Chapbook
[Trump] can't stop this war. He doesn't know how. He has one tool--yell and scream and be an asshole--and it isn't working. Trump's whole life, he's dealt primarily with avaricious cowards. He knows how to handle those guys.
Philosophy
[I]t is not necessary to choose between social control administered by the aggrandized state [collectivism] and a self-assertive individualism subject to no social control [libertarianism]. That supposedly exclusive choice, which causes such furious party antagonism in our society, overlooks entirely one of the oldest, best established, and most
Politics
How [is] a democracy to become so well-educated [that it can] find the answers to [its] problems? The necessary education for popular government cannot be obtained in the schools and colleges, from books, newspapers, lectures, and the radio, alone. Popular education is indispensable, and I should be the last
Politics
Even before Dobbs, it was clear that the devotion of many American conservatives to restricting or outlawing abortion was about regulating the lives of women, not about “life”. When you put that together with the “family values” fairy tale of a society where sexuality was reproductive and contained within a
Politics
[A] predictable rhetorical patterning […] haunts not just American but global discussions of Israel and Palestine. There are people wholly devoted to one side or the other who are essentially tu quoque machines who go into particular overdrive when they’re sure that their own side is morally less odious in
Libraries
§1 Lunar Days “As the summer turns / I seem to fall away / Gaps in the light / The Lunar Days…” §2 The Lion Sleeps Tonight Which cover version is better? Anne Reburn's five-part self-a capella? Or They Might Be Giants' rock re-intepretation (featuring Laura Cantrell)
Books
§1 Rock and metal genres Becoming a Rate Your Music member is a great way to learn about the multitude of genres that people have imagined for sub-dividing rock and metal music, and this video (unrelated to RYM) can serve as a quick introduction. §2 Book David Orr had
Politics
§1 Arkansas Act 372 The willingness of conservative politicians and opinion-shapers in these days of Trump to speak ignorantly, lie brazenly, and act rashly has made it worthwhile to read how judges respond when their work is challenged in court. The latest worthwhile opinion (49-page PDF document) was
History
I started watching this video for one reason, and ended up being fascinated by it for another reason altogether. In the 1960s, white conservatives tended to believe that white people were racially superior to others, while white liberals tended to believe (or at least say they believed) that people of
History
The Scots were right to vote "no" on the referendum for independence because the referendum was misleading. However Scotland voted this week, and whatever the Scots may wish, they will not be independent of England. A vote cannot widen the River Tweed. A vote cannot reduce England to
History
Though the Scots have decided to remain in the United Kingdom, the closeness of the referendum and the panic that gripped the UK government during the last week before voting suggest a parallel between the fate of the Habsburg Empire after its great Napoleonic War struggle and the fate of
Commerce
"It was a tendency [during the nineteenth century], especially after 1860, to conceive of governance not merely as control of strategic centers but as ongoing activity on the part of regional authorities. [...] This territorialization was bound up with the projection of imagined shapes of the nation onto mappable space