Month: February 2012

Julie London, Political Theorist

Megan McArdle‘s not what you would call a bleeding heart libertarian. When she’s not trying to put obstacles in the way of women getting an abortion, she tends not to shed too many tears for the poor, the working class, or even the middle class.  But when it comes to the rich, she manages to finds deep and unexpected wells of empathy. Not sure what there is to say about all this that wasn’t said by that noted political theorist Julie London in 1955.  

Even Narcissists Have Enemies

It’s been a long while since our last roundup of news of the book.  So here goes…. Firedoglake held a salon about The Reactionary Mind today. Rick Perlstein hosted the discussion, lots of people chimed in. Thom Hartmann conducted an interview with me for his show Conversations with Great Minds. I certainly don’t have a great mind, but it was, thanks to Thom, a great conversation. Here’s Part I; here’s Part II. Paul Heideman has a really thoughtful review of the book here, one of the best I’ve read. Though Heideman has some criticisms, he gives a thorough account of the book’s argument. Jeffrey Goldfarb wrote an interesting blog post about the book, which sparked some more interesting discussion. Daniel […]

Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t*

A propos our discussion of libertarianism, birth control, and women’s autonomy, this, from Benjamin Franklin (A Conversation About Slavery), seems relevant: You Americans make a great Clamour upon every little imaginary Infringement of what you take to be your Liberties; and yet there are no People upon Earth such Enemies to Liberty, such absolute Tyrants, where you have the Opportunity, as you yourselves are. It’s hardly unprecedented in the American experience for the greatest cries of liberty to be heard among those who would most deny it to others. *Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t is the title of a wonderful book about jazz and the civil rights movement by my friend Scott Saul. It’s got no real connection to the theme […]

Probing Tyler Cowen, or: When Libertarians Get Medieval on Your Vagina

In case you were wondering why I spent so much time nattering on about Ludwig von Mises’s retrograde views of women—and a great many libertarians did—here’s why: Those views haven’t gone away. Responding to the Virginia legislation that requires all women seeking an abortion to get an ultrasound—as Dahlia Lithwick points out, because most abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of a pregnancy, most of the women affected by this bill would be forced to have a probe stuck up their vaginas, as that’s how ultrasounds in the first trimester are done—libertarian luminary Tyler Cowen tweeted the following: All of a sudden requiring consumers to be informed is extremely unpopular on the “pro-regulation side.” Is Cowen serious? If he […]

Love for Sale: Birth Control from Marx to Mises

From Marx… In On the Jewish Question, Marx famously critiques liberal theorists of religious freedom on the grounds that they merely wish to emancipate the state from religion. Assuming—wrongly, it turns out—that the 19th century state, or at least the American state, had indeed been fully emancipated from religion (e.g., there was no official state religion, no specific confessional requirement for the exercise of political rights, etc.), Marx notes that the American people are nevertheless quite religious. This leads him to the observation that “to be politically emancipated from religion is not to be finally and completely emancipated from religion, because political emancipation is not the final and absolute form of human emancipation.” We may be free of religion at […]

Graduate Student Employee Fired for Union Activism

I had intended to blog about this, but Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber beat me to it. The story goes like this: Jennifer Dibbern, a graduate student at the University of Michigan, was retaliated against for her union activism. It’s as simple as that. Henry is more cautious in telling the story than I am, but having led a campaign for graduate student unionization at Yale, and having been retaliated against for my activism—experiences I wrote about here and here—I see all the tell-tale signs of retaliation. In any event, Henry has lots of links to help you decide what went down at Michigan. And here are some more. Also check out Henry’s excellent follow-up post, in which he itemizes […]

The New York Times Takes Up The Reactionary Mind…Again

So The Reactionary Mind has made it into the New York Times for a third time. Writing in The Stone, the online section of the Times dealing with issues in contemporary philosophy, Gary Gutting, a philosopher at Notre Dame, weighs in on the debate the book has spawned: Corey Robin’s new book presents conservatives as fundamentally committed to stopping “subordinate classes” from taking power from the ruling elite.  Conservatism, Robin says, holds that “the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, to govern themselves or the polity.”  Mark Lilla, however, has argued that Robin misrepresents the tradition of conservative thought. … Robin cites Edmund Burke: “The real object” of the French Revolution is “to break all […]

I’m a Jacobin

I’m very happy to say that I’ll be joining the Editorial Board of Jacobin; actually, it seems I already did in December!  Since it appeared about a year or so ago, Jacobin has been publishing some of the most interesting stuff on the web. Anytime Peter Frase or Mike Beggs or Seth Ackerman has something posted over there, I drop everything and read it right away. Also, they’ve got Remeike Forbes, the smartest and coolest designer I’ve had the pleasure of talking (and listening!) to since I worked with Ginny Blaisdell at HERE. Lastly, they’ve got Bhaskar Sunkara, the young visionary behind it all, an intellectual and political impresario I insist on describing as the “Philip Rahv of our age.” […]