Monthly Archives: November 2016

Mark Lilla: The End of Identity Liberalism – NYTimes.com

We need a post-identity liberalism, and it should draw from the past successes of pre-identity liberalism. Such a liberalism would concentrate on widening its base by appealing to Americans as Americans and emphasizing the issues that affect a vast majority

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Political Philosophy, Politics Tagged with: ,

Marianne Constable: When Words Cease to Matter – Amor Mundi – Medium

Deliberate disregard of language poses a worse danger to political discussion and to the public realm than do ignorance and lies. Ignorance can be met with education. Falsehood and deception can be called out as illusion; they can be challenged

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Operation American Greatness, Political Philosophy, Politics Tagged with:

This Is How Steve Bannon Sees The Entire World – BuzzFeed News

Questioner: What do you think is the major threat today, to the Judeo-Christian Civilization? Secularism, or the Muslim world? In my humble opinion, they’re just trying to defend themselves from our cultural invasion. Thank you. [Question restated by Harnwell] Bannon:

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Operation American Greatness, Politics, War Tagged with: ,

Francis Fukuyama: US against the world? Trump’s America and the new global order – Financial Times

[T]he broader failure of the left was the same one made in the lead-up to 1914 and the Great war, when, in the apt phrase of the British-Czech philosopher, Ernest Gellner, a letter sent to a mailbox marked “class” was

Posted in Neo-Imperialism, Noted & Quoted, Operation American Greatness, Political Philosophy Tagged with: ,

Ben Mathis-Lilley: Richard Rorty predicted election of Trump-like figure in 1998 – Slate

Here’s one of the very next lines in that book after the crazily prescient ones above: “After my imagined strongman takes charge, he will quickly make his peace with the international superrich.” Here’s a headline from Thursday in the Huffington

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Politics Tagged with: ,

Paula Dwyer: Why Obama should pardon Hillary Clinton – Chicago Tribune

[H]alf the country now worries, and the other half hopes, that Trump will make good on his threat. More likely, he’ll contract the job out to House Republicans salivating over the prospect of televised hearings, starting with Clinton raising her

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Politics Tagged with: ,

Mark Penn: The Hillary Clinton of 2000 would have beaten Donald Trump – TheHill

She defended rather than apologized for her vote in 2008, willing to pay a political price for standing by her principles and decisions. Partially as a result of that, she was universally seen as the leader who could answer the

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Politics Tagged with: ,

Jennifer Rubin: Trump voters: We did hear you; we just thought better of you – Washington Post

If one party goes far, far left and the other goes nativist-populist, the center-left and center-right would need to join forces and put forth an alternative that fills in a huge ideological gap. They would: Refuse to favor one-half of

Posted in Noted & Quoted, Politics Tagged with: ,

Troll-Stomping and Other Sensible Things: #WordPress Plug-In Beta Test/Preview

It occurred to me the other day or week that it wouldn’t be hard to create a jQuery-enabled ignore button, and it wouldn’t be too hard to add cookies to make the ignoring persistent, and it wouldn’t be too hard to un-ignore, too. While I was at it, and feeling that enabling ignore was kind of negative, how about making it possible to highlight commenters using about the same methods used to ignore them, or particular comments, so they’re easy to pick out in a thread?

Posted in Meta, WordPress Plug-Ins Tagged with: , ,

Me: Aftermath or An 11/9 Twitterography – Here

Late on election night, after the matter and the immediate after-matter had passed, I turned, only a little drunkenly, to the latest episode of Aftermath on my DVR. The production is far from the level of premium TV product like, among newish shows, Quarry and Westworld, but the scenario and its development seem even more timely now than they did before 11/9…

Posted in Noted & Quoted, notes, Operation American Greatness, Politics Tagged with: ,