1. Here is Michael Tomasky in yesterday’s Daily Beast on the disease of moderation mania. It is an illness that arises, in one origin, from being so systemically embedded that one cannot think outside of it. (That would be the box, for you phrase hogs.) To be making these proposals after the past nearly four […]
Anders Breivik and the Mystery of Judgment
. I admit to the acts, but not to criminal guilt. I do not plead guilty, I was acting in self-defence. Those are the words of Anders Breivik at his trial in Norway. [T]he self-confessed mass killer tried to cast himself in the role of Norway’s lone crusader against the forces of pernicious multiculturalism. There […]
Limbaugh: Censor or Censure?
. My post on “Rush Limbaugh and the Free Market of Speech” drew a comment from JP that is thoughtful and challenging, and I think my responding to it at length can deepen the exploration and understanding of what opponents of Limbaugh are doing in the media campaign against him and of what it is […]
The Duty to Retreat from Standing Your Ground
. When awful incidents like that of the Trayvon Williams killing occur, good outcomes are the attention they draw to existent social conditions, such as the continuing role of race in our relations and the advent of “stand your ground” laws in so many states. A characteristic bad outcome is how the discussion of these […]
Santorumville
. There is no shortage of contenders for the worst in human nature, but the union of faith and cynicism, righteousness and arrogance makes its own historical claim. Join a politician who casts his candidacy as the preservation of religious traditions with the corruption of public discourse that is political media and we arrive at […]