Category: Uncategorized
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Advice and Consent
“To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State…
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Reasons for the Season
Hanukology: It was basically an argument between two points of view that mixed abstractions and interests (as always), but (also as always) with variations and fluctuations, mind-changes and occasional betrayals. To simplify somewhat, one side, those who later (in Hasmonean times, see below) became known as Saducees, were religious conservatives but pro-Hellenist cultural liberals; the…
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2016 Best List
Let those with enough time to consume all the media in a field decide on the objective bests-of-2016. What follows is a completely subjective list of bests, idiosyncratically limited by what I’ve actually had time to watch, read, or listen to: Best New Book in Philosophy: We don’t think hard enough about the metaphysics that…
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“That man who has nothing to lose:” Black Americans and Superfluousness
Long before white Americans felt like their society had abandoned them, Black Americans knew the feeling. Just like whites do today, some Black Americans responded to earlier superfluousness by “clinging to guns and religion” to use Barack Obama’s famous analysis. (cf. Kinsley gaffe) Here’s James Baldwin, describing the Nation of Islam: “I’ve come,” said Elijah,…
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Any Cook Can Govern: Populism and Progressivism
I have lots of feels and lots of arguments about these two pieces by Peter Levine on an alt-left populism: “pluralist populism” and “separating populism from anti-intellectualism.” (This post on identity politics is also relevant.) Peter even goes so far as to call himself a populist, which is a surprising move to restore the term’s…
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Your Enemy is Your Best Teacher
They played constitutional hardball, and won. Maybe Democrats should try that.
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Race, Income, and Elections: The
White(Male?) Working ClassIn my last post before the election, I quibbled with Peter Levine’s strategic argument that Trump’s supporters might be momentarily richer than average, but only because they were older, maler, and whiter. I worried that it was a kind of mistake, even if it’s perhaps an analytic effort designed to enhance our ability and willingness to achieve strategic…
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Explainer Journalism Needs Better Explanations
Corey Robin got some nice jabs in at the current class of younger non-academic pundits a while back: A lot of these pundits and reporters are younger, part of the Vox generation of journalism. Unlike the older generation of journalists, whose calling card was that they know how to pick up a phone and track down a…
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For Education, Against Credentialism
Today I’ll be addressing a group of imprisoned students, university administrators, and prison officials to inaugurate the University of Baltimore’s partnership with the US Department of Education and Jessup Correctional Institution to offer Bachelor’s Degrees. We have a few tasks today, including inspiring the students and encouraging the officials that their support for the program…
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Touchstone Terms: Arendt’s Metaphysical Deflation
This post is a part of a series on some ideas that I find particularly useful or interesting. It also extends the post from last week of metaphysical deflation in Nietzsche. Here, I begin an account of Arendt’s metaphysical deflation, and its intimate connection to a kind of skepticism about personal identity. Though Hannah Arendt began…