Only philosophy can save us? Prove it.

Posted at October 3, 2007 4:10 PM in response to Liberal Principles

Well hey, that's great, the article can appear. But it seems that the Israeli public knows all this and doesn't care. That's why they keep voting for the people doing this stuff. No need to be so quick with the love.

Posted at September 28, 2007 11:55 AM in response to The Dead Children of Palestine

None of us are "here." That's how we get to do this. I see no harm in not pretending.

Second, my feeling is this: if you really want to see the New Deal and the Great Society rolled back, the best way to do it is to attach yourself to old programmatic solutions to decades-old problems and assert that no one with any compassion would every try to change or improve them for a new era. Watch how fast they come tumbling down (and have been). That is the best ammunition you can give your opponents--the unwilligness to reevaluate policy solutions no matter what else happens in the world.

Does the book actually make this argument? I don't see the argument made here so far. Really, how many voters in the '94 elections had heard of the Contract with America? Or how many voters were believers in the Great Society until they read an in-depth policy paper on it by Lee Atwater or Rush Limbaugh? Where is the argument that this is how politics works?

Posted at September 25, 2007 3:33 PM in response to Welcome to The Argument

This post reminds me of an SNL satire of a drill instructor--"look at you, with your ... eyes in your face!" Also reminds me of Joe Klein's assertion that a program like Social Security doesn't make sense now that we're in this new information economy with you know, all this newness.

Posted at September 25, 2007 10:54 AM in response to Democrats and Nothingness

OK. Should we loosen up some cannon as well?

Posted at September 5, 2007 2:59 PM in response to Staging Nuke for Iran?

Duh what'd I do? Here: http://www.phillymag.com/articles/booboos_in_paradise/

Posted at August 29, 2007 5:28 PM in response to David Brooks the Sophist

TAPPED recently linked to this on the book that made Brooks. Best part: I asked him how I was supposed to tell what was comedy and what was sociology. "Generally, I rely on intelligent readers to know -- and I think that at the Atlantic Monthly, every intelligent reader can tell what the difference is," he replied.

Posted at August 29, 2007 5:26 PM in response to David Brooks the Sophist

From Slaughter's LA Times response to Yglesias, an example of how she is not a trustworthy interlocutor:
Thus the central question to ask about the value of a potential bipartisan initiative on Iraq is whether such an initiative could actually produce a policy better than "wait and pray something good will happen before the surge ends" or "admit defeat and pull out now, leaving the Iraqis to their fate and risking the complete collapse of a critically important country in one of the most dangerous and important regions in the world."

This is what she's actually written. And it's not about anything anyone's actually said.

Posted at August 9, 2007 10:06 AM in response to Road Rage Revisited

No one pay any attention to Todd Gitlin. Despite the Raoul Duke-style photo, he sees himself as a floating conscience of the left and is here in his historical role of policing its alleged excesses. If impeachment is "off the table," we're all that much more respectable. The instinct is protective, but the result is the opposite. If the only incentives for Bush crowd's good behavior are ruled out as a matter of course, whether they are pursued or not (and no, impeachment is not going to happen, everyone has to face that) then we're all in that much more danger.

Posted at August 7, 2007 8:33 AM in response to Impeachment Pit

"has never"? You haven't read his early stuff. Some of the best rebukes of his recent stuff can be found there. Try to track down a copy of Prepared for the Worst, for example.

Posted at June 19, 2007 11:02 AM in response to Tunis off the Grill