American Catholics protested the…

Holland, MI. Around 11:00 Sunday night I received a text from a friend informing me that Osama bin Laden had been killed by US military and intelligence units. I confess…

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS That's a terribly unChristian thing to say, I know. To speak in moral terms--to speak of "desert"--in matters of war is to invariably…

Attorney John M. Berry Jr. in Kentucky is defending his right to criticize a decision made by the state's Legislative Ethics Commission. Was his language at fault? Or is someone…

What the political mainstream ignores, unsurprisingly, is that any change in how we raise revenue cannot be only about balancing the numbers. It also involves judgements about the texture of…

Devon, PA. I have just finished teaching Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America with my freshmen students.  In a way I have not witnessed before, they were compelled by his…

Conservatives are awfully fond of referring to America as a “city upon a hill;” it would be a wonderful thing if they actually made some attempt to understand what that…

In the wake of a series of catastrophes in the course of recent years - the financial crisis and the Great Recession; the Gulf oil "spill" as well as a…

“Competitiveness” is the new “proactive” – the word, to paraphrase The Simpsons, that dumb people are using to sound important. Or, more precisely, it’s the word that ostensibly smart people…

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS Let me make two things clear: first, all things considered, I still think Barack Obama has been, and remains, a pretty decent president--certainly…

These days I care more about the results of local sporting events than I do national or out-of-state elections, but I was pleased that Golden Staters put Jerry Brown back…

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS So last night, the Republicans in the Wisconsin state senate passed the bill which Governor Scott Walker has made the cornerstone of his…

It was the best of times; It was the worst of times. Charles Dickens begins A Tale of Two Cities with a paradox, but one that is easily resolved because…

What would Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson say if they were transported to our day?

Those who benefit most from collective bargaining limits in Wisconsin can’t speak as loudly as those who oppose such legislation.

Tucson, AZ. Far from my native Midwest, which sometimes seems to be working out the details of its final collapse after decades of decline, and far from the equally depressing…