January 17, 2011
Positive liberty vs. negative liberty
Ideologies Have Overlap <via Ian Welsh>
Ideologies neither form a spectrum, nor a grid, nor even a circle. Instead the reality is more complicated, with ideologies agreeing on different issues, often for different reasons in some very odd ways.
Progressivism (as I understand it, I would not call myself a progressive) is fundamentally and first about domestic issues. If someone is willing to sacrifice liberty and economic progress for war then they aren’t a progressive. Likewise, Ron Paul for example is not a progressive because he disagrees on key domestic issues (even as he agrees on other domestic issues and many issues surrounding war.)
The paleocon right, the libertarian right and the “hard” (what passes for hard in America) left agree substantially on some specific foreign policy issues (the end of empire). They also agree on many economic issues and liberty issues. They disagree on redistributionism and they disagree on positive liberty (making sure that people actually have an even break), as opposed to negative liberty (making sure the government isn’t actively stopping them from having an even break).
Ideologies neither form a spectrum, nor a grid, nor even a circle. Instead the reality is more complicated, with ideologies agreeing on different issues, often for different reasons in some very odd ways.
Progressivism (as I understand it, I would not call myself a progressive) is fundamentally and first about domestic issues. If someone is willing to sacrifice liberty and economic progress for war then they aren’t a progressive. Likewise, Ron Paul for example is not a progressive because he disagrees on key domestic issues (even as he agrees on other domestic issues and many issues surrounding war.)
The paleocon right, the libertarian right and the “hard” (what passes for hard in America) left agree substantially on some specific foreign policy issues (the end of empire). They also agree on many economic issues and liberty issues. They disagree on redistributionism and they disagree on positive liberty (making sure that people actually have an even break), as opposed to negative liberty (making sure the government isn’t actively stopping them from having an even break).
January 16, 2011
January 14, 2011
Here he is.
This is the thankless punk that will grow up to be an insufferable douchebag that your daughter (or mine) will be dating. Let's hope this specimen turns out to be sterile.
January 13, 2011
Both parties do it...
"Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side's activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can't stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them. Any sentient American knows which side that is."
-- George Packer, on the "Both parties do it" horseshit
<Via New Yorker Magazine>
-- George Packer, on the "Both parties do it" horseshit
<Via New Yorker Magazine>
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