It seems like we’ve been going through an epidemic of plagiarism scandals for the last couple of decades. (This is a topic I’ve written about a lot.) You see it in the political elite. Where once upon a time Joe Biden’s plagiarism of Neil Kinnock destroyed his presidential campaign (in 1988), politicians, even Supreme Court justices (paging Neal Gorsuch), routinely get exposed for plagiarism, and it doesn’t affect them at all. Same goes for journalists. For a time, I thought this surfeit of scandal was a sign of a declining ruling class or something. Some loss of a sense of liberal ownership, of the connection between property and self and all that. (Not for nothing, Adam Smith seems to have […]
I’ve been fighting the Nietzsche Wars for nearly two decades now. For those of you not familiar with this epochal struggle, the Nietzsche Wars are the deep disagreements between liberal and left scholars about whether Nietzsche should be considered a right-wing conservative, which is how some of us think of him, or a serious left-wing thinker (few people actually think this anymore) or, short of that, a freeingly apolitical or antipolitical or ambiguously political thinker whose insights are useful to the left. It just occurred to me, however, that all this time we’ve been arguing about the wrong person. The person Team Nietzsche really wants to conscript for its side, and could legitimately conscript, is Heinrich Heine. Now, before everyone […]
For Americans my age or older, Ravel’s Boléro will always be the music of Blake Edwards’ film “10,” which came out in 1979. Starring Dudley Moore and Julie Andrews, the romantic comedy introduced Bo Derek, she of the braids and breasts, to the world. Thanks to Bo and Blake, Boléro came to be associated with sex of the pure fucking sort, so much so that Allan Bloom singled the music out for criticism (along with “rock ‘n roll”) in The Closing of the American Mind. More innocent times, those were. Last night, at the New York City Center, my daughter and I saw Boléro performed as a ballet. A ballet is what the music was originally commissioned as, but it’s […]
Stepping back from today’s Supreme Court rulings to consider the broad cast of the year, there seem to be three main areas in which the Court significantly pushed back on Trump. They are: 1) independence of the Fed; 2) tariffs; 3) birthright citizenship. As it happens, these were three of Trump’s biggest challenges to prevailing conservative and Republican orthodoxy. And on each one, he failed. How to read that failure? I think the simplest explanation is that the Roberts Court is, above all, a neoliberal Court. Trump’s challenge to free trade and independent monetary policy—as well as the idea of the United States being a nation of the people who are born there, not a nation of blood but a […]
In a probing Substack, John Judis writes, “In ten or fifteen years, it is very possible that the Democratic Party will be known as ‘democratic socialist’ in the same way it is now known widely as ‘liberal.’” Before you dismiss this as ideological patter from a political adventurer, you should know that Judis is a relentlessly unenthusiastic realist, who’s been watching and commenting on the American political scene longer than I’ve been alive. I’d like to take up his thought, with two tweaks. First, I’m less certain if the Democratic Party is going to be the vessel of this transformation. Though it may be at this point the oldest political party in the world—and, as Kevin Phillips famously called it, […]
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Categories
Economies, Political Theory, The Left, The Right, The State
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Tags Arthur Schlesinger, democratic socialism, John Judis, liberalism, Louis Hartz, New Deal, Philip Roth, Richard Hofstadter
Anxious about DSA’s recent victories, centrist House Democrats have issued a manifesto: “We are capitalist, not socialist.” Worried perhaps that that message may not be clear enough, Long Island Democrat Tom Suozzi elaborates in the New York Times: The people that don’t agree with their [DSA] philosophies wring their hands at cocktail parties, but they’re not organized. So we have to get organized. The cocktail party circuit, in other words, has to get organized. Suozzi, by the way, represents the two peninsulas where West Egg and East Egg, of Great Gatsby fame, were set.
The BungaBunga podcast had me on to discuss my Nation review of Sven Beckert’s Capitalism: A Global history. It was an excellent conversation. Both interviewers, Alex Gourevitch and Alex Hochuli, pushed me to think beyond what I had written. Among the issues we discovered in our discussion: Anyway, you can listen to it here or below.
In the June issue of The Nation, I have a review of Sven Beckert’s Capitalism: A Global History. It’s a long review, in part because it’s a long book. While I wound up being quite critical of the book, I’m more than mindful of what it takes to write such a book. I thought I owed the book, and Beckert, the courtesy of giving it its due. Hence the length. The review may be behind the paywall, so if you cannot access it, you can sign up for a subscription to the magazine or email me, and I can send you a pdf. Many thanks to readers of earlier drafts of the review, particularly Lucas Pinheiro, Joan Scott, Greg Grandin, […]
In 1753, Britain considered a bill to allow the naturalization of the country’s 4,000 foreign-born Jews. Formally titled “An Act to permit Persons professing the Jewish Religion to be naturalized by Parliament,” the bill was widely known as the “Jew Bill.” Though it initially passed both houses of Parliament, it was repealed after a vicious campaign of antisemitism and nativism, led by the Tories. Today’s Republican Islamophobes in Congress are more brazen. They don’t wait for the public to do their dirty work of name-calling. They have actually titled a bill that would, among other things, strip Muslim citizens of their citizenship, the “MAMDANI Act.” When people say that the historic Jewish Question, which was about whether Jews could ever […]
“JD Vance Gave A Speech To Almost No One.” “Meanwhile, Zohran Is Just Getting Things Done.”
The first appearance of the phrase “Jewish question” was in not in Germany, France, or anywhere on the Continent. It was in Britain, in 1754. In 1753, Parliament passed a bill allowing for the naturalization of Jews living in Britain. The bill, publicly called the “Jew-Bill,” provoked a massive controversy, leading to its repeal the following year. Joseph Grove wrote his “Reply to the Famous Jew Question” in response to the bill and the controversy. In 2026, nearly 275 years later, Stephen Miller, a Jewish American, is spearheading the most potent revival of today’s version of the original Jewish Question—that is, whether a religious, ethnic, or national minority can belong to a polity or not—in Britain’s most successful colony. And […]
The New York Times has a decent-enough report tonight on how the US made its decision to go war with Iran. Though it’s filled with sharp reporting and detailed accounting, it fails to identify the big forest amid the trees. That’s this: Despite the differences in personnel between the Bush and the Trump administrations, the parallels between the war in Iraq and the war in Iran are pretty straightforward. First, a hard-right Republican president comes to power denouncing the more “internationalist” and “establishment” Republicans and Democrats who see the United States as the world’s policeman. We often forget that one of Bush’s promises when he ran in 2000 was that he wouldn’t do nation-building, the United States would be “humble,” […]
I’ve been following the online debate over the slogan “no kings” with some interest. On the one side, critics argue that it’s a normie notion, which obscures all sorts of questions about imperial war, Palestine, oil, and oligarchy. On the other side, defenders say it appeals to a broad set of values and voters, providing the basis for a popular movement against not just Trump but all the ills he stands for and promotes, not to mention the kind of state he is trying to create and consolidate. Interestingly enough, as Bruno Leipold shows in his magnificent book, Citizen Marx, Marx struggled with this very question across the 1840s, 50s, and 60s. While most readers associate Marx with the claim […]
Marc Andreessen, one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley, doesn’t do introspection. So he tells David Senra—whose great point of pride and life achievement, according to Senra’s website and statement to Andreessen, is that “I’ve read obviously four hundred, I think now, ten [that’s 410] biographies of history’s greatest entrepreneurs”—in a conversation that’s been making the rounds online. Many commentators seem intent on challenging Andreeseen’s claim that he doesn’t do introspection. It is, after all, a bit of a performative contradiction, since the mere affirmation, when asked if he has any levels of introspection, “Zero, as little as possible,” would seem to require at least some introspection and stock-taking. Otherwise, how would he know? But I’ll believe Andresseen. […]
On Thursday, my daughter, who’s a high school senior, won first place for the best paper in the National History Day competition for all of New York City. The title of her paper is “Drop Dead University: The Fight for Free Education at the City University of New York.” She worked hard on it, dug deep into the municipal archives about the 1975 Fiscal Crisis and the decision to end free tuition at CUNY, read widely in the secondary literature, and, though I’m obviously not objective, did a good job. Now she goes on to the New York State competition, which will be at the end of April. Aside from proud-parent bragging, I’m posting about this tonight because I just […]
Many have heard of Hitler’s ill-fated Beer Hall Putsch. It took place in Munich in 1923 and landed Hitler in jail, where he wrote Mein Kampf. Three years before the Beer Hall Putsch there was a much more serious challenge to the Weimar Republic from the right. It was called the Kapp Putsch. Centered in Berlin, led by high-ranking officers of the military, joined by monarchist and conservative elements, speaking for the Freikorps and beyond, it posed a far more immediate threat to the national government than the failed putsch of three years later. It was stopped by a general strike. That general strike was called by the President of the Weimar Republic—the fairly moderate and plodding leader of the […]
Under the headline, “There Were Good Reasons to Depose Maduro,” Bret Stephens writes: Whether failing to remove the regime is a possibly disastrous oversight or part of a yet-to-be-revealed plan, the administration will have to figure out how to get rid of it for good in favor of a legitimate, stable and democratically elected government. Now Stephens is someone who’s on record as claiming that Trump and/or his regime are fascist, authoritarian, and autocratic. Just this past year, he has compared both to North Korea, Nero’s Rome, and much else. Yet here he is, writing as if it’s a real question as to whether this very same leader and this very same regime can create “a legitimate, stable and democratically […]
If you’ve ever read Plato’s Republic, you know that one of its central features is the argument, pursued quite sincerely by Socrates, that the state should prohibit the teaching of certain texts, particularly by the poets, by which Socrates (really, Plato) means Homer. Fast forward a couple thousand years and change, and we see the state of Texas discovering what is truly the best way to teach Plato in today’s world: ban him. Back in November, the Board of Regents of the Texas A&M University System, which is a state body, voted to adopt the following rule: No system academic course will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity, unless the course and […]
Like many of you, I woke up this morning to the news that the United States government had attacked Venezuela and captured its president, spiriting him out of the country. Though this part of it got hardly got any notice, two days ago, Jumaane Williams, in his inaugural address as NYC public advocate, explicitly invoked Maurice Bishop, the leader of Grenada where Williams’s family is from, as an influence and an inspiration. Bishop, a left-wing revolutionary, came to power in Grenada in 1979. In 1983, his government began building an airport in Grenada, which made the Reagan regime nervous. As rumblings in the US grew, Bishop was toppled in a coup and executed by forces within his own government. Six […]
In addition to what I wrote earlier today, I want to make three other observations about Mamdani’s inauguration speech. First, Trump was almost completely absent from the speech. He came up, by name, only once, when Mamdani referenced the voters who cast their ballots for Trump in 2024 and then for Mamdani in 2025. He came up, by act, only once, when Mamdani made a reference to ICE raids. I don’t think anyone believes Mamdani is not aware of Trump or what Trump can do to New York. So we have to ask why he refused to make Trump a feature of his speech. It’s not because Mamdani was only interested in going positive and being hopeful; he referenced all […]
On July 15, at a congressional hearing, New York Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik subjected CUNY’s chancellor, Félix Matos Rodríguez, to a humiliating round of questions about the alleged views of the CUNY faculty and staff. The chancellor, unfortunately, did little to defend the people at CUNY who work to make the institution what it is. Instead, he ritually intoned the need to fight antisemitism. When asked about specific people and institutions at CUNY, he deflected, feigned ignorance, or threw his employees under the bus. I particularly remember one moment of the exchange between Stefanik and the chancellor (start at 4:45). Stefanik: Are you familiar with CUNY CLEAR? This is the clinical arm of CUNY School of Law. Rodríguez: CUNY CLEAR. I’m not […]
A personal word about Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative long-time editor of Commentary, who died two days ago. As some of you many know, back in 2000 or so, I interviewed a bunch of conservatives for a magazine piece I was doing. Amazingly, I got an interview with Bill Buckley, an interview with Irving Kristol, and an interview with Norman Podhoretz. I spoke with Buckley in his Upper East Side townhouse on Park Avenue, surrounded by portraits of his wife and little dishes of cigarettes. (It was more town than house; I don’t think I’ve ever been in a personal dwelling that big.) I spoke with Kristol in an ugly office in Washington, DC; I’m guessing, though I can no longer […]
Yesterday, I was reading Jonathan Israel’s Revolutionary Jews from Spinoza to Marx, when I stumbled across a reference that sent me tumbling down an afternoon’s worth, or warren, of rabbit holes. In no particular order… 1. In February 1945, as Germany slowly dawned to its likely defeat in the Second World War, two of its representative intellectuals, Ernst Jünger and Carl Schmitt, launched the strangest, even by their standards, musing of the mind. Jünger kicked it off. Responding to a condolence card from Schmitt, Jünger stoically itemizes his losses over the last two years: his father, his son (killed during the war), and his hometown. With an unruffled melancholy, he registers the death and destruction that has occurred and is […]
Why did the Democrats cave in on the shut down? It seems clear that the main issue was not electoral backlash, since most of the senators who caved are not up for reelection, and the politics were trending in the Democrats’ favor, or at least not against them. The main issue was the filibuster. There was growing pressure from Trump on the Republicans to get rid of it, and the Democratic leadership had every reason to fear its elimination. Why? It has very little to do with preserving their power while they are in the minority; that ship has obviously sailed. The Democratic leadership doesn’t want to get rid of the filibuster for the same reason the Republican leadership doesn’t […]