Earlier this month, The Washington Post published a chart (below) mapping the origins and development of neoconservatism. YDSers are probably familiar with a lot of the featured personalities and institutions. The chart has appeared all over the blogosphere but I think it gets a lot of stuff wrong.
For example, I don’t think National Review played […]
The debate over health insurance mandates has intensified in recent weeks. In my view, Ezra Klein and other influential pundits are inaccurately framing the debate over mandates as a disagreement between Clinton/Edwards progressives and Obama-leaning centrists. In reality, this dispute is between liberal policy wonks (who tend to gush over the Edwards plan) and an […]
Jonah Goldberg thinks so - or at least he thinks my politics are significantly rooted in the fascist movements and governments of yesteryear. Goldberg makes his case in his newly published book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. I have not (and will not) read […]
The American health insurance regime is a mess. Many of us have seen Michael Moore’s Sicko, which focuses on the greed and cruelty of the insurance industry - specifically the ways in which companies screw policy holders by denying coverage for critical procedures and squirreling out of payments.
Sicko doesn’t touch another more boring but equally […]
…and Joe said, “you people need some new tunes.”
Any self-respecting social movement needs a repertoire of decent songs. The American left, despite its relative political weakness, has given the world a treasure trove of political hymns and radical anthems. Spirituals and gospel songs associated with the labor and civil rights movements are now sung all […]
The leading Democratic candidates, most prominently Barack Obama, are discussing their plans for “fixing” Social Security. Obama accuses other candidates of, “…ducking the issue. Because conventional thinking in Washington says that Social Security is the third rail of American politics. It says you should hedge, and dodge, and spin, but at all costs, […]
I first registered to vote when I stumbled into a small, untidy Democratic Party office on Lancaster Avenue in suburban Southeastern Pennsylvania. As it happens, the office was manned by a former YDS member named Adam Berg. I never really got to know Berg, but I will remember him as a true master of […]
This past weekend, I attended an anti-war rally organized by a peace coalition in Chicago. Although several thousand demonstrators showed up, I still felt that at this stage in the war there should have been many thousands more. As usual, the media hardly covered the event.
There was an especially strong presence of sectarian groups, each […]
Ezra Klein writes,
Any Marxist will tell you that “real” Marxism was never tried. That said, just about every time something called Marxism was tried, it traveled down much the same course, and failed in much the same way. Which is what you should be passing judgment on.
Klein seems to think that Marxism is a system […]
Today the media is in full Princess Diana mode, commemorating the 170th anniversary of Charles Fourier’s passing.
In my view, Fourier and other utopian socialists have been unfairly maligned by Marxists. After all, the utopians had it right - yes the antagonisms inherent to capitalism are powerful factors in social change, but ultimately a socialist future […]
