archive

The military, American foreign policy, conservatism and economics

From Stars & Stripes, a series of articles on Heroes. The Marine flack who starred in Control Room has been called a hero and a traitor for joining an Arabic news network: A review of Mission Al Jazeera: From Jarhead to Journalist by Josh Rushing. Breaking Rank: Meet Iraq veteran Adam Kokesh, the new mouthpiece of the anti-war movement. Armed & Dangerous: A look at how extremists are infiltrating the military

The Great Pseudo-Debate: We only pretend to talk seriously about Iraq. The politics of the war are Kabuki theater, punctuated by moments of Democratic jujitsu. Overvaluing American Values: The trouble with putting "values" at the center of our foreign policy. Bob Hormats talks about his book, The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars. A review of The Pentagon: A History by Steve Vogel.

The End of the Journey: Is George W. Bush's conservatism the fulfillment of his movement or the betrayal of it? Sam Tanenhaus looks back at Whittaker Chambers, one of the founders of contemporary conservatism, who might not be so proud of our president. The introduction to The Right Talk: How Conservatives Transformed the Great Society into the Economic Society by Mark A. Smith. The Aquarians and the Evangelicals: How left-wing hippies and right-wing fundamentalists created a libertarian America. There are two kinds of responses to hypocrisy: cynicism and outrage. Watch “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” for evidence of the former and Fox News for examples of the latter. And while the parallel isn’t exact, we might think of misdirected Rortian ironists as favoring cynicism and misdirected Rortian metaphysicians as tending toward outrage. Politics, People and the Spectacle: The rules of democratic politics as a rational discourse do not seem to apply. 

From Fronesis, in Richard Florida's "creative city", the creative class dissolves the classical division between the productive bourgeoisie and the bohemian. But creativity strategies have been crafted to co-exist with urban socio-economic problems, not to solve them. From Business Week, The New Rich Are Building Bigger: Amid subprime woes, today's ultra-wealthy continue to build enormous trophy homes as testaments to their success. From Hoover Digest, an interview with Edward Lazear, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers. Dean Baker on undoing Bush on the economy. SEIU President Andy Stern heads one of the strongest unions in the country. Why is he so cozy with corporations? A review of Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don’t by John R. Lott, Jr.