Abraham Lincoln, in his so far unending prescience and wisdom, actually offered some thoughts on the nature of labor and capital in of all places Wisconsin – at the annual meting of the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, in Milwaukee, on September 30, 1859. A brief passage from it, bolded below, is quoted often and can […]
What Gingrich Meant When He Called Obama an Anti-colonialist
Certainly you recall it. We had some discussion of it here, and here, and here, and here. The curious question at the root of the whole discussion was what it means at this p0int in history and the evolution of world culture to call someone an “anti-colonialist” and mean it as a pejorative? What does […]
Citizen Bloomberg
Reports The New York Times: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has been frank about why he took pains to keep his search for a new schools chancellor secret, saying he wanted to avoid a public spectacle. But a spectacle is exactly what Mr. Bloomberg has unleashed, and one week after announcing his choice of Cathleen P. […]
Michael Sandel: The lost art of democratic debate
Harvard’s Sandel offers a pithy “real-world” introduction to thinking about justice – Aritstotle’s still “da man” – and defense of reasoned, democratic debate. There is a tendency to think that if we engage too directly with moral questions in politics, that’s a recipe for disagreement, and for that matter a recipe for intolerance and coercion; […]
The Re-Opened Mind
It has been longer than usual since the last Open Mind. Though the series has been quiet on our blogs, ShrinkWrapped and I have been in contact behind the scenes. We paused to review the Open Mind experiment and consider what might be improved. Improvement here means a process that is in some way educational. […]